Speaker 1: Have you ever felt that that just feeling of information overload,
Speaker 1: especially when you're trying to get your head around something
Speaker 1: as complex as online crime and you know its impact
Speaker 1: on real people.
Speaker 2: Oh, definitely, it's a huge topic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So today we're taking a deep dive into cyber
Speaker 1: victimology Decoding cyber Crime Victimization by Professor Debati Holder. Our
Speaker 1: mission really is to cut through some of that noise
Speaker 1: to give you those essential kind of aha moments about
Speaker 1: who cybercrime victims truly are, the unique challenges they face,
Speaker 1: and well, how the world is racing to catch up.
Speaker 2: And what's particularly compelling about Professor Halder's work, I think
Speaker 2: is her immense practical experience. She's not just a professor
Speaker 2: of law, right, not at all. She founded the Center
Speaker 2: for Cybervictim Counseling in India, and she was actually the
Speaker 2: first to introduce therapeutic jurisprudence, which you know, fundamentally looks
Speaker 2: at how the legal system itself impacts well being to
Speaker 2: law students there, that's fascinating. Yeah, And she even developed
Speaker 2: her own rational coping theory for online victimization. It explores
Speaker 2: why victims sometimes choose coping methods online that seem well
Speaker 2: counterproductive on the surface. Plus her work with huge tech
Speaker 2: companies like Facebook and Instagram and bodies like UNISEF on
Speaker 2: online safety, it just provides this crucial real world perspective
Speaker 2: that's frankly invaluable for understanding this whole space.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's unpack this a bit. Victimology, the study
Speaker 1: of victims. It might sound academic, maybe a bit dry,
Speaker 1: but surprisingly, even just defining the term victim has a
Speaker 1: really complex evolving history, especially when it comes to who
Speaker 1: actually gets recognized and supportive.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely right. Historically you had early victimologists like Hinting
Speaker 2: and Fata exploring things like victim vulnerability factors contributing to victimization,
Speaker 2: but this perspective often drew criticism. Why was that, well
Speaker 2: for perhaps unintentionally shifting some of the blame onto the victim,
Speaker 2: you know. And then after World War Two, the legal
Speaker 2: spotlight really really shifted towards the rights of the accused,
Speaker 2: so primary victims often ended up being relegated to just
Speaker 2: witnesses in their own cases, which raises a pretty important question,
Speaker 2: doesn't it. What about the emotional the physical trauma that
Speaker 2: might actually make someone a bad witness in court. Does
Speaker 2: that hinder their ability to get justice?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a crucial point. And here's a truly surprising fact.
Speaker 1: I think it wasn't until nineteen eighty five that the
Speaker 1: term victim even got a universal definition.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, before that landmark moment, a few countries like Israel, England,
Speaker 1: the US, Canada, they were already sort of pioneering victim
Speaker 1: support policies.
Speaker 2: They're already moving on it, funding surveys on unreported crimes,
Speaker 2: holding National Victims' Rights weeks to raise awareness that kind
Speaker 2: of thing exactly. And building on that crucial movement, the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five UN Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice
Speaker 2: for Victims of Crime and Adduce of Power. Well, that
Speaker 2: became a real game changer. It wasn't just a definition,
Speaker 2: It was like a revolution and recognition. It broadly to
Speaker 2: find victims, not just those directly suffering physical or mental injury,
Speaker 2: emotional pain, economic loss, but also immediate family dependence, even
Speaker 2: people who stepped into help. Wow, that's broad, very broad,
Speaker 2: and crucially it applied universally, introduced victim impact statements and
Speaker 2: really emphasized rights to justice, fair treatment, restitution compensation.
Speaker 1: So what this really boils down to, then, is that
Speaker 1: this monumental shift broadened our understanding of victimization way beyond
Speaker 1: just you know, physical violence or property loss. Absolutely, it
Speaker 1: basically laid the essential groundwork for finally recognizing the profound,
Speaker 1: yet often invisible impacts of cybercrime.
Speaker 2: Precisely, it's set the stage.
Speaker 1: Okay, now let's talk about the Internet itself. Think back
Speaker 1: to its early days, I mean, a very different beast
Speaker 1: from what we know today.
Speaker 2: Right, completely different.
