tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/extortion-30328/articlesExtortion – The Conversation2024-03-04T19:48:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2248422024-03-04T19:48:49Z2024-03-04T19:48:49ZPierre Poilievre’s proposed mandatory minimum penalties will not reduce crime<p>In recent months, federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has repeatedly voiced support for discredited “tough on crime” policies that will ultimately fail. In February alone, Poilievre vowed to introduce <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/mmp-pmo/p1.html">mandatory minimum penalties (MMPs)</a> for <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/10284840/poilievre-extortion-mandatory-minimum/#:%7E:text=Poilievre%20said%20the%20Conservatives%20would,of%20gangs%20or%20organized%20crime.%E2%80%9D">extortion</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-bail-auto-theft-crime-1.7105046">auto theft</a> offences.</p>
<p>Generally, criminal offences have a range of sentencing options (e.g. release with conditions, community service, fines, restitution orders, parole, “house arrest” or imprisonment) with a maximum penalty set by the law. Judges then determine a fit sentence that reflects the degree of responsibility of the offender and gravity of what they actually did. </p>
<p>Instead, with MMPs, Parliament removes judicial discretion for any sentencing option other than imprisonment and imposes a minimum term of incarceration, regardless of the facts of the case. </p>
<p>As a criminal law professor and advocate for victims of crime, including a time advising former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, I used to be a proponent of MMPs. But as I’ve learned more about the unintended consequences of MMPs and harshness of imprisonment in my research, including interviews with people who were incarcerated, I’ve become convinced that MMPs are a grave policy failure and cheap politics.</p>
<p>The evidence shows that MMPs are ineffective at reducing crime, may actually increase recidivism, are highly vulnerable to being struck down by the courts as unconstitutional, can increase delays in an overburdened system, and perpetuate systemic racism.</p>
<p>Criminological research has consistently found that harsher sentences have “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1147698">no effect on the level of crime in society</a>.” Alarmingly, MMPs have also contributed to <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/jf-pf/2017/oct02.html">higher rates of incarceration</a> of Indigenous people and Black Canadians, exacerbating already troubling trends.</p>
<p>In addition, research by <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/85-002-x/2017001/article/54844-eng.pdf?st=nRM6SFsI">Statistics Canada</a> found “no evidence that MMPs have deterred crime; rather, some studies suggest that MMPs can result in overly harsh penalties and disparities, that they increase costs to the criminal justice system as a result of higher levels of incarceration, and that lengthier sentencing may actually increase recidivism.” </p>
<p>In other words, Poilievre’s idea may actually backfire, leading to more crime in the long term.</p>
<h2>Supreme Court strikes down MMPs</h2>
<p>Poilievre’s MMPs are not a new idea. They’re an old, tired idea, exposing a lack of understanding of <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-from-tough-on-crime-to-a-new-transformative-vision-for-canadas-justice/">evidence-based policies</a> that will actually make us all safer.</p>
<p>In 1987, there were just nine MMPs on the books in Canada. Since 1996, they have proliferated, with the number of MMPs escalating significantly under the Harper government. With the adoption of the Safe Streets and Communities Act in 2012, the number of MMPs in the Criminal Code <a href="https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1235&context=sclr">approached 100</a>. </p>
<p>The Supreme Court of Canada continues to strike down numerous Harper-era MMPs and related tough-on-crime measures for violating the <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/">Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms</a>, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>In the 2015 case, <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/15272/index.do"><em>R. v. Nur</em></a>, which concerned mandatory minimum sentences for possessing a prohibited or restricted firearm, the court described MMPs as “a blunt instrument.”</p></li>
<li><p>In the 2016 case, <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/15859/index.do"><em>R. v. Lloyd</em></a>, then Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin made this damning observation: “The reality is that mandatory minimum sentences for offences that can be committed in many ways and under many different circumstances by a wide range of people are constitutionally vulnerable because they will almost inevitably catch situations where the prescribed mandatory minimum would require an unconstitutional sentence.”</p></li>
<li><p>In <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/19538/index.do"><em>R. v. Ndhlovu</em></a>, a 2022 case concerning mandatory lifetime registration in the national sex offender registry, the court stated that “mandatory registration of those offenders who are not at an increased risk of reoffending does not assist police.”</p></li>
<li><p>In the 2023 case, <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/19638/index.do?q=youth"><em>R. v. Hills</em></a>, a four-year mandatory MMP for discharging a firearm into or at a home was repealed after the appeal was heard, but the Court nevertheless ruled, finding it unconstitutional. The court’s majority opinion stated: “it would shock the conscience of Canadians to learn that an offender can receive four years of imprisonment for firing a paintball gun at a home.” </p></li>
</ul>
<p>However, in a companion case in <a href="https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/19639/index.do"><em>R. v. Hilbach</em></a>, the Court upheld mandatory minimum sentences for robbery since they were found to be “narrowly defined and limited in scope.” This case is an exception to the clear trend over the last decade of MMPs being struck down as unconstitutional.</p>
<p>Other Harper-era tough-on-crime measures have also been struck down in cases such as <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/17416/index.do"><em>R. v. Boudreault</em></a> and <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/19405/index.do?site_preference=normal"><em>R. v. Bissonnette</em></a>.</p>
<h2>MMPs increase delays in justice system</h2>
<p>Despite this raft of MMP losses, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-bail-auto-theft-crime-1.7105046#:%7E:text=%22My%20legislation%20is%20Charter%2Dproof,It's%20Justin%20Trudeau.%22&text=Former%20prime%20minister%20Stephen%20Harper,been%20overturned%20by%20the%20courts.">Poilievre insists</a> his “legislation is Charter-proof and constitutionally sound.” He’s made <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/polievre-jail-bail-constitutional-experts-1.6847941#:%7E:text=Conservative%20Party%20Leader%20Pierre%20Poilievre,it%20would%20likely%20be%20unconstitutional">similar claims before</a> about other constitutionally suspect proposals. </p>
<p>If history is any judge, Poilievre’s MMPs may not be worth the paper they’re printed on. What’s worse, even if they do pass constitutional muster, they will only exacerbate the existential challenges facing the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>Former Justice Canada lawyer David Daubney <a href="https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1235&context=sclr">cautioned in 2012</a> about the expansion of MMPs at the time. His words ring true today:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The proliferation of mandatory minimum sentencing will lead to fewer guilty pleas, significant processing delays, big increases in the number of accused persons awaiting trial in already overcrowded provincial remand facilities and just plain injustice as discretion is moved from judges to prosecutors. There will be many more Charter challenges and acquittals. Canadians will be less safe.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While MMPs are widely believed to be popular with more conservative voters, there may be cracks among voters on this issue. <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/rg-rco/2018/mar02.html">A 2018 Justice Canada study</a> revealed 90 per cent of Canadians believed that judges should have the flexibility to impose a sentence that is less than the mandatory minimum. Participants described jail as an “inappropriate measure that would likely ‘do more harm than good’ and result in ‘better criminals’, rather than successfully integrating members of society.” </p>
<p>Politicians peddling flawed criminal justice policies like mandatory minimum penalties need to have their ideas publicly called out and confronted.</p>
<p><em>Prof. Benjamin Perrin is the author of Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial (UTP, 2023)</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224842/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Perrin receives funding from the Law Foundation of British Columbia.</span></em></p>Pierre Poilievre’s “tough-on-crime” rhetoric relies on discredited ideas that can lead to overly harsh penalties and actually increase crime.Benjamin Perrin, Professor of Law, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2112242023-08-15T11:17:32Z2023-08-15T11:17:32ZBandits in Nigeria: how protection payments to militias escalate conflict in the north-west<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542100/original/file-20230810-19-9yfl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Weapons recovered from bandits during Operation Safe Haven in Nigeria. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>North-western Nigeria has become increasingly violent. This is due to the activities of militias, known locally as “bandits”. These are loosely organised armed groups, reportedly over <a href="https://africacenter.org/spotlight/criminal-gangs-destabilizing-nigerias-north-west/">120 factions</a> with 28 to 2,500 members. They are now deadlier than the well-known <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct3tpy">Boko Haram</a>, which operates in north-eastern Nigeria.</p>
<p>The origins of the conflict in north-western Nigeria can be traced back to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19392206.2022.2061320?scroll=top&needAccess=true&role=tab">2011</a> following disagreements between Hausa farmers and Fulani pastoralists over changes in land ownership and encroachment on grazing routes, primarily due to environmental and climatic factors. They were characterised by small-scale disputes and isolated hit-and-run attacks resulting in crop damage and livestock theft. This conflict also included skirmishes with primitive weapons, such as sticks, daggers and locally crafted Dane guns.</p>
<p>And then in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksad033">2018</a>, many Hausa-dominated communities in the region formed “peace committees” to engage the Fulani militias. Through these committees, they entered an <a href="https://dailytrust.com/dining-with-the-devil-how-villagers-co-habit-with-bandits/">ad-hoc agreement</a> to give the militias “protection payment” – levies in cash or kind, in exchange for protection from attacks.</p>
<p>The militias send letters to village heads for payment, leaving a phone number to contact when the villagers were ready to pay. The village heads would call their council and peace committee members to determine how much each resident should contribute. The system was comparable to how rural communities in pre-colonial Nigeria paid farm and livestock taxes and levies to traditional leaders. </p>
<p>But unlike standard taxation, the protection payment does not imply support for militias. Many residents attempted to avoid direct involvement while adhering to the terms of the agreement. The militias are also not motivated by a desire to rule over the communities. Instead of advancing a political or ideological cause, their primary goal is to enrich themselves.</p>
<h2>Dangerous consequences</h2>
<p>In a recently published <a href="https://academic.oup.com/isagsq/article/3/2/ksad033/7206860">article</a> which is based on my PhD research on the dynamics of political violence in Nigeria, I argued that payments to the militias provided some communities with short-term safety. But that, in the long term, they are leading to dangerous consequences. </p>
<p>The strategy resulted in less violence for the first few months and encouraged more communities to pay the protection levies. However, the militias gradually began to demand more payment, and more militia groups emerged (competing against one another) to forcefully demand protection against their attacks.</p>
<p>As a result, violence against civilians increased, including rising fatalities, sexual violence, population displacement, asset destruction and economic disruption.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-can-be-done-to-fight-rural-banditry-in-northern-nigeria-122776">What can be done to fight rural banditry in northern Nigeria</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>.</p>
<h2>Protection payment pathways</h2>
<p>I explained that the protection payment escalates the conflict in the region through two pathways: acquiescence and resistance. Acquiescence occurs when a community pays a militia to protect them from other militias. This leads to increased predation and demands for more payments. Resistance occurs when a community pays a militia to protect them. If they refuse to continue payments, the militia responds with violence to punish the community and instil fear.</p>
