By Akinbowale, Oluwatoyin E., Mashigo, Mariann P., Zerihun, Prof. Mulatu

The book covers the overview of cyberfraud and the associated global statistics. It demonstrates practicable techniques that financial institutions can employ to make effective decisions geared toward cyberfraud mitigation. Furthermore, the book contains some emerging technologies, such as information and communication technologies (ICT), forensic accounting, big data technologies, tools, and analytics employed in fraud mitigation. In addition, it highlights the implementation of some techniques, such as the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and system thinking approach to address information and security challenges. The book combines a case study, empirical findings, a systematic literature review, and theoretical and conceptual concepts to provide practicable solutions to mitigate cyber fraud. The major contributions of this book include the demonstration of digital and emerging techniques, such as forensic accounting for cyber fraud mitigation. It also provides in-depth statistics about cyber fraud, its causes, its threat actors, practicable mitigation solutions, and the application of a theoretical framework for fraud profiling and mitigation.

Capetown, AOSIS, 2024 

By Charlotte Hunn, Paul Watters, Jeremy Prichard, Richard Wortley, Joel Scanlan, Caroline Spiranovic and Tony Krone

Online CSAM offending is a challenge for law enforcement, policymakers and child welfare organisations alike. The use of online warning messages to prevent or deter an individual when they actively search for CSAM is gaining traction as a response to some types of CSAM offending. Yet, to date, the technical question of how warning messages can be implemented, and who can implement them, has been largely unexplored. To address this, we use a case study to analyse the actions individuals and organisations within the technology, government, non-government and private sectors could take to implement warning messages. We find that, from a technical perspective, there is considerable opportunity to implement warning messages, although further research into efficacy and cost is needed.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 669. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2023. 14p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By The Jack-Roller and Jon Snodgrass, with Gilbert Geis James F. Short, Jr. Solomon Kobrin

Jack-Roller at Seventy: A Fifty-Year Follow-Up delves into the compelling story of the once notorious Jack-Roller, now at the age of seventy. In this long-awaited follow-up, readers are taken on a journey through the protagonist's remarkable life over the course of five decades. Exploring themes of redemption, resilience, and the passage of time, this poignant tale sheds light on the complex evolution of a character once defined by his turbulent youth. With insightful reflections and unexpected twists, Jack-Roller at Seventy offers a fresh perspective on a timeless narrative, captivating both loyal fans and new readers alike.

Lexington Mass. Lexington Books. 1982. 189p.

By Sergi D. Bray , Shane D. Johnson and Bennett Kleinberg

Deepfakes’ are computationally created entities that falsely represent reality. They can take image, video, and audio modalities, and pose a threat to many areas of systems and societies, comprising a topic of interest to various aspects of cybersecurity and cybersafety. In 2020, a workshop consulting AI experts from academia, policing, government, the private sector, and state security agencies ranked deepfakes as the most serious AI threat. These experts noted that since fake material can propagate through many uncontrolled routes, changes in citizen behaviour may be the only effective defence. This study aims to assess human ability to identify image deepfakes of human faces (these being uncurated output from the StyleGAN2 algorithm as trained on the FFHQ dataset) from a pool of non-deepfake images (these being random selection of images from the FFHQ dataset), and to assess the effectiveness of some simple interventions intended to improve detection accuracy. Using an online survey, participants (N = 280) were randomly allocated to one of four groups: a control group, and three assistance interventions. Each participant was shown a sequence of 20 images randomly selected from a pool of 50 deepfake images of human faces and 50 images of real human faces. Participants were asked whether each image was AI-generated or not, to report their confidence, and to describe the reasoning behind each response. Overall detection accuracy was only just above chance and none of the interventions significantly improved this. Of equal concern was the fact that participants’ confidence in their answers was high and unrelated to accuracy. Assessing the results on a per-image basis reveals that participants consistently found certain images easy to label correctly and certain images difficult, but reported similarly high confidence regardless of the image. Thus, although participant accuracy was 62% overall, this accuracy across images ranged quite evenly between 85 and 30%, with an accuracy of below 50% for one in every five images. We interpret the findings as suggesting that there is a need for an urgent call to action to address this threat. 

Journal of Cybersecurity, 2023, 1–18 

By Horace A. Bartilow

In this book, Horace Bartilow develops a theory of embedded corporatism to explain the U.S. government’s war on drugs. Stemming from President Richard Nixon’s 1971 call for an international approach to this “war,” U.S. drug enforcement policy has persisted with few changes to the present day, despite widespread criticism of its effectiveness and of its unequal effects on hundreds of millions of people across the Americas. While researchers consistently emphasize the role of race in U.S. drug enforcement, Bartilow’s empirical analysis highlights the class dimension of the drug war and the immense power that American corporations wield within the regime.

Drawing on qualitative case study methods, declassified U.S. government documents, and advanced econometric estimators that analyze cross-national data, Bartilow demonstrates how corporate power is projected and embedded—in lobbying, financing of federal elections, funding of policy think tanks, and interlocks with the federal government and the military. Embedded corporatism, he explains, creates the conditions by which interests of state and nonstate members of the regime converge to promote capital accumulation. The subsequent human rights repression, illiberal democratic governments, anti-worker practices, and widening income inequality throughout the Americas, Bartilow argues, are the pathological policy outcomes of embedded corporatism in drug enforcement.

Chapel Hill, NC:The University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 320p.

By Filson Young.

With notes and introduction by Filson Young. “Most of the interest and part of the terror of great crime are due not to what is abnormal, but to what is normal in it; what we have in common with the criminal, rather than that subtle insanity which differentiates him from us, is what makes us view with so lively an interest a fellow-being who has wandered into these tragic and fatal fields.”

William Hodge (1910) 266 pages.

By Albert Borowitz.

This is the first book-length study of an important early Victorian criminal case: the murder of Patrick O'Connor in Bermondsey (South London) by his mistress Marie Manning and her husband. Set in the midst of the raging cholera epidemic of 1849, the case stirred the passionate interest of all sectors of British society, including writers and public figures. Notable among students of the case was Charles Dickens, who based his characterization of Mile Hortense, the murderess in Bleak House, on the personality of Mrs. Manning. The Manning case represents a remarkable chapter in the social history of England. The apprehension of the Mannings was a major early triumph of Scotland Yard; and the efficient detective work, featuring the use of the newly invented electric telegraph, as well as pursuits by sea and rail, confirmed the early Victorian sense of security and the belief in progress based on science. At the same time, the case stirred controversy in a number of respects. The intensive coverage of the murder by a sensation-mongering press led to public outcries against the commercialization of crime; and the brutish behavior of the crowd at the Mannings' execution sharpened partisan feelings on the issue of capital punishment. Dickens was inspired to write his famous letters to the Times advocating an end to public hangings, and was denounced in turn by absolutist supporters of the abolition of the death penalty.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1981. 337p.