As cybercrime researchers we’re often focused on the globalised aspects of online harms – how the Internet connects people and services around the world, opening up opportunities for crime, risk, and harm on a global scale. However, as we argue in open access research published this week in the Journal of Criminal Psychology in collaboration between the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre (CCC), Edinburgh Napier University, the University of Edinburgh, and Abertay University, as we have seen an enormous rise in reported cybercrime in the pandemic, we have paradoxically seen this dominated by issues with a much more local character. Our paper sketches a past: of cybercrime in a turbulent 2020, and a future: of the roles which state law enforcement might play in tackling online harm a post-pandemic world.
Continue reading Friendly neighbourhood cybercrime: online harm in the pandemic and the futures of cybercrime policing