Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

2
CHAPTER 1
Cyberspace: The new frontier for policing?
According to the UK’s 2011 Cyber Security Strategy, at the time of its publication 
2 billion people were online and there were over 5 billion Internet-connected devices 
in existence. During that same year, the number of people being proceeded against 
for offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1991 in England and Wales, accord-
ing to a document from the Ministry of Justice, was nine (
Canham, 2012
) with no 
people being proceeded against for the two offences under s.1(1) and s.1(3). Perhaps 
as surprisingly, the records from the Police National Legal Database (PNLD) used 
by all police forces in England and Wales for offence wordings, charging codes, and 
legal research show that during two weeks (chosen at random) in 2013 the Computer 
Misuse Act 1990 and its constituent parts were accessed as follows:
Between 4th and 10th March—907 times
Between 10th and 16th November—750 times
Reconciling these two data sets is difficult. While it is clear from the PNLD access 
data that law enforcement officials in England and Wales are still interrogating the 
1990 legislation frequently (on average, around 825 times per week or 118 times 
per day or annually 42,900 times), the number of prosecutions for the correlative of-
fences is vanishingly small. One of the many challenges with cybercrime and cyber-
enabled criminality is establishing its size and shape.
THE SHAPE OF THE CHALLENGE
Just as the shape of our technology has changed beyond all recognition since 1990, 
so too has the shape of the challenge. The almost unconstrained development of 
Internet-based connectivity can be seen, on one hand, as a phenomenological eman-
cipation of the masses, an extension of the Civil Data Movement and the citizens’ 
entitlement to publicly held data (see (
Sampson and Kinnear, 2010
). On the other 
hand, the empowerment it has given others (particularly sovereign states) to abuse 
cyberspace has been cast as representing the “end of privacy” prompting a petition to 
the United Nations for a “bill of digital rights.”
Steering a predictably middle course, the UK strategy sets out the key—and, it is 
submitted, most elusive—concept within the document: that of a “vibrant, resilient, 
and secure cyberspace.” The aspiration must surely be right but how can resilience 
and security be achieved within a vibrant space run by computers? In terms of both 
computers and our reliance upon them, we have moved so far from the original no-
tion of boxes, functions, commands and programs, along with the consequences that 
can be brought about by their use, that a fundamental re-think is needed.
So what—and where—is cyberspace? Much has been written recently on the 
threat, risk and harm posed by “cybercrime,” “e-crime,” “cyber-enabled” criminality 
but the legislation has been left a long way behind. The EU has a substantial num-
ber of workstreams around its “Cybersecurity Strategy” and its own working defini-
tion of “cyberspace” though its own proposed Directive has no legal definition but 
rather one for Network and Information Security to match the agency established in 

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