A new thing under the sun?: Crime in the digitized society

Abstract

Computer systems can be used to commit – and be targets of – crime. The article investi-gates whether so-called “digital crime” can be regarded as a new thing under the sun. The question itself is not new. It was originally raised in the 1950ies when computer technology had become sufficiently advanced to be put into use by large financial corporations and insurance companies (McQuade 2006: 11). Concomitantly, the opportunity to commit com-puter fraud emerged, an opportunity not lost on insiders. As the era of network technology and mobile devices had not yet arrived, outsiders did not have easy access to corporately owned computers, thus they were practically excluded from committing computer crime. Since insider crime in such corporations was regarded as being “white collar”, computer crime was perceived as a form of white collar crime.