Speaker 1: What was truly fascinating is how its evolution, you know,
Speaker 1: from this niche military tool to some of that's part
Speaker 1: of our everyday lives, has directly, almost inevitably shaped the
Speaker 1: very rise of cybercrime.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, back in the nineteen sixties, the Internet's precursor,
Speaker 2: it was primarily used for digitizing US military intelligence documents,
Speaker 2: very specific purpose. But by the mid nineteen eighties you
Speaker 2: get companies like Apple coming in democratize and computing, and
Speaker 2: suddenly you see non state actors starting to target vulnerable
Speaker 2: government cyber infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Ah So the early hacking.
Speaker 2: Exactly early forms of hacking, rampant music piracy, that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. Then the early two thousands brought this surge
Speaker 2: in malware, trojans, ransomware, gasty stuff. Yeah, and the emergence
Speaker 2: of sophisticated organized cybercrime groups using tactics like denial of
Speaker 2: service DAWs and distributed denial of service DIDO attacks, basically
Speaker 2: overwhelming a system with traffic to crash it.
Speaker 1: You know, you might not realize it, but a really
Speaker 1: significant moment happened with the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: Ah, yes, Budapest very important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this wasn't just another document. It was the first
Speaker 1: international agreement to actually categorize these new offenses, put them
Speaker 1: into four main buckets.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. You had offenses against confidentiality, integrity, availability
Speaker 2: of computer data and systems like illegal access. Then computer
Speaker 2: related offenses forgery, fraud, okay, then content related offenses things
Speaker 2: like child pornography, and finally copyright infringement. It basically provided
Speaker 2: a common language for a global problem.
Speaker 1: Which is huge. But what's striking is how quickly this
Speaker 1: scope of cybercrime just blew past those initial categories. Wasn't that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Incredibly quickly? Subsequent international documents started tackling even more
Speaker 2: specific issues like the Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention
Speaker 2: in two thousand and three dealt with racist and xenophobic
Speaker 2: propaganda online.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Then the Council of Europe Convention on Prevention of Terrorism
Speaker 2: in two thousand and five covered using cyberspace for terrorist
Speaker 2: recruiting and training. The Lanzarote Convention in two thousand and
Speaker 2: seven focused specifically on child sexual exploitation, right. And then,
Speaker 2: of course the critical EU General Data Protection Regulation GDP
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen really zered in on data privacy issues,
Speaker 2: fundamentally changing how data is handled pretty much globally.
Speaker 1: So to bring this to life a bit, think about
Speaker 1: how these digital threats actually played out in the real world.
Speaker 1: Researchers have pointed to the nine to eleven attacks in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one as a really chilling example of
Speaker 1: computer tech being used to systematically plan terror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a sobering example.
Speaker 1: Or consider that devastating two thousand and seven DEDOS attack
Speaker 1: on Estonia, a crippled government websites.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It showed how offline political anger could just bill directly
Speaker 1: into cyberspace.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and more recently you have groups like ISIS developing
Speaker 2: these incredibly robust online presence. I mean, even using artificial
Speaker 2: intelligence to manipulate emotional intelligence, running web based recruiting systems
Speaker 2: for hate propaganda.
Speaker 1: It's quite sophisticated, which then raises this critical question one
Speaker 1: it's still debated today. I think, Yeah, how do we
Speaker 1: actually distinguish between sophisticated state backed cyber warfare like say
Speaker 1: the Stucks networm, which was allegedly a US Israel thing
Speaker 1: to disrupt the uron's nuclear program, and cyber terrorism, which
Speaker 1: is often done by separatist non state actors.
Speaker 2: Exactly the methods things like cyber espionage, unauthorized access, they
Speaker 2: can look strikingly similar, but the motivations and crucially, the
Speaker 2: entities behind them differ significantly, and that impacts how we
Speaker 2: respond legally and militarily. It's a complex distinction.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, given this ever expanding digital threat landscape, who
Speaker 1: actually falls victim? It's easy to just think of individuals,
Speaker 1: maybe yourself included, But the scope of victim in cyberspace
Speaker 1: is far far broader, isn't it. Yeah, your touch is
Speaker 1: pretty much every level of society.
Speaker 2: That's right. If we try to connect this to the
Speaker 2: bigger picture, victims of cybercrime can broadly be categorized into
Speaker 2: say three main groups, governments, companies, and ordinary individuals. Okay,
Speaker 2: Governments can be victimized as independent units, especially when national
Speaker 2: security data, military intelligence, confidential commerce info gets breached. They're
Speaker 2: also targets for web hijacking, defacement, embarrassing stuff exactly, even
Speaker 2: if it's not directly supported by an enemy country, it
Speaker 2: can cause significant political embarrassment and become leverage and diplomatic
Speaker 2: tussles that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Can you give us a specific, maybe impactful.
