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The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed [Hardcover]

Nate Anderson
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Book Description

August 19, 2013

Chaos and order clash in this riveting exploration of crime and punishment on the Internet.

Once considered a borderless and chaotic virtual landscape, the Internet is now home to the forces of international law and order. It’s not just computer hackers and cyber crooks who lurk in the dark corners of the Web—the cops are there, too.

In The Internet Police, Ars Technica editor Nate Anderson takes readers on a behind-the-screens tour of landmark cybercrime cases, revealing how criminals continue to find digital and legal loopholes even as police hurry to cinch them closed.

From the Cleveland man whose “natural male enhancement” pill inadvertently protected the privacy of your e-mail to the Russian spam king who ended up in a Milwaukee jail to the Australian arrest that ultimately led to the breakup of the largest child pornography ring in the United States, Anderson draws on interviews, court documents, and law-enforcement reports to reconstruct accounts of how online policing actually works.

Questions of online crime are as complex and interconnected as the Internet itself. With each episode in The Internet Police, Anderson shows the dark side of online spaces—but also how dystopian a fully “ordered” alternative would be.



Editorial Reviews

Review

“As soon as the Internet turned mainstream, a new breed of criminal appeared. The police, who were trained on Agatha Christie novels, took about a decade to catch up. This entertaining and informative book tells their story.” (Bruce Schneier, author of Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Thrive)

“Nate Anderson shows where the Internet's flourishing underworld meets international law enforcement. From stories of good guys, bad guys, and people that can't be pigeonholed, Nate gives the background to tomorrow's headlines.” (Cliff Stoll, author of The Cuckoo's Egg and High Tech Heretic)

“A brisk, eminently readable, and important history of the relationship between law, law enforcement, and the net, and as you'd expect, it's excellent. Anderson's reporting career has exposed him to innumerable cases of fascinating and horrifying networked shenanigans, and he cherry-picks the most interesting stories to tell, and tells them well, and uses each one to paint a broader picture of how the attempt to impose law and lawfulness on the Internet has unfolded at every turn.” (Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing)

About the Author

Nate Anderson is the deputy editor of Ars Technica. His work has been published in The Economist and Foreign Policy. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (August 19, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393062988
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393062984
  • Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica, where he writes about technology law and policy. His work has also been published in outlets like The Economist and Foreign Policy. His first computer was an Atari 600XL with a tape drive and so little memory that it could be filled just by typing in programs from magazines.

Customer Reviews

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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars very good examination of internet governance August 9, 2013
Format:Hardcover
I was privileged to read a pre-release edition of this book. My review is, of course, based on this edition, and the final work may vary from it.

Anderson does a great job of chronicling how criminals have begun using the internet, how the police followed them, and how the internet has changed as a result of both.

The book deals primarily with fraud, extortion, child porn, spam, and piracy. One of the most interesting tales from the book is of how voyeurs are able to gain control of a user's computer and webcam, and often get pictures or video of the naked user and then use the material to extort further material from them. This is a novel, and frightening use of the internet, which I'd not heard of before.

Anderson tells the stories of many people through the book and their roles in online crime--whether criminal, victim, cop, judge, lawmaker, etc. As he tells the stories, he asks the question, "How can we maintain a police presence on the internet without loosing anarchy, while still catching the crooks, without succumbing to totalitarianism?"

This question, though not explicitly asked until toward the end of the book, is constantly in mind throughout the book. In fact, the entire book is really attempting to find a proper balance between "productive chaos" and police powers online. One of the most interesting things in the book is the revelation that many of the most vital tools that criminals use online was in fact created by the US Navy. The tool, "TOR" (The Onion Router), actually requires others to use it--for good or ill, in order for the tool to have a legitimate use by the Navy, and other intelligence agencies. Without others using it, nations would immediately recognize the presence of government or the military at work.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but Also A Bit Basic August 22, 2013
Format:Hardcover
The Internet has three features making it especially difficult to control in any centralized way: 1)Having relatively few gatekeepers (ISPs) means the Internet is not well-suited for centralized surveillance and law enforcement. 2)Attempts to control Internet content requires dealing with many countries and legal environments. 3)The Internet was built without any mean of validating identity; this is further complicated by the possibility of digital payments via anonymous services, and forwarding servers deliberately configured to mask the original source of a message.

Investigators learn something each time they shut down a site - unfortunately for them, so do the criminals. Police in multiple nations are often involved - especially in cases involving child pornography. Fortunately for investigators, child pornography is one of the few online activities condemned everywhere. The 'bad news' for some (eg. film pirates) is that once Internet providers implement technology to block child pornography, it's much easier for courts to also order them to block access to film piracy sources as well. Online poker sites, some YouTube links, Wikipedia entries, fringe religions, and euthanasia sites have also been blocked - throwing free-speech die-hards into fits.

The 'Privacy on the Computer' chapter reports on hackers seeding peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like LimeWire with malware titled as popular-sounding song titles. When downloaded and opened, the recipient computers come under external control. This control cold include key-loggers, as well as software that could turn on any webcams and microphones built into the infected computers. For those less sophisticated, tool kits make it simple to infect 'slave' computers with remote access tool (RAT), with only modest technical skill.
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