ABSTRACT
If the Internet is one of the most rewarding inventions of recent years, then the cyberspace it has created is, simultaneously, a most complex and contradictory environment. 2 The ‘prosaic set of wires and switches’ that was originally designed to connect together the computers of researchers and technicians has rapidly become an emblem of national pride and economic and social vitality (Walker et al. 2000: 3). Yet the new business, governmental and social opportunities the Internet generates are also accompanied by new criminal opportunities – cybercrimes – and much of the public debate about the Internet has focused upon the risks and anxieties they generate. Consequently, ‘cybercrime’ is a term that has widely come to symbolise insecurity in cyberspace. Yet, in itself, the term is fairly meaningless, other than signifying the occurrence of a harmful behaviour that is somehow related to a networked computer (NCIS 1999). More importantly, perhaps, it is largely an invention of the media and has no specific reference point in law. Indeed, many of the so-called cybercrimes are not necessarily crimes in law, they are harms. Yet it is the term ‘cybercrime’ that has acquired considerable linguistic agency and has become absorbed into the vernacular. Furthermore, cybercrimes have become widely identified as ‘something that must be policed’. This chapter, therefore, will consider the insecurities the Internet creates within the new ‘social’ field (see Manning 2000: 177) of cyberspace. The chapter goes on to explore the ways in which these insecurities can be, and are being, policed.