Speaker 2: Example, Well, think about the Wanna cry ransomware attack back
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 2: It was devastating. It didn't just affect the UK's national
Speaker 2: health services, it spread to many other government and private
Speaker 2: hospital systems worldwide. It really highlights how governments, just because
Speaker 2: they hold these massive amounts of sensitive personal data, become
Speaker 2: prime targets, and sometimes their liability for negligence might even
Speaker 2: get shifted to the third party contractors they hire to
Speaker 2: handle that data.
Speaker 1: It gets complicated. What about companies?
Speaker 2: Companies face a dizzying array of threats too, unethical profit schemes,
Speaker 2: ransom demands, phishing, spoofing, money laundering, or sometimes just attacks
Speaker 2: aimed purely at maligning their reputation.
Speaker 1: We've seen some big ones, haven't we.
Speaker 2: So yeah, major incidents like the LinkedIn hack and twenty
Speaker 2: twelve millions of passwords compromise, or British Airways facing that
Speaker 2: huge fine in twenty nineteen after a hack leaked passenger data.
Speaker 2: Companies are also targeted for their unique business strategies, their
Speaker 2: trade secrets, and because they're corporate stakeholders working in different roles,
Speaker 2: their legal responsibilities to clients can vary. They might face
Speaker 2: multiple liabilities across different jurisdictions globally, it's a minefield.
Speaker 1: And then well there are us ordinary individuals. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: We face these common patterns of cybercrime victimization. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you know, online hate propaganda, economic fraud, sexual offenses, hacking.
Speaker 1: But here's the kicker, isn't it. Many individuals might not
Speaker 1: be digitally savvy enough or maybe financially equipped enough to
Speaker 1: gather the crucial evidence they need to actually convince the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system about their plate.
Speaker 2: That is a huge hurdle, a massive barrier to justice
Speaker 2: for many. And what's fascinating here too, is the broader
Speaker 2: context of well illegal surveillance in the wake of nine
Speaker 2: to eleven and events like the Arab Spring in the
Speaker 2: early twenty tens, governments in many countries became understandably, perhaps
Speaker 2: extremely vigilant about suspicious online activity, right monitoring things, which
Speaker 2: often led them to decrypt private Internet communications, and this
Speaker 2: naturally raised significant concerns about freedom of speech privacy rights.
Speaker 2: You've seen courts, for example, indicating that police facial recognition tools,
Speaker 2: when used as mass surveillance mechanisms, can be illegal and
Speaker 2: violate those privacy rights. It's a constant tension.
Speaker 1: Okay. So, given these expanding, increasingly complex patterns of online victimization,
Speaker 1: how does the criminal justice system even begin to catch
Speaker 1: up with these dynamic, often anonymous threats that just ignore
Speaker 1: physical borders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the million dollar question, isn't it. Traditional policing training,
Speaker 2: which focuses on physical space crimes often just doesn't fully
Speaker 2: translate to cybercrime. Totally different skills. You need specialized knowledge
Speaker 2: to understand the digital nature of the case, how to
Speaker 2: collect digital evidence without corrupting it, and even how to
Speaker 2: counsel traumatize victims who might struggle to cooperate because of
Speaker 2: their emotional state. However, that Budapest Convention we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: it was truly crucial in encouraging states to actually develop
Speaker 2: specific laws, established jurisdiction and offer mutual legal assistance for
Speaker 2: cybercrime cases.
Speaker 1: So there's progress.
Speaker 2: There is progress, we're seeing it. Many countries now have
Speaker 2: specialized police teams. Un bodies like UNODC have developed global
Speaker 2: programs specifically to train officers to handle cybercrime. It's happening,
Speaker 2: but it's a constant race.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack the legal side a bit more than
Speaker 1: you mentioned countries or developing laws.
Speaker 2: Yes, places like the UK, Singapore, Australia, Canada, India, they've
Speaker 2: either enacted specific new laws or amended their existing ones
Speaker 2: to cover cyber offenses. For instance, we'll take the UK's
Speaker 2: Computer Misuse Act, which goes way back to nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: It penalizes unauthorized access and intentional disruption, and it specifically
Speaker 2: covers serious damage to human welfare like loss of life,
Speaker 2: disruption of essential services, and national security. And in the US,
Speaker 2: in the US, you've got eighteen US Code, Section ten
Speaker 2: thirty that deals with fraud and related activity involving computers.