<p>While many communities initially paid the militias as a self-protection strategy, it has become extortion as the militias became predatory over time. They are now <a href="https://dailytrust.com/bandits-impose-levies-on-sokoto-communities-issue-ultimatum-for-payment/">demanding more money</a> than initially agreed and adopting a criminal mode of operation. They forced the villagers to pay additional “<a href="https://dailytrust.com/bandits-impose-tax-on-katsina-farmers/">harvest fees</a>”, buy fertiliser or work on militia farms before they could till their land.</p>
<p>A 2022 <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/557418-merchants-of-terror-1-paying-blood-taxes-helpless-communities-sustain-nigerias-terrorists.html?tztc=1">investigation</a> in hard-to-reach communities of Zamfara and Sokoto states identified civilian protection payments as one of the primary sources of revenue that militias use to finance their operations. Journalists estimated that communities in 13 of the 14 local government areas of Zamfara had paid over 538 million Naira (about US$711,080) in protection levies in less than a year.</p>
<p>The militias <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/557418-merchants-of-terror-1-paying-blood-taxes-helpless-communities-sustain-nigerias-terrorists.html?tztc=1">spend the money</a> on more guns, readily available on the region’s illicit arms market, primarily smuggled in from the Sahel through porous borders. They also use the protection payment to pay “informants”, civilian collaborators who go about their daily lives while <a href="https://dailytrust.com/explainer-how-to-identify-bandits-informants/">providing intelligence</a>. When communities refuse to pay additional fees, they attack them with lethal weapons such as assault rifles and submachine guns, often killing many civilians in one attack. </p>
<p>When I conducted field research in Zamfara last summer, many vulnerable communities fled or continued to pay protection levies.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerias-new-police-chief-faces-structural-challenges-5-key-issues-to-tackle-209113">Nigeria's new police chief faces structural challenges - 5 key issues to tackle</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>.</p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the conflict, my research indicates that paying militias for protection is risky. It escalates conflict and violence against communities. </p>
<p>Instead, planned flight to safer areas is suggested as a safer alternative to protect civilians during armed conflicts. The government must also step up efforts to safeguard smaller towns and villages, which are frequently more vulnerable to attacks than state capitals. This could be done by deploying more security forces and, if possible, through dialogue with the militias.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211224/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Imrana Buba’s doctoral research is supported by the European Research Council’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under grant number 852816 for the project ‘Resilience Building: Social Resilience, Gendered Dynamics, and Local Peace in Protracted Conflicts’ (PI: Jana Krause).</span></em></p>Civilian protection payment is not a sustainable self-protection strategy in north-west Nigeria.Imrana Buba, PhD Candidate in Political Science, University of OsloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2009852023-03-20T18:51:40Z2023-03-20T18:51:40ZProtecting children from exploitation means rethinking how we approach online behaviour<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514964/original/file-20230313-1698-qqk3ao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C86%2C5248%2C3406&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Perpetrators often utilize the numerous social media, messaging apps, games and forums available online to initiate contact with potential victims.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Raising children in the digital age is increasingly challenging. Many younger people are relying more on screens for social interactions. They experiment with new media sharing options, such as TikTok, Snapchat and BeReal, but without necessarily having the ability to consider long-term consequences. </p>
<p>This is normal, as children still have an <a href="https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/The-Teen-Brain-Behavior-Problem-Solving-and-Decision-Making-095.aspx">underdeveloped prefrontal cortex</a>: the part of the brain that is responsible for reasoning, decision-making and impulse control.</p>
<p>Parents, who are tasked with anticipating the consequences of digital interactions, are overwhelmed. Many parents might lack the digital literacy to guide their children through the numerous social media options, messaging apps and other online platforms available today. </p>
<p>This situation can lead to children falling victim to online sexual exploitation. <a href="https://doi.org/10.17705/1jais.00652">In our research</a>, we collected data from a diverse group of experts in the U.S. and U.K. This included interviews with internet safety non-profits, safeguarding teams, cybercrime police officers, digital forensics staff and directors of intelligence. A main cause behind the <a href="https://2017-2021.state.gov/online-sexual-exploitation-of-children-an-alarming-trend/index.html">rapid escalation</a> of online child sexual exploitation is the ability to share explicit content online. </p>
<p>Our research unveiled four distinct stages used by perpetrators. </p>
<h2>Perpetrators and escalation</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514769/original/file-20230311-20-9x2k1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514769/original/file-20230311-20-9x2k1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514769/original/file-20230311-20-9x2k1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514769/original/file-20230311-20-9x2k1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514769/original/file-20230311-20-9x2k1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514769/original/file-20230311-20-9x2k1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514769/original/file-20230311-20-9x2k1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514769/original/file-20230311-20-9x2k1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A figure showing how child sexual exploitation takes place online.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <strong>Stage 1</strong>, perpetrators utilize various technological tools and networks, such as social media, messaging apps, games and online forums, to initiate contact with potential victims. They often create false identities by using fake images to develop convincing digital personas, through which they approach children, such as pretending to be a “new kid on the block” seeking new friends.</p>
<p>In <strong>Stage 2</strong>, perpetrators use tactics like posing as a similar-aged child to build trust with potential victims. This can happen over a considerable period of time. In one case we studied, a 12-year-old in Lee County, N.C., received 1,200 messages from the same perpetrator over 2 years. During this stage, offenders may send their own explicit images to lower a victim’s suspicion, and may target multiple victims until successful.</p>
<p>In <strong>Stage 3</strong>, perpetrators engage in online extortion. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/teen-boys-sextortion-scams-data-1.6541791">They use photographs provided by victims or manipulate innocent photos to appear sexual or pornographic</a>. Perpetrators then share these images to their victims to keep them in a state of suspended humiliation. This is further escalated when perpetrators threaten to share these embarrassing images with the victim’s friends, teachers or family unless their victims send more explicit photos or videos.</p>
<p>Many extortion techniques and direct threats are being used at this stage. It is difficult to imagine the psychological pressures this can create for children. In one case described to us, a 12-year-old girl uploaded 660 sexually explicit images of herself to a cloud-based storage account controlled by a 25-year-old perpetrator before seeking help.</p>
<p>In <strong>Stage 4</strong>, perpetrators start trafficking these images on <a href="https://www.computerworld.com/article/2588287/networking-peer-to-peer-network.html">peer-to-peer networks</a>, the dark web and even child pornographic networks.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3vDe0EVUYMI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A video outlining how child sexual exploitation can take place online.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Preventing online exploitation</h2>
<p>There are common mistakes that parents can avoid to help prevent exploitation. By sharing these, it is our hope that parents, policymakers, school boards and even children will rethink their approach to online behaviour.</p>
<p><strong>1. “That won’t happen to us!”</strong>
Many victims and their families fall prey to <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/optimism-bias">optimism bias</a>, thinking that negative events are unlikely to happen to them. However, online crimes can affect anyone. Unfortunately, these incidents occur more frequently than most people realize. No family is exempt from the potential dangers of the online world.</p>
<p><strong>2. “Everyone else is doing it!”</strong>
Parents oversharing pictures of their children online has become commonplace. Many cannot resist the pressure or temptation to post photos of their children on social media. Very often, it is these photographs that are edited and distorted to appear as pornographic. All family members need to resist the pressure to overshare pictures online.</p>
<p><strong>3. “My kids don’t mind!”</strong>
Many children today have a digital presence that was initiated and maintained by their parents without their consent. This disregard for children’s privacy not only undermines their autonomy, but can also have a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/opinion/children-internet-privacy.html">lasting impact on their self-confidence</a>, their personal and professional future, and the parent-child relationship. </p>
<p>Creating a digital life for children at a young age could also desensitize them to the importance of online privacy. The assumption that children will not mind is erroneous. In one case, a court in Rome <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/facebook-fines-woman-son-photos-post-social-media-court-italy-rome-a8155361.html">decided that a mother should take down all images of her son from Facebook</a> and pay a €10,000 fine if she continued to post photos without his consent.</p>
<p><strong>4. “We cannot keep up with their technology!”</strong>
Many parents are overwhelmed and intimidated when they cannot keep up with their kids. As technology continues to play a critical role in children’s lives, improving digital literacy of parents through online resources and schools needs to become a priority. Parents need to seek and receive support to understand the technology their children are using.</p>
<p><strong>5. “They’re just online, talking to friends!”</strong>
Despite being very involved and interested in who their children talk to on the way home from school or at their friends’ houses, parents might not be as aware of who their children talk to online. Just like they show an interest in their child’s real-world interactions, the benefits and dangers of online behaviour need to be an equally important and frequent topic of conversation. </p>
<p>Online child sexual exploitation is a grave and multifaceted issue that demands our unwavering attention. Only by carefully considering these critical concerns can we hope to prevent children from falling victim to these crimes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200985/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dionysios Demetis has received funding from HEIF. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Kietzmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many children and adolescents fall victim to online exploitation, but there are some steps parents can take to protect their children online.Jan Kietzmann, Professor, Gustavson School of Business, University of VictoriaDionysios Demetis, Senior Lecturer in Management Systems, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1907812022-10-12T14:04:10Z2022-10-12T14:04:10ZJohannesburg’s informal traders face abuse: the city’s ‘world class’ aspirations create hostility towards them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488496/original/file-20221006-22-msr6cl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Street vendors ply their trade in Johannesburg.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Kim Lubrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Unemployment and the rising cost of living force many people to make a living in the informal economy, particularly street trading. While it is difficult to measure the size of the informal economy, some studies show that <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_626831.pdf#page=5">more than 60% of employed people in the world work in the informal economy</a>. It’s <a href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/supporting-africas-urban-informal-sector-coordinated-policies-social-protection-core#:%7E:text=Accounting%20for%2080.8%25%20of%20jobs,economic%20activity%20in%20urban%20Africa">over 80% in Africa</a>, and the trend is increasing. </p>
<p>But many governments discourage informal trading, considering it the <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12132-005-0013-0.pdf">antithesis of development</a>. In their view, informal trading causes street congestion, contributes to crime and grime and threatens public order.</p>
<p>This is often the case in major cities, such as Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic engine, which aspires to be a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/johannesburg-world-class-city-advert">“world-class city”</a>. “World class” is equated with formality and orderly streets. This aspiration, which is about maintaining an image of a city that is orderly and well managed to attract investments, is unsympathetic to street trading. </p>
