Cybercrime

• Author: Lloyd G. Waller/Corin Bailey/Stephen Johnson
• Profession: Senior Lecturer in Methodology and Political Sociology and Head/Chair of the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and Director of the Centre for Leadership and Governance, a research and policy unit within the Department of Government, UWI/Fellow at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, ...
• Pages: 39-56

Cybercrime

CONCEPTUALISING CYBERCRIME

Usage of the term ‘cybercrime’ has become quite popular



and objectifying the concept. Furthermore, there is no single

term to characterise the tools and software used in several

online crimes. In the next two sections, we comprehensively



different categories (Gordon and Ford 2006).

  



based on ‘the perception of both observer/protector and

victim and are partly a function of computer-related crimes

geographic evolution’ (McQuade 2006). For example,

The Council of Europe’s Cybercrime Treaty uses the term

‘cybercrime’ to refer to offences ranging from criminal

activity against data, to content and copyright infringement.

       

as fraud, unauthorised access, child pornography, forgery

and unauthorised access, lotto scamming and cyber-stalking

(Zeviar-Geese 1997–98).



   

of a computer. However, based on S. McQuade (2006) and

 

can be committed using different types of Information

Communication Technologies (ICTs).

40 ¦ FEAR OF CYBERCRIME

Cybercrime is extremely extensive in scope as it

encompasses pre-existing crimes assisted by technology as

well as the creation of new ones. Most ostensibly, cybercrime

may be described as any criminal offence committed using

the computer (Kierkegaard 2005). Cybercrime consists

of two distinct categories: computer-related crime and

computer crime. Computer-related crime entails the

committing of conventional crime such as various methods

of fraud, stalking and forging documents with the aid or

assistance of a computer technological device. Computer

crime, on the other hand, is more recent as the computer

technological device is the modus operandi (the primary tool

used to perpetrate the crime) and the main targets are usually

other computer networks (Kierkegaard 2005; McQuade

2006). Instances of computer crime include hacking into



illegal acts. Computer crimes exist only in the technological

realm and require exceptional levels of expertise, knowledge

and skill by the perpetrator (Kierkegaard 2011).

HISTORY OF CYBERCRIME

The concept cybercrime represents what appears to be

the product of a rather dynamic process. The trajectory of

     

emerged it was clouded in confusion. Its history dates back

as far as the Second World War, when computers were used

by the United States to decrypt coded messages. During this

period (1958), the term, ‘computer related crimes’, was used

to describe crimes committed with the aid of computers.

Throughout the 1960s, terms such as ‘corporate and

economic crime’, were used to describe crimes involving

corporate or university computer systems. In the 1970s