Speaker 2: It outlines penalties for unauthorized computer access that can range
Speaker 2: from fines all the way up to life imprisonment if
Speaker 2: death results from the conduct or up to twenty years
Speaker 2: for say permanent disfigurement. So serious potential penalties.
Speaker 1: But this raises an important question, right, how effective are
Speaker 1: these punishments? And what about tenology the study of punishment
Speaker 1: for these cyber offenses.
Speaker 2: It's definitely still a developing area. I mean, sure, cyberterrorism
Speaker 2: might warrant capital punishment in cases of really grave violence
Speaker 2: against humanity, but the trend for most other cybercrimes is
Speaker 2: often more restrictive, preventative and maybe reformative like what well,
Speaker 2: for example, cyberbullying, trolling, defamation. They might be treated as
Speaker 2: misdemeanors unless, of course, they instigate self harm or directly
Speaker 2: cause physical assault. Okay, but courts are increasingly imposing things
Speaker 2: like restraining orders and fines, and we saw this in
Speaker 2: that Canadian case Caplin Vatas from twenty twenty one. The
Speaker 2: court actually recognized internet harassment as a new type of harm,
Speaker 2: a new torte yeah, and they imposed a restraining order
Speaker 2: against publishing about the victim, specifically acknowledging that the harm
Speaker 2: can and often does continue even after a perpetrator is arrested.
Speaker 1: That point about harm snowballing even after an arrest. That's
Speaker 1: incredibly sobering, isn't it. It really is. Pilot's the unique,
Speaker 1: almost insidious nature of digital attacks compared to traditional crime.
Speaker 2: Exactly for the victim. The unique challenge of cyber victimization
Speaker 2: is that the harm can just keep propagating long after
Speaker 2: the perpetrator is identified or even caught. Harmful content stays online.
Speaker 2: It causes ongoing psychological financial impact.
Speaker 1: Which explains maybe why some vict turned to other methods.
Speaker 2: Precisely, this often leads victims to prefer what Professor Halder
Speaker 2: calls those irrational coping methods like counterbulying or maybe contacting
Speaker 2: amateur hackers, largely because the official criminal justice machinery can
Speaker 2: be slow, slow to analyze guilt, slow to pronounce punishment,
Speaker 2: and critically, it doesn't always stop the spread of the
Speaker 2: harmful content.
Speaker 1: So we've journeyed through this really complex world of cybervictimology today.
Speaker 1: We've traced its roots from the historical struggles just to
Speaker 1: define victim, through that landmark UN declaration in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: and now to its current rapidly evolving state. What really
Speaker 1: stood out to you about how traditional legal frameworks are
Speaker 1: adapting or maybe still struggling to keep pace with these
Speaker 1: ever shifting digital harms.
Speaker 2: Well, if we connect this back to the bigger picture,
Speaker 2: I think Professor Holder's work makes it incredibly clear that
Speaker 2: effectively addressing cybercrime victimization it demands unprecedented, almost urgent.
Speaker 1: Collaboration, collaboration between who.
Speaker 2: Between states, non governmental agencies, individual researchers, and critically, the
Speaker 2: web companies themselves. These companies which once operated almost like
Speaker 2: parallel governments with their own content policies right setting their
Speaker 2: own rule exactly, they're now being held far more accountable.
Speaker 2: We saw that in pivotal cases like the Facebook Cambridge
Speaker 2: Analytica data breach and the intense questioning of Facebook's CEO
Speaker 2: by the European Parliament afterwards. It's a fundamental shift and
Speaker 2: responsibility that's underway.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, this deep dive really shows us that as
Speaker 1: our lives become more and more intertwined with the Internet,
Speaker 1: understanding cybervictimology isn't just for legal scholars or policymakers. It's
Speaker 1: really for all of this, isn't it. As digital citizens
Speaker 1: we need to be aware of the vulnerabilities and also
Speaker 1: the ongoing fight for justice in this incredibly dynamic digital realm.
Speaker 2: Well said, it affects everyone.
Speaker 1: So here's a final thought to leave you with. Considering
Speaker 1: how rapidly technology evolves, what new forms of victimization do
Speaker 1: you think might emerge in the next decade, and, maybe
Speaker 1: more importantly, how prepared do you think our legal systems
Speaker 1: will truly be to define and address them effectively.