<p>But the activity is burgeoning in Johannesburg. This poses urban management challenges for authorities. These challenges include overcrowding in busy streets, trading in non-demarcated spaces as well as the obstruction of foot and vehicular traffic and waste management.</p>
<p>The city’s street trading management approach is mainly restrictive. This is manifest in the <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/39675492.pdf">limiting</a> of the number of legal trading spaces – through evictions, relocations, harassment of traders and confiscation of their stock.</p>
<h2>The study</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-university/faculties-and-schools/-engineering-and-the-built-environment/research-entities/cubes/documents/Strategies%20used%20by%20Street%20Traders%20Organisations.pdf">Some studies</a> have found that there was a growing number of organisations that seek to represent the interests of street traders and influence policy and practice. </p>
<p>These organisations engage with the government at various spheres and participate in urban governance to influence the management of street trading. They employ a number of strategies to put pressure on the government to include them in decision making processes. </p>
<p>My recent PhD research focused on <a href="https://cdn.gcro.ac.za/media/documents/2022-01-12_Matjomane_MD_Thesis_10Dec2021.pdf">the role and influence of street trader leaders in urban governance</a> in Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and Tshwane, the three major metropolitan cities in Gauteng Province, the country’s economic hub. I wanted to understand their role in urban governance. </p>
<p>Understanding the role street trader leaders play in street trading management is crucial to informing the development of appropriate, practical and inclusive management approaches. </p>
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<p>For my study, I reviewed media articles and government documents, and conducted in-depth interviews with city officials as well as street traders and their leaders. </p>
<p>In the case of Johannesburg – the metro least “friendly” to street trading – I interviewed one former city official, eight trader leaders and eight street traders between 2017 and 2018.</p>
<p>Respondents were asked about everyday management of street trading, the relationship between street trader leaders and authorities, and the extent to which the leaders participated in managing trading. </p>
<p>I found that leaders of street traders represented traders in different ways and interact with the government in various ways. There are leaders who operate on the margins, with no institutionalised relationship with authorities and quasi-state bureaucrats who have been formally included in the everyday management of street trade (they have the power to allocate trading spaces together with officials and manage waiting lists for spaces). </p>
<p>The leaders on the margins of the state that have been excluded from formal processes find other ways of inserting themselves into the management processes (allocating trading spaces in areas not demarcated for trade). These findings matter because they show what is really happening on the ground in terms of street trade management. Some of these practices can inform the adoption of an inclusive management approach. </p>
<h2>Street trading policy and practice</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.joburg.org.za/documents_/Documents/POLICIES/COJ_%20Informal%20Trading%20Policy%20April%202022.pdf">Johannesburg’s informal trading policy</a> generally acknowledges street trading as a feature of the urban landscape – at least in rhetoric. This, amid the triple challenge of high poverty, unemployment and inequality. <a href="https://databankfiles.worldbank.org/data/download/poverty/33EF03BB-9722-4AE2-ABC7-AA2972D68AFE/Global_POVEQ_ZAF.pdf">Over 50%</a> of South Africans live in poverty, unemployment <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/Media%20release%20QLFS%20Q2%202022.pdf">is over 30%</a>. The country is one of the <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/03/09/new-world-bank-report-assesses-sources-of-inequality-in-five-countries-in-southern-africa#:%7E:text=South%20Africa%2C%20the%20largest%20country,World%20Bank%27s%20global%20poverty%20database">most unequal in the world</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the inclusive nature of the city’s informal trading policy, authorities tend to adopt restrictive and punitive approaches. The translation of the policy into technical tools such as bylaws and authorities’ management practices create an environment that is inimical to street trading. </p>
<p>The restrictive management practices manifest in various ways. One is the <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/39675492.pdf">creation of scarcity</a> of trading spaces – by limiting the number of legal, demarcated spaces for street trading. This makes most traders in the inner city “illegal”. It criminalises them and fuels competition for lucrative trading spaces. (The city does not publicise information about the number of legal traders). </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/informal-economies-are-diverse-south-african-policies-need-to-recognise-this-104586">Informal economies are diverse: South African policies need to recognise this</a>
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<p>Evictions and relocations of street traders from their sites are another manifestation of the city’s restrictive management approach. For example, in 2013, thousands of street traders in the inner city were evicted in a large-scale operation, dubbed <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/operation-clean-sweep-a-dirty-game-1604801">Operation Clean Sweep</a>.</p>
<p>The street trading management approach in Johannesburg relies heavily on enforcing bylaws. This results in ongoing harassment of street traders considered “non-compliant”, and the (often unlawful) confiscation of their stock. Intimidation and harassment by city police occur daily. </p>
<h2>Intimidation and corruption</h2>
<p>The city’s approach has opened space for abuse of power and corruption by the authorities. When law enforcement officers confiscate the traders’ stock, they sometimes issue <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-university/faculties-and-schools/-engineering-and-the-built-environment/research-entities/cubes/documents/Strategies%20used%20by%20Street%20Traders%20Organisations.pdf">high fines</a>, which are more than the value of the stock.</p>
<p>This is often a strategy to get the street traders to pay bribes to avoid their stock being confiscated. In other instances, city police do not issue confiscation receipts. So, traders have no way of claiming their stock back.</p>
<p>All this has given rise to <a href="https://cdn.gcro.ac.za/media/documents/2022-01-12_Matjomane_MD_Thesis_10Dec2021.pdf">alternative forms of management by street trader leaders</a>. </p>
<p>For instance, the leaders have forged informal partnerships with authorities to manage trading. Some leaders assist authorities in the everyday management of street trading, such as maintaining order on the streets and allocating trading spaces. This alternative form of management strengthens the capacity of the state to govern street trading, and helps provide pragmatic solutions to complex issues.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-informal-sector-plays-a-key-role-in-skills-development-but-gets-no-recognition-189178">Zimbabwe's informal sector plays a key role in skills development but gets no recognition</a>
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<p>But, there is also a dark side to this alternative form of management. It has in some instances opened a window for extortion of fellow traders by the leaders. </p>
<p>There are instances where they collect <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-university/faculties-and-schools/-engineering-and-the-built-environment/research-entities/cubes/documents/Strategies%20used%20by%20Street%20Traders%20Organisations.pdf">“protection fees”</a> from traders, promising to protect them from law enforcement officers who harass and confiscate their stock. </p>
<p>Some of the leaders even have the power to evict “non-compliant” traders and take away their officially allocated trading spaces.</p>
<h2>Looking forward</h2>
<p>The vicious cycle of street trading management in Johannesburg manifests in various ways, from evictions to limiting legal trading spaces. This is despite policies that acknowledge the role of street trading. </p>
<p>Such punitive practices criminalise the efforts of poor people to earn an honest living, and drives corruption. There is, therefore, an urgent need to find better approaches to street trading management that value the role the activity plays in job creation, poverty alleviation and mitigation of the high cost of living.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mamokete Modiba previously received research support funding from NRF and TISO Foundation. </span></em></p>The city’s street trading management approach is mainly restrictive. Relocations, harassment and confiscation of of traders’ stock are common.Mamokete Modiba, Researcher, Gauteng City-Region ObservatoryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1871822022-07-18T13:49:33Z2022-07-18T13:49:33ZMass shootings in South Africa are often over group turf: how to stop the cycle of reprisals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474584/original/file-20220718-72671-c54j9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African police minister, Bheki Cele, centre, at the scene of the tavern shooting that claimed 16 lives in Soweto. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In just two days in early July 2022, 25 people were shot dead in four separate incidents at taverns across South Africa. In one of these shootings, in <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2022-07-13-police-have-footage-of-soweto-tavern-shooting-mazibuko-says/">Soweto</a>, 16 people lost their lives. </p>
<p>The killings made <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/10/africa/soweto-south-africa-shooting-intl/index.html">international headlines</a> and were shocking even in South Africa, a society with one of the highest <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=ZA">murder rates</a> in the world.</p>
<p>There has been intense speculation about the motives behind the killings in the absence of reliable evidence that explains why the multiple murders took place. </p>
<p>To provide some insights into the possible reasons, I reflect on some of the research about mass shootings in South Africa with a view to recommending violence prevention interventions. </p>
<p>South African police <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2022/05/16/wc-has-seen-more-than-400-mass-shootings-between-june-2019-and-december-2021">classify</a> a mass shooting as an incident in which three or more people are shot with a firearm. Available evidence indicates that mass shootings in South Africa are mostly perpetrated by organised criminal groups, such as gangs, with motives often linked to competition over territory and resources. And that shooting incidents have a tendency to result in reprisal attacks.</p>
<p>Based on my insights gained over decades of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Guy-Lamb-3">researching violence in South Africa</a>, my view is that the police will need to prioritise the confiscation of illegal firearms and improve the functioning of crime intelligence to reduce the occurrence of mass shootings.</p>
<h2>Patterns of crime</h2>
<p>Mass shootings have been taking place in South Africa for decades. Incidents were prominent during the 1990s, especially in the province of <a href="https://www.accord.org.za/ajcr-issues/voting-and-violence-in-kwazulu-natals-no-go-areas/">KwaZulu-Natal</a> as a result of tensions between supporters of the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party. Over the past three decades conflicts between <a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/docs/taxiviolence/fromlowintensity.pdf">minibus taxi associations</a> and between <a href="https://issafrica.org/research/books/organised-crime-a-study-from-the-cape-flats">criminal gangs</a> (especially in the Western Cape province) have frequently been characterised by mass shootings.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/services/crimestats.php">Quarterly crime data</a> indicate that incidents involving multiple murder victims have increased substantially over the past year. </p>
<p>Most murder cases involve the use of a firearm in which a single perpetrator murders a single victim. Nonetheless, multiple murders are perpetrated on a regular basis. For example, the <a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/services/april_to_march_2019_20_presentation.pdf">2019/20 crime data</a> indicated that there were 508 murder cases where two or more people were slain simultaneously. A total of 1,133 people died in the incidents. This represented 5% of murders for 2019/20. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/plasma-gangs-how-south-africans-fears-about-crime-created-an-urban-legend-185544">Plasma gangs: how South Africans' fears about crime created an urban legend</a>
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<p>No data for multiple murder cases was provided for 2020/21. But <a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/services/crimestats.php">quarterly crime data</a> for 2021/22 showed a significant increase in such murders. For the six-month period between 1 October 2021 and 31 March 2022, there were 416 multiple murder cases involving 953 victims. This equated to 9% of murders for this period.</p>
<p>Historically, most mass shootings in South Africa have been associated with three main things: gang conflicts, rivalries in the minibus taxi sector and factional or inter-group feuds (mainly in KwaZulu-Natal). These forms of collective violence have ultimately emerged from efforts to control certain spaces and resources.</p>
