The Darknet and Smarter Crime: Methods for Investigating Criminal Entrepreneurs and the Illicit Drug Economy

ISBN-13: 9783030265144 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 235 str.

Angus Bancroft

Recenzje

"This useful reference brings together various facets of digital crime and their connections with offline behavior, providing readers with a deeper understanding of the success of cryptomarkets as the choice platform for online drug markets." (Phoram Mehta, Computing Reviews, February 25, 2021)

Spis treści

Acknowledgements 5

1: Overview of the book 6

2: Crime is as smart and as dumb as the internet 11

Digital crime is global and local 13

The limits of digital crime 14

After Cybercrime 15

New configurations of digital crime 17

Do not fear the darknet 19

Myths of the internet make digital crime look strange when it is normal 24

Conclusion 27

3: How cryptomarkets work 27

Cryptomarkets mimic the form but not the content of clearnet shopping sites 27

New contexts for crime and semi-crime 34

Technology shouldn’t lead and criminals should avoid bitcoin 37

Cultures of digital crime 40

Implications of cryptomarkets 42

Conclusion 43

4: Fracturing research in splintering digital environments 43

The internet is more mobile, more ingrained and also more fractured 43

Reshaping expertise in social research 45

Questioning scientific hierarchies 47

New data types and combinations 49

Ethics and politics in the data infrastructure 51

End of the online 53

The Network and the Limits of Metaphor 54

How this changes what we study 56

Research for this book 58

Conclusion 58

5: Illicit trades are political economies 59

Security and insecurity are distributed by the nation state and global economy 59

Social trauma and harm geography 60

Extent and growth of the illicit economy 62

Legitimate illicit business 66

Legitimate violence 71

Markets regulate crime 72

Conclusion 74

6: The cultural drug-crime confection 74

Illicit intoxication and normal addiction in the ‘machine zone’ 75

The work of culture in the context of the illicit 76

Symbolic order and power 80

Looking for culture 83

Looking into the surface 85

Drug markets in institutions 86

Conclusion 88

7: Cybercrime is not always rational, but it is reasonable 89

Digital crime is structured more than organised 89

Organised crime is a useful performance for cops and criminals 91

Trade associations exist alongside cartels 93

Illegal markets come in different types 94

From Kingpinning to routine crime 95

Normal scammers and legit vendors 96

Business strategy and trajectory 96

Building a hybrid infrastructure to cope with uncertainty 100

Markets regulate crime work 101

Coordination and cooperation 103

Structuring Opportunity 105

8: Managing relationships in digital crime 108

Seeing like a blockchain: the problem of trust 109

Smart contracts, and machine laws 110

Trust in cryptomarkets 111

Coordination and cooperation 113

Conclusion 115

9: How knowledge about drugs is produced in cryptomarkets 116

Quality is an unstable quality 118

Paraphernalia and preparation 119

How users share knowledge and assess quality 124

Adulteration, contamination 127

Conclusion 129

10: Risk structuring 130

Cryptomarkets are one place where drug risk is dissected and reworked 130

Structuring of risk 132

Peer support 135

Risk signalling and responsible harm 137

Dosing and the user’s body 141

Drug Altruism 142

Cryptomarkets are meeting points 143

Conclusion 146

11: Technology does not confer security and transparency does not confer safety 147

Anonymity is desired but not achieved in the cryptomarkets 147

Secrecy is needed 150

Anonymity’s techno-politics 150

The pleasures of the hidden 152

Attesting persona 155

Multiple identities are a challenge for users and vendors: 155

Maintaining opsec through defeat and deniability 156

The inadequate shield of technology 158

Conclusion 161

12: Why digital crime works 162

Cybercriminals and law enforcement imagine crime and so shape what crime is 163

Crime has logics, not only rationality 164

What is happening to the cryptomarkets 166

This all matters because as a society we are far more constrained than at any time in the past 167

Conclusion 168

References 169

O autorze

Angus Bancroft is Lecturer in Sociology at The University of Edinburgh, UK. His current research interests are cyber-security, illicit markets and views of darknet users. He is the author of three previous books: Dead White Men and Other Important People (Palgrave, 2016); Drugs, Intoxication and Society (Cambridge Polity, 2009); and Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe: Modernity, Race, Space and Exclusion (Avebury Ashgate, 2005). 

Blurb

This book draws on research into darknet cryptomarkets to examine themes of cybercrime, cybersecurity, illicit markets and drug use. Cybersecurity is increasingly seen as essential, yet it is also a point of contention between citizens, states, non-governmental organisations and private corporations as each grapples with existing and developing technologies. The increased importance of privacy online has sparked concerns about the loss of confidentiality and autonomy in the face of state and corporate surveillance on one hand, and the creation of ungovernable spaces and the facilitation of terrorism and harassment on the other. These differences and disputes highlight the dual nature of the internet: allowing counter-publics to emerge and providing opportunities for state and corporate domination through control of the data infrastructure. This book argues that, far from being a dangerous anarchist haven, the darknet and the technologies used within it could have benefits and significance for everyone online.