30 Critical Criminology and Cybercrime 607

interest of powerful corporations” (Lanier et al. 2015, p. 264). It could be argued, for
instance, that while the business regulations implemented alongside Roosevelt’s
New Deal stifled individual capitalists, these measures ultimately saved American
capitalism from the excesses of its greediest companies. In another example, struc-
tural Marxists have pointed out that the American criminal justice system operates in
a manner which reifies class distinctions, rendering the poor and other “problem
populations” as deserving of punishment through incarceration, while the gross
harms caused by white collar and corporate offenders are often construed as regu-
lator or civil offenses – if they are considered offenses at all (Reiman and Leighton
2017; Spitzer 1975).
Despite major changes to the political economy in the age of the Internet that has
created a host of new crime problems and criminal opportunities, applications of
radical criminology on cybercrime and security are limited. It is toward the limited
research from a radical perspective on these subjects that this chapter now turns to.

Radical Criminology and Cybercrime

Though radical criminology does address crime and crime causation, many radical
criminologists focus on criminalization and control. It is thus perhaps fitting that one
of the earliest pieces of radical criminology in the realm of cybercrime focuses on the
formation of an industrial complex dedicated to cybersecurity. In this piece, Majid Yar
(2008a) builds from the work of Nils Christie (2000) who described the emergence of
Crime Control as Industry or what others have termed the prison-industrial complex
or corrections-commercial complex (e.g., Lilly and Knepper 1993). Yar (2008a) notes
the emergence of an industry dedicated to computer crime control, following trends in
other areas of crime control, which increasingly relies on market-based solutions.
Further, Yar (2008a) notes that computer security has become “responsibilized” where
the onus is placed on individuals to protect themselves from criminal predation, a
trend he attributes to “a transition to a neo-liberal mode of capitalism” that displaced
security to “non-market quasi-public regulatory bodies,” “communities of self-polic-
ing,” and private companies (Yar 2008a, pp. 193, 195). In other words, security is
provided as a commodity and service.
The computer crime control industry have itself entrenched within “nodal”
approaches to crime control – where responsibilities for managing cybercrime
threats are dispersed among an assortment of public and private organizations and
actors. These “nodal” or decentralized methods of control have been heavily criti-
cized. For instance, a reliance on nonpublic entities for security suffers from a lack of
oversight and accountability (Loader and Sparks 2007, pp. 82, 91). Concerns have
also been expressed about the role of privatization and the dispersal of control in the
erosion of the state’s power for governance – that the state is being “hollowed out”
(Holliday 2000; Jessop 2004; Rhodes 1994). Further, functional limitations may also
confront these approaches. Yar (2011, pp. 10–13), for example, argues that such
cooperative control efforts may breakdown or otherwise fail due to three endemic
tendencies: (1) “failure due to inter-systemic conflicts and discordant rationalities” or
608 A. L. McCarthy and K. F. Steinmetz

the tendency for these networks to be disrupted by competing interests, agendas, and
governing logics between state, market, and other organizations/actors; (2) “failure
due to intra-systemic competition” or the tendency of actors within governing
sectors, like local and federal law enforcement, to compete with each other; and
(3) “failure due to multiple spatial-temporal scales” or the tendency of governing
organizations and actors to undermine each other by operating at different scales or
levels of analysis (see also: Levi and Williams 2013).
Banks (2015, p. 260) provides a noteworthy analysis demonstrating the computer
crime control industry at work in the aftermath of the discovery of the “Heartbleed”
bug. Heartbleed exploited “vulnerable versions of OpenSSL software” and enabled
“individuals to read the memory content of systems by compromising the ‘secret keys’
which are employed in the identification of service providers, the encryption of traffic,
usernames and passwords and the content of messages.” Bank’s analysis examines the
reporting of the bug, whereby news media and information security companies
peddled a narrative of risk and encouraged fear about the possible outcomes of the
coding error, creating a “culture of fear” surrounding cybercrime (Wall 2008). To
ameliorate their anxieties, users were encouraged the take matters into their own
hands, including acquiring products and services from various information security
vendors. As the author indicates, this is a common tactic taken by private companies
provisioning crime control and security – fear generates demand (Hall and Winlow
2005; Hayward 2004). Of course, as he acknowledges, “it may well be the case that
the hyperbolic news reporting that follows the discovery of a new digital danger acts to
drive public awareness and increase the speed with which online populations identify
and deploy preventative measures and remedies” (Banks 2015, p. 275). Banks (2015),
however, remains skeptical, arguing that the coverage of Heartbleed was – at least in
part – an attempt to cultivate sales of security services and products.
Recent works have also explored hacking and hacktivism (a portmanteau of
“hacking” and “activism”) through radical criminology. In their recent analyses,
Banks (2018) and Steinmetz (2016) argue that these issues are mired in in social
constructionist distortions which contribute to a social unease and fear about infor-
mation security and personal safety. As Banks (2018, p. 112) explains, the fear
generated creates benefits for “governments, law enforcement agencies, the techno-
security industry, commercial corporations and the media” by allowing for the
expansion of state surveillance apparatuses, government power through harsh pun-
ishments of offenders, and the creation of a multibillion dollar cybersecurity indus-
try. In this manner, the actual threat posed by hackers and hacktivists is potentially
distorted in the funhouse mirrors of news media, popular culture, political rhetoric,
and corporate propaganda (Ferrell et al. 2015; Steinmetz 2016). Steinmetz (2016)
further adds that contemporary information capitalism simultaneously harnesses the
creative productive potential of hackers while seeking to suppress the threat they
pose to the capitalist mode of production. He highlights three “fronts of social
construction” through which this process occurs: “first, hackers are constructed as
dangerous, which allows a criminal classification to be imposed. Second, intellectual
property is reified, giving capitalists a set of property ‘rights’ to protect from the
threats of individuals like hackers. Finally, technological infrastructures are
30 Critical Criminology and Cybercrime 609