<p>Criminal gangs operate in most major cities in South Africa, especially in Cape Town and Gqeberha, in the Eastern Cape, where much of the <a href="https://www.sacities.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Web_SACN-State-of-Urban-Safety-2018-19-1204-1.pdf">violent crime</a> has been attributed to gang activity. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/world/africa/cape-town-crime-military.html">Gang conflicts</a> have traditionally revolved around gangs seeking to dominate poorer urban neighbourhoods to facilitate and benefit from the trade in illegal goods, especially drugs. </p>
<p>Violence in the <a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/docs/taxiviolence/fromlowintensity.pdf">minibus taxi industry</a> has often arisen from conflicts between taxi organisations over access to transport routes and taxi ranks. Another driver has been the perceived competition from other public transport service providers, such as <a href="https://www.news24.com/fin24/companies/amabhungane-taxi-mafia-blamed-for-deadly-attacks-on-long-distance-buses-20220608-2">bus companies</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.newframe.com/going-back-to-the-future-of-kwazulu-natal-politics/">Factional disputes</a>, which have frequently been linked to party politics, have often been related to access to and control over territory.</p>
<p>Mass shootings have at times been the outcome of conflicts between vigilantes and gangsters (or those regarded as criminals by vigilante groups) over control over specific communities. This has been an ongoing problem in Philippi East in the Western Cape. For example in September 2017, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-10-03-patrollers-in-marikana-philippi-east-live-in-fear-after-mass-shooting/">11 people</a> were fatally shot in one evening at the <a href="https://www.groundup.org.za/article/marikana-informal-settlement-erupts-protests/">Marikana informal settlement</a> in fighting between gangsters and other residents. </p>
<p>Vigilantes in <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-07-28-phoenix-massacre-what-really-happened-in-the-deadly-collision-of-brutalised-communities/">Phoenix</a> were also responsible for mass shootings during the July 2021 unrest in KwaZulu-Natal.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/crime-statistics-show-south-africas-lockdown-crime-holiday-is-over-166785">Crime statistics show South Africa's lockdown 'crime holiday' is over</a>
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<p>Mass shootings have also been associated with the illegal gold mining sector, due to conflicts between <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/5/1/illicit-gold-trade-fuels-conflict-in-south-african-mining-town">competing groups of miners</a> (or “zama zamas”) and between zama zamas and law enforcement or private security personnel. For instance, eight illegal miners died in a shootout with police at a mine in Orkney in <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/news/six-killed-as-police-exchange-fire-with-zama-zamas-in-north-west-20211007">October 2021</a>. And in <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2018/01/15/police-suspect-gang-rivalry-after-7-men-found-dead-at-benoni-mine-shaft">January 2018</a>, seven died in a shootout between different groups of miners.</p>
<p>Since 2017, mass shootings, particularly in <a href="https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lifting-the-veil-on-extortion-in-Cape-Town-GITOC.pdf">Khayelitsha</a> in the Western Cape, have increasingly been attributed to extortion efforts by gangs. Acts of mass firearm violence have been used to terrorise township businesses and residents into paying “protection” fees. </p>
<p>Such violent organised criminality appears to have become more prevalent. <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/tavern-shootings-extortion-among-possible-motives-say-experts-20220711">Extortion</a> efforts might be the cause of the recent tavern shootings in Soweto and Pietermaritzburg. </p>
<p>Turf battles between extortion gangs have also tended to result in mass shootings between these groups.</p>
<p>All these forms of collective violence appear to have become self-perpetuating. Mass shootings have tended to ignite <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/bodies-pile-up-as-cape-towns-hard-livings-gang-goes-to-war-in-durban-a97c039f-f0a8-4e60-8364-f266baa0c74e">retaliatory attacks</a>, which in turn have led to further violent reprisals. This has contributed to norms and beliefs that prioritise the use of violence to manage inter-group conflicts becoming more entrenched in crime-affected communities. </p>
<p>On top of this, COVID and the war in Ukraine have had serious implications for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-economy-has-taken-some-heavy-body-blows-can-it-recover-183165">legal economy</a> as well as the illegal economy. Organised criminal groups have been feeling the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-11-03-gugulethu-massacre-gang-sends-out-grim-video-message-warning-of-more-carnage/">economic pinch</a>. Hence <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/extortion-rackets-likely-behind-spate-of-mass-shootings-in-cape-town-20220513">competition</a> between groups, especially between street gangs and groups specialising in extortion, appears to have become more acute and more violent.</p>
<h2>Way forward</h2>
<p>The South African government has two options to reduce mass shootings. Both will require monumental policing efforts. </p>
<p>The first entails the establishment of <a href="https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/01/11/how-to-reduce-gun-violence-in-baltimore-city/">targeted police operations</a> that focus on the confiscation of illegal firearms and ammunition where the risk of mass shootings is the highest, such as Khayelitsha and Delft in the Western Cape and Soweto in Gauteng. This is critically important as the upturn in violent crime appears to be linked to the widespread availability of illegal firearms. These are the <a href="http://www.policesecretariat.gov.za/downloads/reports/CSPS-WSG_Firearms_Report.pdf">most common weapon</a> used to commit murder, attempted murder and robberies with aggravating circumstances in the country.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-turn-the-tide-against-south-africas-crime-wave-131839">How to turn the tide against South Africa's crime wave</a>
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<p>This would need to be linked to a process of tightening the <a href="https://www.saferspaces.org.za/understand/entry/gun-violence">firearm law</a> to reduce the diversion of firearms into criminal hands. More than 5,000 licensed firearms are lost or stolen each year.</p>
<p>The second option necessitates considerable <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/role-intelligence-combating-organised-crime">intelligence gathering</a>. The police service’s crime intelligence arm needs to be able to identify and monitor the activities of groups responsible for mass shootings to secure arrests and convictions in court.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187182/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guy Lamb receives funding from the Peace Research Institute, Oslo. He also serves as a Commissioner on South Africa's National Planning Commission where he chairs the Commission's Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Task Team.</span></em></p>Historically, most mass shootings in South Africa have been associated with three main things: gang conflicts, rivalries in the minibus taxi sector and factional or inter-group feuds.Guy Lamb, Criminologist / Lecturer, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1798912022-04-02T08:25:49Z2022-04-02T08:25:49ZRising vigilantism: South Africa is reaping the fruits of misrule<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454388/original/file-20220325-23-10rx82p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of South Africa’s anti-migrant “Operation Dudula” group march in Jeppestown, Johannesburg. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michele Spatari / AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Once relegated to the margins of South African politics, anti-immigrant activism has gone mainstream. Several anti-immigrant groups, including <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-60698374">Operation Dudula</a>, the <a href="https://satrucker.co.za/tag/atdf/">All Trucker Foundation</a> and the <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/were-not-xenophobic-says-south-african-first-president-mario-khumalo-e9f129df-61ee-47a9-8794-fd100e994f1d">South Africa First Party</a>, have become reference points for national debate.</p>
<p>Reflecting forms of radical protectionism, they channel the frustrations of South Africans with <a href="https://theconversation.com/state-capture-in-south-africa-how-the-rot-set-in-and-how-the-project-was-rumbled-176481">corruption</a>, <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/speaking-notes-delivered-police-minister-general%C2%A0bheki-cele-mp-occasion-release-%C2%A0quarter">crime</a>, and <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=14957">unemployment</a>. The results are campaigns to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9k_XR1aRSI">‘clean’ the country of immigrants</a>, home invasions and <a href="https://twitter.com/ReggieReporter/status/1505828159874383873?s=20&t=8PDjo7hP7OWz92uCR9fPEA">widespread threats and violence</a>.</p>
<p>This is not a response to an immigration crisis. Immigrant numbers are <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/south-africa-immigration-destination-history#:%7E:text=The%20government's%20statistical%20agency%2C%20Statistics,in%20the%202001%2D06%20period">not higher than they have been for a decade</a>. This is a crisis of constitutional credibility. </p>
<p>Anti-immigrant activism is politics by other means, with violence likely to become common amid fundamental ruptures in governance. After years of unfulfilled promises, a youthful citizenry <a href="https://theconversation.com/here-are-five-factors-that-drove-low-voter-turnout-in-south-africas-2021-elections-173338">has lost considerable faith in formal electoral politics</a>. </p>
<p>Popular embrace of nationalism, street justice, and anti-immigrant activism reflects the ascendency of an extra-legal order. That regime is a mix of formal institutions and local fiefdoms held together by patronage and coercion. That system is now unravelling. </p>
<h2>Perils of indirect rule and patronage</h2>
<p>During the apartheid era, local gangsters often made alliances with the apartheid state. Some justified their violence and venality as a strategy to make the country ungovernable. This latter group – the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00020189908707905">‘comrade tsotsis’</a> (young thugs so-called for claiming to being anti-apartheid activists) – later connected with the post-apartheid governing party, the African National Congress (ANC). This allowed them to maintain local influence with the <a href="https://mg.co.za/editorial/2022-03-31-editorial-theres-a-crisis-coming/">tacit permission of the ANC</a>. The opposition Inkatha Freedom Party has similarly relied on its sometimes violent <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504630.2020.1814235?casa_token=VkRbWmqNdfYAAAAA%3A1k0OuQHkjXcGSx1EFT9tRnSUyVei75c3eemaIErOdkcd_cL5WYsI3E77Swx94CX1MZvzGwzs4MVQ">network of hostel leaders</a>.</p>
<p>This created a system of ‘indirect rule’, reflecting a similar logic to the colonial administration where local ‘chieftains’ worked in complex patronage networks to keep public order. But, where the gangsters once worked under the national government, the police and officials now appear to answer to vigilantes, participating in Dudula raids under ‘<a href="https://twitter.com/newzroom405/status/1505500039774638080?s=21">sole authority of the local community</a>’. </p>
<p>The post-apartheid system of indirect rule has been expedient for the governing party. Rather than extend its presence into cities whose populations <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315867878-13/south-africa-tortured-urbanisation-complications-reconstruction-ivan-turok">swelled in the post-apartheid era</a>, it <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02589346.2019.1692520">closed party offices</a>. </p>
<p>Under the country’s party list system, locally elected municipal councillors <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-11-27-direct-elections-bill-will-give-real-power-to-the-people/">are often absent or powerless</a>. Viewed from the perspective of the historically neglected <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03736245.1982.10559651?journalCode=rsag20#:%7E:text=Positioned%20just%20to%20the%20west,3">black residential areas</a> and informal settlements, elected officials are often more committed to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pad.1642">pleasing the party than the people they ostensibly represent</a>.</p>
<p>The dominant parties maintained this system of indirect rule, relying on civic associations, local chiefs and other ‘community leaders’ to deliver votes and maintain order, over two decades.</p>
<p>Unwilling or unable to displace them from local positions of authority, national, provincial, and municipal governments negotiate with them, further entrenching their power. The challenge now is that the political and economic resources the three spheres of government used to maintain this system are dwindling.</p>
<p>South Africa’s economic crisis means there are fewer government tenders available, and less money for social programmes. More importantly, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59166081">the dip in ANC support below 50% in the 2021 elections</a> means party and bureaucratic bosses now face uncertain futures. Amid this, upstarts seeking opportunities and jockeying for position engage in new alliances, mobilisation and violence. </p>
