The Innovation Law & Theory Workshop
Presents
Professor David S. Wall
Professor of Criminal Justice and Information Society
School of Law, University of Leeds
Topic: Cybercrime and the Culture of Fear 2.0: Constructing Cybercrime in the Public Imagination
Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Time: 12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Place: Solarium, Falconer Hall, 84 Queen’s Park
Description: As the boundary between science fiction and science becomes more blurred, then new networked technologies not only shape the social, but the social is also simultaneously shaping networked technologies. With this maxim in mind this paper explores the way that the conceptual origins of cyber crime in social science fiction and real-world crime influence the way that we view, and react to, online deviance. It also explores the frequent confusion between rhetoric and reality in the production of knowledge about cybercrime. It illustrates how the reporting of dystopic narratives about life in networked worlds influences public reactions to technological change. Reactions which strengthen the prevailing culture of fear about cyber crime and which, in turn, shapes public expectations of online risk, the formation of law and the subsequent interpretation of justice. The paper then identifies these expectations and responds to the various mythologies that are currently circulating about cyber crime, before identifying the various tensions in the production of criminological knowledge about it that contribute to sustaining those mythologies. Finally, the paper will reflect upon the reception of an earlier incarnation of this paper following publication.
Bio: David S. Wall (BA, MA, M Phil, PhD, FRSA, AcSS) is Professor of Criminal Justice and Information Society at the University of Leeds. Formerly Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies (2000-2005) and Head of the School of Law (2005-2007), he conducts research and teaches in the fields of criminal justice and information technology (Cybercrime), policing, cyberlaw and intellectual property crime. He has a sustained track record of funded research projects and his recent EU projects include the regulation of deviant behaviour on the Internet (AHRC) and FP6 project TRANSCRIME (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) and the Sorbonne, Paris on the counterfeiting of luxury fashion goods. He also recently collaborated with Michael Levi (University of Cardiff) on an EC-funded project that led to the report Security and Privacy for the Citizen in the Post-September 11 Digital Age: A Prospective Overview (IPTS, Seville, 2003). He has published 11 books and more than 30 articles on his subject area. The more recent and relevant titles include: Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age (Polity, 2007), Cyberspace Crime (ed. Ashgate/ Dartmouth, 2003), Crime and the Internet (ed. Routledge, 2001) and he co-edited The Internet, Law and Society (with Y. Akdeniz and C. Walker, Longman, 2000).
Lunch will be provided - Please RSVP to centre.ilp@utoronto.ca so we can better
predict the numbers.
Sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Law Technology and Culture and the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto
