Dora Heideman
Blog Assignment 2
Fall 2013
Sociology 167
Describing the Crime: In July 2013, five men—four of whom were from Russia, one from Ukraine, and three of whom still have yet to be found by authorities—were charged with conspiracy and other counts of fraud and identity theft after carrying out a series of world-wide cyberattacks which have collectively been called one of the largest cases of identity theft in history. Over 160 million credit/debit card numbers were stolen from an array of large U.S. companies (a total of 17, including 7-Eleven, NASDAQ, Carrafour, JCP, Wet Seal, JetBlue, Global Payment, etc.) over a timespan of seven years, adding up to losses of hundreds of millions of dollars (just 3 of the targeted companies alone reported losses that added up to $300 million). Each of the five men played a different role in the elaborate operation, specializing in the specific field to which they were contributing. Their system included frequently changing physical platforms of where they were storing their data and stolen information, frequently erasing content on short notice, keeping their identities entirely anonymous along with using anonymous web-hosting services, encrypting communications, disabling security systems of corporate networks, and having multiple steps in the operation (multiple layers), making it difficult to get back to the main source of the crime (them).
How the Criminals use the Disinhibition Effect: I believe that the cybercrime defendants in this situation were experiencing the disinhibition effect which Suler discusses, and more specifically, that they were relying heavily on what Suler explains as Dissociative Anonymity. The expectation on the Internet is such that your life online is separate from your real life in person, and therefore it’s easier to escape real-life consequences when these lives are separate and you can choose to be anonymous on the Internet (and carefully hide your activities as the criminals here have taken advantage of doing). As Suler explains in The Online Disinhibition Effect, “In a process of dissociation, they don’t have to own their behavior by acknowledging it within the full context of an integrated online/offline identity…superego restrictions and moral cognitive processes have been temporarily suspended from the online psyche.” (Suler, 322) I believe that this is what the Internet criminals are doing in this case—they’re detaching their actions from the consequences, and taking advantage of being anonymous so that evidence cannot be easily traced back to them. I do, however, also feel that these five men are relying a decent amount on not having to be physically present (“Invisibility”), and not having things occur in real time (“Asynchronicity”)—it’s like being able to rob a bank and pausing time so that no one sees you come in (invisible, ignoring temporal restraints)—it’s an Internet ‘hit and run’.
LINK TO ARTICLE: http://www.justice.gov/usao/nj/Press/files/Drinkman,%20Vladimir%20et%20al.%20Indictment%20News%20Release.html
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