<h2>Cause for anxiety</h2>
<p>To be sure, more is going on than a crumbling patronage system. South Africans would generally prefer less immigration. There has been no time in the last two decades <a href="https://www.africaportal.org/publications/deadly-denial-xenophobia-governance-and-global-compact-migration-south-africa/">where they have broadly welcomed newcomers</a>. <a href="https://repository.hsrc.ac.za/handle/20.500.11910/18951">COVID has exacerbated concerns about immigration</a>, as <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2021-12-05-south-africas-youth-unemployment-crisis-the-clock-is-ticking-and-its-five-minutes-to-midnight/#:%7E:text=The%20latest%20official%20data%20reflect,four%20of%20the%20under%2D25s">youth unemployment hovers near 70%</a>.</p>
<p>There is clearly cause for anxiety. Politicians with <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/434851/south-africa-does-not-have-a-viable-economic-recovery-plan-analyst/">few plans for addressing this gap</a> have capitalised on these attitudes.</p>
<p>Yet, these widespread trends do little to explain the violence in specific places, at particular times, or why it is so difficult to counter. Anti-outsider violence is <a href="http://www.xenowatch.ac.za">not universal</a> nor always aimed at immigrants alone. </p>
<p>It is also not easily explained by poverty. Many of the poorest areas have remained peaceful while more prosperous ones have not. Instead, violence tends to occur repeatedly in specific neighbourhoods, because of localised political power games.</p>
<h2>Outsourcing state authority</h2>
<p>One example from <a href="https://www.ijcv.org/index.php/ijcv/article/view/3118/pdf">our research</a> in Mamelodi, outside Pretoria, the country’s seat of national government, illustrates this point.</p>
<p>Its population growth has outpaced any kind of state intervention, police control, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-73073-4_5">or service provision</a>.</p>
<p>Working together, two groups have filled the political and regulatory vacuum. One is the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SouthAfricanNationalCivicOrganisation2015/">South African National Civic Organisation</a>. The other, the Phomelong Residents Association, is a local informal group headed by self-appointed leaders. Those wanting to build, do business, or even transport goods through the area pay them or get out.</p>
<p>To finance their protest and political activities, the two groups plunder foreign-owned shops and businesses. Like the self-financing armies of old, protesters are given licence to loot. One leader <a href="https://www.ijcv.org/index.php/ijcv/article/view/3118/pdf#page7">reported that</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>when protesters feel hungry, they go and get food from shops to eat or take home to cook; and if shops here are closed they go to shops in other locations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Through the distribution of resources and the eviction of foreigners, the associations legitimate their form of rule, positioned as gangster intermediaries. With popular support, they then demand attention by the municipal authorities. Cleverly, their leaders borrow the language of continued black deprivation and the need for <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-03-14-carl-niehaus-tables-radical-economic-transformation-plan-ahead-of-ace-magashules-campaign-for-anc-president/">‘radical economic transformation’</a> to legitimise themselves.</p>
<p>Another example of this indirect rule is Philani, a poor area largely neglected by city government, outside eThekwini in KwaZulu-Natal. In early 2019, the Delangokubona Business Forum <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/afr/news/stories/2019/5/5cda7da04/refugees-affected-by-xenophobic-attacks-in-south-africa-in-need-of-urgent.html">displaced and kidnapped about 50 foreigners</a> living in the area.</p>
<p>Claiming to champion <a href="http://www.thedtic.gov.za/financial-and-non-financial-support/b-bbee/broad-based-black-economic-empowerment/">‘black economic empowerment’</a>, they accused foreigners of blocking the economic advancement of poor black citizens.</p>
<p>They extracted ransoms from their families and friends, while negotiating with the government for their safe return. Successful on both counts, they positioned themselves as intermediaries and peacemakers – the <em>de facto</em> local authorities.</p>
<p>As in other cases in the country, these groups <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-02-09-mafia-style-business-forum-halts-multi-million-road-project/">effectively create multi-faceted protection rackets</a>. Increasingly (and <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/bogus-mk-veterans-who-were-just-5-years-old-during-apartheid-smoked-out-as-verification-kicks-into-gear-20220317">implausably</a>) claiming to be military veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle, they use violence to create instability and instil fear to extract resources and establish legitimacy. </p>
<p>These actions create powerful local forces that demand payment from any state development projects in the areas they control. This way, the state is able to preserve the appearance of authority and constitutionalism while allowing someone else to do the dirty work of keeping people in line. But trouble ensues when the developers can no longer pay or other parties are eyeing the booty – money, houses, businesses, and votes. </p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Given the legacy of indirect rule, it is unclear who the government can call to rein in the violent leaders who effectively govern some <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/townships">townships</a>. Or, indeed, if it has the desire or popular legitimacy to do so. Impunity for past misdeeds has emboldened these groups, strengthening them so much that police respond to them rather than the other way around.</p>
<p>Authority to decide who lives where, who does what, and what are appropriate standards of behaviour rests with them – rather than the constitution or town councils.</p>
<p>South Africa’s <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/nap/index.html">national action plan on xenophobia</a> calls for <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-a-plan-to-fight-prejudice-but-its-full-of-holes-114444">conversations and dialogue with these groups</a>. This is precisely the system they have manipulated to entrench their power. </p>
<p>Ending violence against foreigners and true economic recovery can only happen by first recognising – and addressing – the hazards of South Africa’s crumbling system of indirect rule.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179891/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Loren B Landau has received funding from the national research foundation, the Mellon Foundation, Porticus Foundation, and USAID </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jean Pierre Misago does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ending violence against foreigners can only happen by first recognising – and addressing – the hazards of South Africa’s crumbling system of indirect rule.Loren B Landau, Co-Director of the Wits-Oxford Mobility Governance Lab, University of the WitwatersrandJean Pierre Misago, Researcher, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1724032021-11-30T19:11:44Z2021-11-30T19:11:44ZStudents who cheat don’t just have to worry about getting caught. They risk blackmail and extortion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434603/original/file-20211130-21-1jhv1xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5374%2C3575&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When students use a commercial <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-unite-against-the-academic-black-market-85232">contract cheating</a> service, getting caught by their lecturers is just one of many serious consequences that could damage them and those who trust them. They also expose themselves to blackmail and extortion. Despite these risks, one in ten students at Australian higher education institutions have used a commercial cheating service to complete an assessment, according to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2021.1972093">survey findings</a> presented at the inaugural <a href="https://torrens.eventsair.com/aain-forum2021/">Australian Academic Integrity Network Forum 2021</a> (AAIN) hosted by Torrens University. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/1-in-10-uni-students-submit-assignments-written-by-someone-else-and-most-are-getting-away-with-it-166410">1 in 10 uni students submit assignments written by someone else — and most are getting away with it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>With sophisticated <a href="https://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-is-getting-better-at-writing-and-universities-should-worry-about-plagiarism-160481">artificial intelligence</a> and indeed sinister forces coming into play, there is a growing urgency for higher education institutions to act on this increasing threat to academic integrity. The threat isn’t just to the reputation of institutions. It also places students at risk. </p>
<p>When students fill in their credit card number to complete a purchase from a contract cheating service, they are doing business with unscrupulous gremlins. They risk heading down a sinister black hole of <a href="https://www.teqsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/contract-cheating-blackmail.pdf?v=1591659442">extortion</a> and blackmail using the threat of exposure to their university or employer.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1256108411839819776"}"></div></p>
<h2>Services have found a new income stream</h2>
<p>Extortion is the new name of the game. Contract-cheating gremlins have turned to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2020.1730313?journalCode=cshe20">blackmail</a> as an ongoing source of income from students. They threaten to tell the university the student has bought an assignment unless the student pays up. </p>
<p>Students can be blackmailed even after finishing their degrees when the gremlins threaten to expose their cheating behaviour to employers. </p>
<p>If the student refuses to pay up, then the gremlins get to work on destroying their credibility. The university can revoke the degree the student “earned”. The student loses their qualification and potentially their career and suffers reputational damage and financial loss.</p>
<p>Contract cheating starts off as a rational approach to getting an assignment done quickly and easily. As the student descends the morality ladder, the lines between right and wrong become blurred. The student who engages in academic misconduct is laying the foundations for unethical conduct in the workplace.</p>
<p>There is <a href="https://clutejournals.com/index.php/JDM/article/view/4977">strong evidence</a> that cheating as a student can lay the foundations for unethical behaviour in life and as members of society. </p>
<p>When the US audit watchdog <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/15/us-watchdog-fines-kpmg-australia-over-widespread-cheating-on-online-training-tests">fined KPMG Australia</a> A$615,000 following major cheating in its workplace, it revealed the dangers of the normalisation of these practices in society. Similarly, <a href="https://asic.gov.au/">ASIC</a> is suing the <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/news/asic-is-suing-anz-over-its-introducer-program-alleging-unlicensed-parties-funnelled-borrowers-to-loans-they-could-not-afford/ar-AAR8BEw?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531">ANZ Bank</a> for breaching the Credit Act by allegedly paying commissions to unlicensed third parties who referred borrowers to the bank for loans. Bank representatives overlooked these actions in an attempt to achieve sales targets for bonuses.</p>
<p>Gremlins are smart. They advertise their services as assignment help and tutors 24/7, in an attempt to normalise the practice of cheating. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1232588120836710400"}"></div></p>
<p>Students then unknowingly open themselves up to a raft of offences, including misrepresentation, fraud, forgery and financial advantage from crime. When a student submits a bought assignment and completes the cover sheet stating that it’s their own work, it could be considered fraud because they are making a false or misleading statement. The financial advantage from this action would be the avoidance of retaking a subject and saving on course fees. </p>
<p>It’s potentially an act of forgery when a student submits a fabricated assignment and the university considers it to be original work, legitimately created by the student. So far no students have been charged with fraud for submitting a contract-cheated assessment in Australia. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-is-getting-better-at-writing-and-universities-should-worry-about-plagiarism-160481">Artificial intelligence is getting better at writing, and universities should worry about plagiarism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What is being done about cheating?</h2>
<p>The Australian government’s introduction of anti-cheating <a href="https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/school-life/new-laws-passed-could-see-cheaters-who-sell-services-to-university-students-jailed/news-story/599e268e4e5ff39e0766544688274092">laws</a> in 2020 offers some hope of reining in the gremlins. The first <a href="https://www.teqsa.gov.au/latest-news/articles/teqsa-successful-federal-court-action-block-access-cheating-website">successful prosecution</a> by the higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), resulted in the blocking of two illegal cheating websites. </p>
<p>The new law also makes the promotion and selling of contract cheating services illegal. Penalties include up to two years’ jail and a fine of $110,000. </p>
