ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the nature of disruption and its application in the context of cybercrime, with a particular focus on legal frameworks. It begins with the nature of disruption and the role of intelligence in disruptive practices, before providing examples of how disruption may apply in the context of cybercrime. The chapter considers three contexts in which legislative action may be required in order to provide both the necessary legal powers and appropriate oversight. These are: the need for criminal offences that support disruptive techniques, investigative powers that may be utilised for disruptive purposes and provisions that support transnational cooperation. Since the early 1990s, policing agencies have increasingly moved away from a reactive prosecution-directed mode of crime control towards a form of policing known as intelligence-led policing. Because of its more proactive nature, intelligence-led policing lends itself not only to crime prevention and reduction, but to the use of other techniques to disrupt criminal activity without necessarily proceeding to prosecution.
