UK Crime Agency's Latest Moral Panic: Kids Modding Videogames May Be A Gateway To Becoming Criminal Hackers

from the and-reporters-lap-it-up dept

Well, it looks like we may have our latest moral panic to deal with. The UK's National Crime Agency is warning that kids modding video games may be a gateway to becoming criminal hackers:

Gaming websites could be spawning a new breed of cybercriminals, according to new research which claims that young people are being indoctrinated into hacking crimes via free and easily-accessible internet pages.

Websites and forums which provide cheat codes and modifications for video games are making it increasingly easy for young people to develop criminal skills and become involved in hacking chat rooms, a report by the U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA) has said.

And, of course, the press is lapping it up without any skepticism or criticism. The link above is to CNBC which just assumes the conclusions of the report must be accurate. Then there's the BBC that also parrots the report without question. At least that one admits that this report was based on "a small number of interviews" conducted by the NCA, but then jumps in full bore with the moral panic:

At the heart of the NCA's report is a simple but worrying conclusion: the internet is creating a new kind of criminal.

Young people who in the real world wouldn't dream of committing a crime are, in their online world, stealing other people's data, vandalising websites, taking down servers. Breaking the law, causing real damage to real victims.

Next thing you know, we're going to see advertisements and concerned local newscasts warning parents to watch out for their kids modding games or visiting cheat forums. The BBC's report goes full-on with the scaremongering:

This world can seem very seductive. Where you can make "friends" quickly and easily and you are praised for your skills, rather than being criticised for being a "nerd". But it is also a place where the vulnerable or naive can become criminals without quite realising what they are doing.

The bad news is that suspects are getting younger. Seventeen is the average age, according to the National Cyber Crime Unit, but some are as young as 12.

Of course, all of this ignores that the vast majority of people who mod games or use cheat codes don't go on to become criminal hackers.

In this age where having more people knowledgeable about computers and programming is important for future innovation, these kinds of scaremongering reports do a hell of a lot of damage. Lots of really smart techies got their programming chops started by messing around with video games. Having parents stop them from tinkering because of this overblown report of how it's a "gateway" to crime could do a lot of damage.

Filed Under: cybercrime, gateway, modding, uk, uk nca, video games

Torrent Madness: UK Cybercrime Official Argues That File Sharing Is A Gateway Drug To Crime

from the moral-panic-du-jour dept

Perhaps it's time to make an update to Reefer Madness, entitled Torrent Madness. A totally out of touch and clueless -- but powerful -- UK official, Andy Archibald, who somehow is the deputy director of the National Cyber Crime Unit at the National Crime Agency, is going around spouting nonsense about how file sharing is some sort of "gateway" into more crimes for young people today (found via Ars Technica):

"If you think about the illegal downloading of music, of videos and DVDs, I think that practice is more common than we might imagine within the youth of today.

"That's criminality.

"It's almost become acceptable.

"That's the first stages, I believe, of a gateway into the dark side."

Considering how many people engage in file sharing, if it actually were a "gateway" into further criminal activity, you'd think we'd be in the midst of an incredible crime wave. And yet, here are the stats straight from the UK government: Obviously, correlation is not causation and yada yada, but doesn't that look like crime rates peaked just as file sharing really started taking off? If it were truly acting as a gateway to more crime, wouldn't that be showing up in the data somewhere?

But, no, good old Andy Archibald isn't troubled by the data. He knows that these evil hacker types are all showing up because of that no good file sharing:

"There are many of our young people, and not only young people, who are becoming highly skilled and capable in a digital environment," he said.

"It's important that they put those skills to good use and are not tempted to become involved, unwittingly in cyber criminality.

"They are members of forums and are exchanging ideas in a marketplace that criminals are looking (at).

"They are looking for people with technical skills who can compliment their criminal business.

"They are looking to recruit those people.

"They try to induce and manipulate them."

Yup. We've moved past the "child predators are grooming your kids" moral panic, into the "evil cybercriminals are grooming those file sharers" moral panic.

And, of course, it's all happening in that scary, scary place known as the "dark web" (boo!)

"When I joined policing ... you had drug trafficking, organised immigration crime, firearms trafficking, you knew where to go to sell stolen property, you knew where to go to hire a hit man, frankly.

"Actually, we could control that and we managed that by covert policing, overt policing and an infrastructure around it.

"All of those things I've just described are now happening in a digital environment in what is loosely termed the dark web.

"On the dark web we have criminals operating there, trading guns, trading drugs.

"That is where the illegal commodities are being traded."

But, he insists, the police don't want mass surveillance. They want "A narrative... that reassures the public." Funny, then, that it appears most of his speech was a bunch of nonsense designed to scare the public, huh?

Filed Under: andy archibald, crime, cybercrime, file sharing, gateway, uk

More Myth Debunking: File Sharing Is A Gateway Crime

from the it's-not dept

There's been plenty of coverage of Clay Shirky's recent talk at SXSW where, among other things, he discussed the impact of Napster on our culture. As per usual with Shirky, he made a bunch of fantastic points, often presenting a perspective that is unique and makes you think. I just wanted to pick up on one point, however, because I've been hearing the following argument a lot lately: file sharing needs to be "stopped" because this widespread "illegality" is teaching kids to not have respect for the rule of law. Even Larry Lessig has been known to make this point. Yet, Shirky quickly debunks it in his talk:

In the Napster era, some attributed the ascent of pirated digital music to a supposedly criminal-minded nature among American youth. The argument didn't work. "It coincided with the largest fall in the rate of crime in recorded history," Shirky said.

People aren't file sharing because they don't respect the rule of law. They're file sharing because that particular law doesn't make any sense to them. The idea that people jumping on the file sharing bandwagon will start breaking other laws appears to have no empirical backing whatsoever.

Filed Under: clay shirky, crime, gateway, napster, sharing