<p>By their very nature, these services are not exemplars of integrity and ethical behaviour. They blackmail their customers and exploit the so-called “academic” writers they employ. They are now also recruiting students to on-sell their services, exposing them to the risk of a criminal record.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1233169724155916290"}"></div></p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-unite-against-the-academic-black-market-85232">Universities unite against the academic black market</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Individuals make a significant investment in their education. But if they turn to cheating, their actions can have far-reaching consequences for their lives. They also harm those around them – their families, partners, employers and society in general.</p>
<p>While the AAIN Forum identified some strategies to encourage students to rethink cheating, it is critical that we create a robust culture of academic integrity across our institutions. Appreciating the true value of a well-earned degree will be just as important as the law in keeping the cheat gremlins at bay.</p>
<p>Let the student buyer beware!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172403/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristina Nicholls does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An estimated one in ten Australian tertiary students have paid a so-called contract cheating service to do their work for them. What most don’t think about is the risk of being blackmailed later.Kristina Nicholls, Director, Academic Integrity, Torrens University AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1618182021-07-13T20:10:05Z2021-07-13T20:10:05ZIs Australia a sitting duck for ransomware attacks? Yes, and the danger has been growing for 30 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410991/original/file-20210713-19-1st57cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C499%2C2261%2C1619&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Massimo Botturi/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australian organisations are a soft target for ransomware attacks, say experts who yesterday <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-13/ransomeware-report-cyber-security-hacking-jbs-nine/100287278">issued a fresh warning</a> that the government needs to do more to stop agencies and businesses falling prey to cyber-crime. But in truth, the danger has been growing worldwide for more than three decades.</p>
<p>Despite being a relatively new concept to the public, ransomware has roots in the late 1980s and has evolved significantly over the past decade, reaping billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.</p>
<p>With names like Bad Rabbit, Chimera and GoldenEye, ransomware has established a mythical quality with an allure of mystery and fascination. Unless, of course, you are the target. </p>
<p>Victims have few options available to them; refusing to pay the ransom depends on having good enough backup practices to recover the corrupted or stolen data.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://www.coveware.com/blog/2020/1/22/ransomware-costs-double-in-q4-as-ryuk-sodinokibi-proliferate">study by security company Coveware</a>, 51% of businesses surveyed were hit with some type of ransomware in 2020. More concerningly still, typical ransom demands are climbing dramatically, from an average of US$6,000 in 2018, to US$84,000 in 2019, and a staggering US$178,000 in 2020.</p>
<h2>A brief history of ransomware</h2>
<p>The first known example of ransomware dates back to 1988-89. Joseph Popp, a biologist, distributed floppy disks containing a survey (the “AIDS Information Introductory Diskette”) to determine AIDS infection risks. Some 20,000 of them were reportedly distributed at a World Health Organization conference and via postal mailing lists. Unbeknown to those receiving the disks, it contained a virus of its own. The <a href="https://www.sdxcentral.com/security/definitions/case-study-aids-trojan-ransomware/">AIDS Trojan</a> lay dormant on systems before locking users’ files and demanding a “licence fee” to restore access.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404787/original/file-20210607-28232-1yroxrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404787/original/file-20210607-28232-1yroxrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404787/original/file-20210607-28232-1yroxrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=285&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404787/original/file-20210607-28232-1yroxrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=285&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404787/original/file-20210607-28232-1yroxrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=285&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404787/original/file-20210607-28232-1yroxrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404787/original/file-20210607-28232-1yroxrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404787/original/file-20210607-28232-1yroxrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1989 AIDS Trojan (PC Cyborg) ransom demand.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joseph L. Popp, AIDS Information Trojan author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although the malware was <a href="https://www.virusbulletin.com/uploads/pdf/magazine/1990/199001.pdf">inelegant and easily undone</a>, it drew media attention at the time as a new type of cyber threat. The demand for payment (by cheque to a PO box in Panama) was primitive by comparison with modern approaches, which call for funds to be transferred electronically, often in cryptocurrencies.</p>
<p>It was well over a decade before ransomware truly began to proliferate. In the mid-2000s, stronger encryption allowed for more effective ransom campaigns with the use of asymmetric cryptography (in which two keys are used: one to encrypt, and a second, kept secret by the criminals, to decrypt), which meant even skilled systems administrators could no longer extract the keys from the malware.</p>
<p>In 2013, CryptoLocker malware rose to global dominance, partly supported by the <a href="https://www.knowbe4.com/gameover-zeus">GameOver Zeus botnet</a>. Cryptolocker encrypted users’ files, sending the unlock key to a server controlled by the criminals with a three-day deadline before the key was destroyed. The network was shut down in 2014, thanks to a major global law enforcement effort called <a href="https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/07/operation-tovar-the-latest-attempt-to-eliminate-key-botnets.html">Operation Tovar</a>. It is estimated to have impacted more than <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/cryptolockers-crimewave-a-trail-of-millions-in-laundered-bitcoin/">250,000 victims and potentially garnered 42,000 Bitcoin</a>, worth around US$2 billion at today’s valuation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404789/original/file-20210607-28202-1pf32vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404789/original/file-20210607-28202-1pf32vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404789/original/file-20210607-28202-1pf32vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404789/original/file-20210607-28202-1pf32vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404789/original/file-20210607-28202-1pf32vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404789/original/file-20210607-28202-1pf32vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404789/original/file-20210607-28202-1pf32vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404789/original/file-20210607-28202-1pf32vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">CryptoLocker ransom demand.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nikolai Grigorik, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2016 there were several high-profile incidents involving the Petya ransomware, which prevented users from accessing their hard drives. It was one of the first significant examples of <a href="https://www.upguard.com/blog/what-is-ransomware-as-a-service">Ransomware as a Service</a>, whereby criminal gangs “sell” their ransomware tools as a managed service.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404790/original/file-20210607-50508-zhyfzk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404790/original/file-20210607-50508-zhyfzk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404790/original/file-20210607-50508-zhyfzk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404790/original/file-20210607-50508-zhyfzk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404790/original/file-20210607-50508-zhyfzk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404790/original/file-20210607-50508-zhyfzk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404790/original/file-20210607-50508-zhyfzk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404790/original/file-20210607-50508-zhyfzk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Petya ransom demand.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Unknown criminal. Notify the authorities, in case of discovery. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The following year saw arguably the most notorious ransomware attack of all time: the WannaCry attack. It struck hundreds of thousands of computers, including an estimated 70,000 systems at the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hospitals-across-britain-hit-by-ransomware-cyberattack/">UK National Health Service</a>. The global impact of WannaCry has been <a href="https://www.kaspersky.com.au/resource-center/threats/ransomware-wannacry">estimated at up to US$4 billion</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404792/original/file-20210607-21-phl39a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404792/original/file-20210607-21-phl39a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404792/original/file-20210607-21-phl39a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404792/original/file-20210607-21-phl39a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404792/original/file-20210607-21-phl39a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404792/original/file-20210607-21-phl39a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404792/original/file-20210607-21-phl39a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404792/original/file-20210607-21-phl39a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wannacry ransom demand with integrated multi-language support.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot of a WannaCry ransomware attack on Windows 8. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recent still was the <a href="https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/big-game-hunting-with-ryuk-another-lucrative-targeted-ransomware/">Ryuk</a> ransomware, which targeted local councils and national government agencies. But cyber-criminals have also attacked specific private companies, including the United States’ largest refined oil distribution network, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-20/colonial-pipeline-ceo-confirms-company-paid-ransom-darkside/100151094">Colonial Pipeline</a>, the multinational meat processor <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57318965">JBS Foods</a>, and Australia’s <a href="https://www.cybersecurity-insiders.com/australia-channel-9-tv-ransomware-cyber-attack/">Channel Nine network</a>.</p>
<h2>Is all ransomware the same?</h2>
<p>There are hundreds of types of ransomware, but they fit into a few broad categories:</p>
<p><strong>Crypto ransomware</strong></p>
<p>In modern crypto ransomware attacks, the malware encrypts users’ files (“locking” the files to make them unreadable) and will typically involve a “key” to unlock the files being stored on a remote server controlled by the cyber-criminals. Early variants would require the victim to buy software to unlock the files.</p>
<p><strong>Locker ransomware</strong></p>
<p>Locker ransomware is usually a more complex type of malware that targets a user’s entire operating system (such as Windows, macOS or Android), hampering their ability to use their device. Examples can include preventing the computer from booting, or forcing a ransom demand window to appear in the foreground and preventing interaction with the other applications.</p>
<p>Although files are not encrypted, the system is typically unusable by most users (as you would likely need another system or software to extract the files). In some cases the ransom demands refer to government agencies with threats of investigations relating to tax fraud, possession of child abuse materials, or terrorist activities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404785/original/file-20210607-27-1nt2r8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404785/original/file-20210607-27-1nt2r8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404785/original/file-20210607-27-1nt2r8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404785/original/file-20210607-27-1nt2r8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404785/original/file-20210607-27-1nt2r8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404785/original/file-20210607-27-1nt2r8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404785/original/file-20210607-27-1nt2r8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404785/original/file-20210607-27-1nt2r8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A fake FBI ‘seize’ notice designed to convince victims to pay the ‘fine’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Motormille2, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Leakware</strong></p>
<p>In a leakware attack, the data are not encrypted but instead are stolen from the victim and held by cyber-criminals. It is the threat of public release alone that is used to secure a ransom payment. From 2020 to 2021, <a href="https://secure2.sophos.com/en-us/medialibrary/pdfs/whitepaper/sophos-state-of-ransomware-2021-wp.pdf">reported occurrences of non-encrypted ransoms have doubled</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Double extortion</strong></p>