portrayed as vulnerable, lending a degree of urgency to the need to fight off the
hacker ‘menace’ along with other technocriminals” (Steinmetz 2016, pp. 178, 218).
Once formed, these ideological machinations permit the expansion of corporate and
state control over intellectual property and technological production.
Digital piracy, or the unauthorized digital duplication and distribution of
copyrighted content, is also a cybercrime that can be understood through radical
criminology. Many studies have been published which are critical of copyright law
as well as the rhetoric and behavior of content industries (music, movies, software,
etc.) (e.g., Boyle 2003; Halbert 2016; Lessig 2004, 2012; Mueller 2016; Parkes 2012;
Perelman 1998, 2002, 2014). Though an exhaustive exploration of this literature is
beyond the scope of this chapter, the current analysis will highlight scholarship on
piracy within criminology consistent with the radical criminological tradition. In
particular, these studies understand piracy as a product of a criminalization process
that largely serves the interests of capital accumulation increasingly dependent on
global vectors of information transmission (Yar 2005, 2008a; Steinmetz and Pimentel
2018). Importantly, radical criminologists regard piracy as a problem without moor-
ings in a social consensus about harm but, rather, as a product of processes which
affirm the interests of capital accumulation (Yar 2008b, p. 606). Yar (2005, p. 684)
argues that we need to “examine with a critical eye the social processes by which
‘piracy’ is itself being constituted (and reconstituted) as a legal (and moral) violation,
and to consider how quantifications of the ‘piracy’ problem are themselves the
outcome of a range of contingent (and interest-bound) processes and inferences.”
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, peer-to-peer (p2p) filesharing systems like
Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa, and BitTorrent emerged which allowed for rapid and
decentralized distribution of files across the Internet. These systems were largely
embraced for their ability to make accessible large troves of copyrighted content for
free download. Needless to say, copyright industries panicked. They decried the
growth of so-called online piracy, foretold of significant economic losses to indus-
tries and content creators, and called for increased copyright protections and enforce-
ment efforts (Lessig 2004; Yar 2005). During this period, criminology produced a
host of studies examining potential causes, correlates, and harms of piracy, much of
it uncritically accepting the narratives and statistics produced by industry organiza-
tions (e.g., Gunter 2009; Higgins et al. 2008; Morris and Higgins 2010; Smallridge
and Roberts 2013; Tade and Akinleye 2012). Yet some research echoed the schol-
arship in other fields which was becoming increasingly skeptical about claims made
by industries regarding dangers and losses resulting from piracy.
In 2005, Majid Yar provided an early radical criminological take on the piracy by
examining the social construction of piracy as a crime problem by corporate
interests. In particular, he attacks the reliance on industry-produced statistics on
the magnitude of the issue, including losses produced to industries and content
creators to create a narrative about the prevalence of and harm produced by piracy
(Yar 2005). As he explains, these figures are often biased in favor of content
industries who have a vested interest in maximizing the totals to increase the
perceived urgency in dealing with copyright violators to lawmakers and law enforce-
ment agencies (see also: Kariithi 2011; Lessig 2004). He further argues that:
610 A. L. McCarthy and K. F. Steinmetz

These industry “guesstimates” usually become reified into incontrovertible facts, and pro-
vide the basis for further discussion and action on the “piracy problem.” From the industry’s
viewpoint, the inflation of the figures is the starting point for a “virtuous circle” – high
figures put pressure on legislators to criminalize, and on enforcement agencies to police
more rigorously; the tightening of copyright laws produces more “copyright theft” as
previously legal or tolerated uses are prohibited, and the more intensive policing of “piracy”
results in more seizures; these in turn produce new estimates suggesting that the “epidemic”
continues to grow unabated; which then legitimates industry calls for even more vigorous
action. What the “true” underlying levels and trends in “piracy” might be, however, remain
inevitably obscured behind this process of socio-statistical construction. (Yar 2005, p. 690)

