Handbook

This course examines the legal regulation of cybercrime, information security and digital enforcement, with a focus on intellectual property and communications media. 

Using a comparative and practical approach, the course surveys the explosion in crimes that use the resources of the internet, smart phones, artificial intelligence, drones and computers to achieve illegal goals. It explores new online crimes against computers, the data they contain, and the services they are used to deliver, such as hacking, denial of service attacks, digital extortion, and other challenges to critical infrastructure of the online world. It also examines the transformation of existing crimes – such as copyright piracy, economic espionage, identity theft, fraud, bullying, and extortion – into more serious and problematic challenges to law enforcement. The course considers how nation-states regulate unlawful activity in an environment that crosses international borders and increasingly involves activities on the dark net.

This is a fast developing area of law, and this will be reflected in the material studied in the course. Main cybercrime topics that are expected to be covered in the course include:

• the evolving nature of cybercrime, information security challenges and digital enforcement;
• national and international legal and policy frameworks;
• cyberbullying, cyberstalking and online harassment;
• electronic data and identity theft including biometric data;
• digital piracy, trademark counterfeiting, economic espionage and trade secret violations, and digital enforcement;
• attacks on infrastructure, including hacking, denial of services, ransomware and other forms of digital extortion;
• pornography and obscenity including child pornography, sexting and non-consensual pornography (‘revenge porn’);
• disinformation, misinformation (for example, fake news and deep fakes) and other forms of cyber-fraud;
• information security, including privacy and surveillance challenges;
• the use of cyberspace for terrorism, political destabilization and organized crime;
• cybercrime, information security and digital enforcement post-COVID.
• cyber-terrorism and information warfare, including the growing use of cyberspace to promote political destabilization.

A technical background is not required.