<p>Double extortion is an alarming development whereby not only is a payment required to secure release of encrypted organisation data, but there is the added threat of public release.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404786/original/file-20210607-25-1qxvzm9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404786/original/file-20210607-25-1qxvzm9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404786/original/file-20210607-25-1qxvzm9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404786/original/file-20210607-25-1qxvzm9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404786/original/file-20210607-25-1qxvzm9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404786/original/file-20210607-25-1qxvzm9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404786/original/file-20210607-25-1qxvzm9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404786/original/file-20210607-25-1qxvzm9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Screenshots from Cl0p leaks website providing access to stolen Transport NSW files (web version is not redacted).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This approach typically involves data being stolen from the organisation during the malware infection process, then sent to servers run by the cyber-criminals. To encourage payment, extracts may be posted on public-facing websites to prove possession of the data – coupled with threats to publish the remaining data.</p>
<p><strong>Ransomware as a Service (RaaS)</strong></p>
<p>Early ransomware was developed by individuals but, as with all software, ransomware has come of age. It is now a multibillion-dollar industry (an <a href="https://pentestmag.com/ransomware-statistics-trends-and-facts-for-2020-and-beyond/">estimated US$20 billion in 2020</a>) and is every bit as well designed and implemented as any commercial software.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kgx_teNOo-U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Ransomware as a Service is here - and cheaper than you may think!</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Just as Microsoft’s Office 365 has developed into a service, where instead of buying the software, you pay a monthly or yearly subscription, so has ransomware. <a href="https://www.upguard.com/blog/what-is-ransomware-as-a-service">Ransomware as a Service</a> (RaaS) allows criminals to obtain services, typically in return for a <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-as-a-service-for-allows-wannabe-hackers-to-cash-in-on-cyber-extortion/">cut of the ransom</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/holding-the-news-to-ransom-what-we-know-so-far-about-the-channel-9-cyber-attack-158069">Holding the news to ransom? What we know so far about the Channel 9 cyber attack</a>
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<hr>
<h2>To pay, or not to pay?</h2>
<p>Most law enforcement agencies recommend against ransom payments (just as many governments will not negotiate with terrorists), because it is likely to encourage future attacks. But many organisations nevertheless do pay up. Interestingly, the public sector hands over up to <a href="https://statescoop.com/ransomware-local-government-pays-10-times-more/">ten times more money</a> to release their files than victims in the private sector.</p>
<p>Paying a ransom is frequently seen as the lesser of two evils, particularly for smaller organisations that would otherwise be shut down entirely by the disruption to their systems. Or, if you are lucky, the malware will already have a publicly available antidote.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"363279911793856514"}"></div></p>
<p>But paying the ransom doesn’t guarantee you’ll get all your data back. By one <a href="https://secure2.sophos.com/en-us/medialibrary/pdfs/whitepaper/sophos-state-of-ransomware-2021-wp.pdf">estimate</a>, an average of 65% of data was typically recovered after paying the ransom, and only 8% of organisations managed to restore all of it.</p>
<p>With criminal groups now reaping <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/ryuk-gang-estimated-to-have-made-more-than-150-million-from-ransomware-attacks/">multimillion-dollar profits</a>, ransomware attacks are likely to target larger organisations where the rewards are richer, perhaps focusing on holders of valuable intellectual property such as the health-care and medical research sectors. The Internet of Things (IoT) will likely be a <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/02/what-makes-iot-ransomware-a-different-and-more-dangerous-threat/">target for cyber-criminals</a>, with global networks of connected devices held to ransom.</p>
<p>While big organisations are likely to have appropriate technical safeguards, user education is still key - a lapse of judgement from a single person can still bring an organisation to its knees. For smaller companies, seeking (and following) cyber advice is crucial.</p>
<p>Given the huge scale on which cyber-criminals are now operating, we have to hope law enforcement and software security engineers can stay one step ahead.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/holding-the-world-to-ransom-the-top-5-most-dangerous-criminal-organisations-online-right-now-163977">Holding the world to ransom: the top 5 most dangerous criminal organisations online right now</a>
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</em>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The first ransomware attack, in 1988, was a crude effort involving virus-laden floppy disks. But in the decades since, the sophistication of malware, and the money reaped by criminals, has skyrocketed.Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean (Computing and Security), Edith Cowan UniversityAndrew Woodward, Executive Dean of Science, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1589342021-05-13T12:33:49Z2021-05-13T12:33:49ZHere’s how much your personal information is worth to cybercriminals – and what they do with it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400396/original/file-20210512-16-eqal3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C10667%2C7984&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The black market for stolen personal information motivates most data breaches.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/internet-fraud-hacker-behind-a-laptop-royalty-free-illustration/1276940612?adppopup=true">aleksey-martynyuk/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Data breaches have become common, and <a href="https://pages.riskbasedsecurity.com/hubfs/Reports/2020/2020%20Q1%20Data%20Breach%20QuickView%20Report.pdf">billions of records are stolen worldwide every year</a>. Most of the media coverage of data breaches tends to focus on how the breach happened, how many records were stolen and the financial and legal impact of the incident for organizations and individuals affected by the breach. But what happens to the data that is stolen during these incidents?</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pvxc54kAAAAJ&hl=en">cybersecurity researcher</a>, I track data breaches and the black market in stolen data. The destination of stolen data depends on who is behind a data breach and why they’ve stolen a certain type of data. For example, when data thieves are motivated to embarrass a person or organization, expose perceived wrongdoing or improve cybersecurity, they tend to release relevant data into the public domain. </p>
<p>In 2014, hackers backed by North Korea <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/north-korean-programmer-charged-in-sony-hack-wannacry-attack">stole Sony Pictures Entertainment employee data</a> such as Social Security numbers, financial records and salary information, as well as emails among top executives. The hackers then published the emails to embarrass the company, possibly in retribution for releasing a <a href="https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/theinterview">comedy</a> about a plot to assassinate North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un.</p>
<p>Sometimes when data is stolen by national governments it is not disclosed or sold. Instead, it is used for espionage. For example, the hotel company Marriott was the victim of a data breach in 2018 in which personal information on 500 million guests was stolen. The key suspects in this incident were hackers backed by the Chinese government. One theory is that <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/420929-china-behind-marriott-data-breach-investigators-conclude">the Chinese government stole this data</a> as part of an intelligence-gathering effort to collect information about U.S. government officials and corporate executives. </p>
<p><iframe id="T0U9h" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/T0U9h/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>But the majority of hacks seem to be about selling the data to make a buck.</p>
<h2>It’s (mostly) about the money</h2>
<p>Though data breaches can be a national security threat, 86% are about money, and 55% are committed by organized criminal groups, according to <a href="https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/dbir/2020/results-and-analysis/">Verizon’s annual data breach report</a>. Stolen data often ends up being sold online on the <a href="https://www.csoonline.com/article/3249765/what-is-the-dark-web-how-to-access-it-and-what-youll-find.html">dark web</a>. For example, in 2018 hackers <a href="https://gbhackers.com/hackers-selling-stolen-data/">offered for sale more than 200 million records</a> containing the personal information of Chinese individuals. This included information on 130 million customers of the Chinese hotel chain Huazhu Hotels Group. </p>
<p>Similarly, data stolen from <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/target-says-stolen-info-data-breach-hit-70-million-people-flna2D11894083">Target</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-05/sally-beauty-data-hack-another-day-another-retailer-in-a-massive-credit-card-breach">Sally Beauty</a>, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pf-changs-breach-33-restaurants-20140804-story.html">P.F. Chang</a>, <a href="https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/new-retail-breach-reported-a-5927">Harbor Freight</a> and <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2014/09/18/technology/security/home-depot-hack/index.html">Home Depot</a> turned up on a known online black-market site called <a href="https://qz.com/260716/these-are-the-websites-where-hackers-flip-stolen-credit-card-data-after-an-attack/">Rescator</a>. While it is easy to find marketplaces such as Rescator through a simple Google search, other marketplaces on the dark web can be found only by using <a href="https://drfone.wondershare.com/dark-web/dark-web-browser.html">special web browsers</a>.</p>
<p>Buyers can purchase the data they are interested in. The most common way to pay for the transaction is with bitcoins or via Western Union. The prices depend on the type of data, its demand and its supply. For example, a <a href="https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cyber-attacks/follow-the-data">big surplus</a> of stolen <a href="https://www.csoonline.com/article/3215864/how-to-protect-personally-identifiable-information-pii-under-gdpr.html">personally identifiable information</a> caused its price to drop from US$4 for information about a person in 2014 to $1 in 2015. <a href="https://www.privacyaffairs.com/dark-web-price-index-2021/">Email dumps</a> containing anywhere from a hundred thousand to a couple of million email addresses go for $10, and <a href="https://www.privacyaffairs.com/dark-web-price-index-2021/">voter databases</a> from various states sell for $100. </p>
<p><iframe id="YtPSu" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/YtPSu/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Where stolen data goes</h2>
<p>Buyers use stolen data in several ways. Credit card numbers and security codes can be used to create clone cards for making fraudulent transactions. Social Security numbers, home addresses, full names, dates of birth and other personally identifiable information can be used in identity theft. For example, the buyer can apply for loans or credit cards under the victim’s name and <a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/taxpayer-guide-to-identity-theft">file fraudulent tax returns</a>. </p>
<p>Sometimes <a href="https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime-and-digital-threats/what-do-hackers-do-with-your-stolen-identity">stolen personal information is purchased</a> by <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25808189">marketing firms</a> or companies that specialize in spam campaigns. Buyers can also use stolen emails in phishing and other social engineering attacks and to distribute malware. </p>
<p>Hackers have targeted personal information and financial data for a long time because they are easy to sell. Health care data has <a href="https://www.hipaajournal.com/healthcare-data-breach-statistics/">become a big attraction for data thieves</a> in recent years. In some cases the motivation is extortion. </p>
<p>A good example is the theft of patient data from the Finnish psychotherapy practice firm Vastaamo. The hackers used the information they stole to demand a ransom from not only Vastaamo, but also from its patients. They <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/vastaamo-psychotherapy-patients-hack-data-breach/">emailed patients</a> with the threat to expose their mental health records unless the victims paid a ransom of 200 euros in bitcoins. At least 300 of these <a href="https://apnews.com/article/psychotherapy-cabinets-finland-6b27c895df0abd532a4fb000c9d5d517">stolen records have been posted online</a>, according to an Associated Press report.</p>
<p>Stolen data including medical diplomas, medical licenses and insurance documents can also be used to <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-is-how-hackers-make-money-from-your-stolen-medical-data/">forge a medical background</a>. </p>