In this manner, Yar (2005) argues that a possible explanation of the increase in illegal
downloading is not necessarily entirely a result in changing behaviors among
Internet users but may be a result of industries crafting a narrative portraying piracy
as on the rise and their industry in greater need of state protections.
In 2008, Yar also provided a radical criminological exploration of industry-pro-
duced anti-piracy educational campaigns. According to him, these campaigns are
designed to convince young folks that piracy is an antisocial activity and that
intellectual property should be treated as analogous to forms of physical property.
They are lesson plans which promote a particular view of intellectual property in the
interests of content industries, views juxtaposed with alternative assessments like
those who argue that content is equivalent to speech and any attempt to curtail such
speech (i.e., prevent piracy) is an encroachment of speech (e.g., Dame-Boyle 2015;
Doctorow 2016; Stallman 2002). Thus Yar (2008b, p. 607) argues that “anti-piracy
campaigns must be viewed as ideological in character, providing support for this
construction of value by both drawing upon and extending longstanding (albeit
contested) notions of property and individual property rights, which themselves out
to be seen as essential underpinnings of capitalist accumulation” (Yar 2008b, p. 607).
More recently, Steinmetz and Pimentel (2018) authored a radical criminological
examination that argued intellectual property and piracy were caught up in dialectical
contradictions presented by classical liberal values endemic to both capitalism and many
sectors of tech culture, including hacking and piracy. One key argument made in their
analysis is that “piracy is produced under the same historical circumstances that birth
intellectual property – one cannot exist without the other” (Steinmetz and Pimentel
2018, p. 200). From this view, each time a new technology emerges that alters the way
information is disseminated, certain uses of the technology emerge which are decried by
established business interests as “piracy” (Lessig 2004). Yet, Steinmetz and Pimentel
(2018) point out that it would be insufficient to simply claim that piracy is the antithesis
of copyright and content industries. Instead, variations of similar ideological values
underpin both business interests and piracy – that the friction between these opposing
sides may stem from contradictions endemic to liberal values. For instance, they stated
that “on the one hand, the liberal value of property ownership as an expression of
freedom undergirds intellectual property” but “on the other hand, liberalism also
supports the view of pirates that expressive content is akin to speech and, as such, any
limit on its circulation is fundamentally amoral” and that “piracy reimagines the
enlightenment values of sharing information as a social good” (Steinmetz and Pimentel
2018, p. 200).
30 Critical Criminology and Cybercrime 611

This chapter has highlighted just a few of the potentially many applications of
radical criminology on cybercrime. There are many other possibilities for applica-
tions of radical criminological theory. For example, online fraud can be understood
as at least partially a result of the proliferation of criminal opportunities created
within the context of contemporary information capitalism. Banks, for example,
now use online services to access and transfer of moneys faster at a global scale,
expanding the capacity for traditional use of banks for fraud by larger businesses
but also the capacity for white collar crime by providing opportunities for workers
to transfer funds with their exclusive access (Levi 2008). In other words, structural
changes to the transfer and management of money have created new structures of
opportunity for criminal activity. The same goes for the existence of online illicit
marketplaces which trade in login credentials and financial information (e.g., credit
card numbers). These marketplaces can only exist in an era of information capi-
talism which depends on the rapid and relatively unfettered transmission and
storage of financial information for the purposes of commerce. Examining the
intersection between money management technologies, legal market structures,
and illicit marketplaces may therefore be a fruitful area of research for radical
criminologists.
Another potential area of radical inquiry concerns the transition of some gam-
bling to Internet platforms has opened the gateway for transnational crimes. For
example, Crawford (2014) analyzes the conflict between the United States and
Antigua and Barbuda over illicit online gambling draws parallels to the capitalist
outsourcing of labor, i.e., gambling is “characterize[d] the outsourcing of
manufacturing from a rich country, where wages and other costs tend to be high,
to a poorer nation, where the skill of workers is equivalent to that of the domestic
labour force” (p. 134). The United States domestic law enforcement patterns tended
to pursue offshore online casinos/gambling less than domestic gambling suppliers
and thus reflecting capitalist interests rather than upholding moral codes rendering
the state criminogenic. In another example, Banks (2014) demonstrates how online
gambling has opened up pathways for risk of fraud and theft victimization which
users much learn to navigate across licit, illicit, and semi-illicit gambling market-
places. Additionally, such businesses engage in various strategies in attempts to
manage users’ perceptions of risk regarding “underage and problem gambling,
significant financial loss, crime, and victimization” – thus portraying online gam-
bling as a safe risk (Banks 2014, p. 60). He also points out that the transition to
online spaces allowed for gambling operators to be subjected to new forms of
extortion – that their sites would be subjected to denial of service attacks unless
they paid out. Considering the complex interplay of economic interests, legal
regulations, and management strategies employed by gambling site operators,
users, and fraudsters, online gambling presents a tremendous opportunity for radical
criminological analysis.
Up to this point, the chapter has focused primarily on power in the context of
capitalist social relations. While the radical perspective of tracing power through
capitalism is important, power can also be discursive and nuanced, requiring a
theoretical perspective more attuned to the relationship between language and
power. Enter postmodern criminology.