<h2>How to know and what to do</h2>
<p>What can you do to minimize your risk from stolen data? The first step is to find out if your information is being sold on the dark web. You can use websites such as <a href="https://haveibeenpwned.com/">haveibeenpwned</a> and <a href="https://intelx.io/">IntelligenceX</a> to see whether your email was part of stolen data. It is also a good idea to subscribe to <a href="https://www.usnews.com/360-reviews/identity-theft-protection">identity theft protection services</a>. </p>
<p>If you have been the victim of a data breach, you can take <a href="https://www.tomsguide.com/us/data-breach-to-dos,news-18007.html">these steps</a> to minimize the impact: Inform credit reporting agencies and other organizations that collect data about you, such as your health care provider, insurance company, banks and credit card companies, and change the passwords for your accounts. You can also report the incident to the Federal Trade Commission to get a <a href="https://identitytheft.gov/">tailored plan</a> to recover from the incident.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ravi Sen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A thriving black market for stolen personal data makes millions of people vulnerable to spies, spammers, scammers and hackers.Ravi Sen, Associate Professor of Information and Operations Management, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1474112020-12-08T13:12:28Z2020-12-08T13:12:28ZThe Taliban are megarich – here’s where they get the money they use to wage war in Afghanistan<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373398/original/file-20201207-23-1rkoaiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C81%2C4928%2C3194&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Taliban militants and Afghan civilians celebrate the signing of a peace deal with the United States on March 2.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/afghan-taliban-militants-and-villagers-attend-a-gathering-news-photo/1204647996?adppopup=true">Noorullah Shirzada/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article was published on Dec. 8, 2020.</em></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373401/original/file-20201207-13-1nz93x4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373401/original/file-20201207-13-1nz93x4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373401/original/file-20201207-13-1nz93x4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373401/original/file-20201207-13-1nz93x4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373401/original/file-20201207-13-1nz93x4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373401/original/file-20201207-13-1nz93x4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373401/original/file-20201207-13-1nz93x4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>The Taliban militants of Afghanistan have <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/exclusive-taliban-s-expanding-financial-power-could-make-it-impervious-to-pressure-secret-nato-report-warns/30842570.html">grown richer and more powerful</a> since their fundamentalist Islamic regime was toppled by U.S. forces in 2001. </p>
<p>In the fiscal year that ended in March 2020, the Taliban reportedly brought in US$1.6 billion, according to Mullah Yaqoob, son of the late Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who revealed the Taliban’s income sources in a confidential report commissioned by NATO and later obtained by <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/exclusive-taliban-s-expanding-financial-power-could-make-it-impervious-to-pressure-secret-nato-report-warns/30842570.html">Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty</a>.</p>
<p>In comparison, the Afghan government brought in <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/22/c_138726699.htm">$5.55 billion</a> during the same period.</p>
<h2>Who funds the Taliban?</h2>
<p>I study the Taliban’s finances as an <a href="https://www.unomaha.edu/international-studies-and-programs/center-for-afghanistan-studies/about-us/hanif-sufizada.php">economic policy analyst at the Center for Afghanistan Studies</a>. Here’s where their money comes from. </p>
<h2>1. Drugs – $416 million</h2>
<p>Afghanistan accounted for approximately 84% of global opium production over the five years ending in 2020, according to the <a href="https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf">United Nation’s World Drug Report 2020</a>. </p>
<p>Much of those illicit drug profits go to the Taliban, which <a href="https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2019_481.pdf">manage opium</a> in areas under their control. The group imposes a 10% tax on every link in the drug production chain, according to a 2008 report from the <a href="https://www.ecoi.net/en/file/local/1064797/1002_1229784757_counter-narcotics-areu.pdf">Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit</a>, an independent research organization in Kabul. That includes the Afghan farmers who <a href="https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/taliban_opium_1.pdf">cultivate poppy</a>, the main ingredient in opium, the labs that convert it into a drug and the traders who move the final product out of country.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men in a very green field." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373397/original/file-20201207-23-3rzian.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373397/original/file-20201207-23-3rzian.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373397/original/file-20201207-23-3rzian.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373397/original/file-20201207-23-3rzian.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373397/original/file-20201207-23-3rzian.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373397/original/file-20201207-23-3rzian.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373397/original/file-20201207-23-3rzian.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Afghan farmers harvest opium sap from a poppy field in the Darra-i-Nur District of Nangarhar province May 10.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/farmers-harvest-opium-sap-from-a-poppy-field-in-the-darra-i-news-photo/1212451272?adppopup=true">Noorullah Shirzada/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Mining – $400 million to $464 million</h2>
<p>Mining <a href="https://momp.gov.af/sites/default/files/2019-06/02%20-%20MoMP%20Roadmap%20%2B%20Reform%20Strategy_reduce_0.pdf">iron ore, marble, copper, gold, zinc and other metals and rare-earth minerals</a> in mountainous Afghanistan is an <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/22/taliban-afghanistan-mining-peace-talks/">increasingly lucrative business for the Taliban</a>. Both small-scale mineral-extraction operations and big <a href="https://mines.pajhwok.com/introduction-mining-companies-workingafghanistan">Afghan mining companies</a> pay Taliban militants to allow them to keep their businesses running. Those who don’t pay <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2020_nhdr_afganistan_en.pdf">have faced death threats</a>.</p>
<p>According to the Taliban’s Stones and Mines Commission, or Da Dabaro Comisyoon, the group earns $400 million a year from mining. <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/exclusive-taliban-s-expanding-financial-power-could-make-it-impervious-to-pressure-secret-nato-report-warns/30842570.html">NATO estimates that figure higher, at $464 million</a> – up from just $35 million in 2016. </p>
<h2>3. Extortion and taxes – $160 million</h2>
<p>Like a government, the Taliban tax people and industries in the <a href="https://8am.af/ghazni-has-become-the-talibans-tax-area/">growing swath of Afghanistan under their control</a>. They even issue official receipts of tax payment.</p>
<p>“Taxed” industries include mining operations, media, <a href="https://tolonews.com/node/12610">telecommunications</a> and development projects funded by international aid. <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/23/taliban-coal-tax-highway-toll-afghanistan/">Drivers</a> are also charged for using highways in Taliban-controlled regions, and shopkeepers pay the Taliban for the right to do business. </p>
<p>The group also imposes a traditional Islamic form of taxation called “ushr” – which is a 10% tax on a farmer’s harvest – and “zakat,” a 2.5% wealth tax. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/exclusive-taliban-s-expanding-financial-power-could-make-it-impervious-to-pressure-secret-nato-report-warns/30842570.html">Mullah Yaqoob</a>, tax revenues – which may also be considered extortion – bring in around <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/23/taliban-coal-tax-highway-toll-afghanistan/">$160 million annually</a>. </p>
<p>Since some of those taxed are poppy growers, there could be some financial overlap between tax revenue and drug revenue.</p>
<h2>4. Charitable donations – $240 million</h2>
<p>The Taliban receive covert <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/how-the-taliban-get-their-money/a-18995315">financial contributions</a> from private donors and international institutions across the globe. </p>
<p>Many Taliban donations are from <a href="https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2019_481.pdf">charities and private trusts located in Persian Gulf countries</a>, a region historically sympathetic to the group’s religious insurgency. Those donations add up to about $150 million to $200 million each year, according to the <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124821049">Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies</a>. These charities are on the <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/terrorist-illicit-finance/Pages/protecting-charities_execorder_13224-a.aspx">U.S. Treasury Department’s list of groups that finance terrorism</a>. </p>
<p>Private citizens from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/world/asia/saudi-arabia-afghanistan.html">Saudi Arabia</a>, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations also help finance the Taliban, contributing another $60 million annually to the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani Network, according to American counterterrorism agencies. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373402/original/file-20201207-17-14cogys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Soldiers walk in front of burnt out ruins." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373402/original/file-20201207-17-14cogys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373402/original/file-20201207-17-14cogys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373402/original/file-20201207-17-14cogys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373402/original/file-20201207-17-14cogys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373402/original/file-20201207-17-14cogys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373402/original/file-20201207-17-14cogys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373402/original/file-20201207-17-14cogys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Taliban’s insurgency has destabilized Afghanistan for nearly 20 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/taliban-city-soldiers?agreements=pa:91269&family=editorial&phrase=taliban%20city%20soldiers&sort=newest#license">Norrullah Shirzada/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>5. Exports – $240 million</h2>
<p>In part to launder illicit money, the Taliban import and export various everyday consumer goods, according to the <a href="https://undocs.org/en/S/2012/683">United Nations Security Council</a>. Known business affiliates include the multinational <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/sanctions/1988/materials/summaries/individual/malik-noorzai">Noorzai Brothers Limited</a>, which imports auto parts and <a href="https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2019_481.pdf">sells reassembled vehicles and spare automobile parts</a>.</p>
<p>The Taliban’s net income from exports is thought to be around $240 million a year. This figure includes the export of poppy and <a href="https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/2017-05/sr404-industrial-scale-looting-of-afghanistan-s-mineral-resources.pdf">looted minerals</a>, so there may be financial overlap with drug revenue and mining revenue.</p>
<h2>6. Real estate – $80 million</h2>
<p>The Taliban own real estate in Afghanistan, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-united-nations-taliban-asia-pacific-af35125db20f2017fe7f06e625806965">Pakistan</a> and potentially other countries, according to Mullah Yaqoob and the <a href="https://www.samaa.tv/news/2020/02/dead-taliban-chiefs-karachi-properties-up-for-auction/">Pakistani TV Channel SAMAA</a>. Yaqoob told NATO annual real estate revenue is around $80 million.</p>
<h2>7. Specific countries</h2>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46554097">BBC reporting</a>, a classified CIA report estimated in 2008 that the Taliban had received $106 million from foreign sources, in particular from the Gulf states.</p>
<p>Today, the governments of <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/596933077/top-u-s-commander-in-afghanistan-accuses-russia-of-aiding-taliban">Russia</a>, <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/exclusive-taliban-s-expanding-financial-power-could-make-it-impervious-to-pressure-secret-nato-report-warns/30842570.html">Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia</a> are all believed to bankroll the Taliban, according to numerous U.S. and international sources. Experts say these funds could amount to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46554097">as much as $500 million a year</a>, but it is difficult to put an exact figure on this income stream. </p>
<h2>Who funds the Afghan government?</h2>
<p>For nearly 20 years, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/world/asia/for-the-taliban-modest-success-in-battle-but-opium-trade-and-illicit-businesses-boom.html">Taliban’s great wealth</a> has financed <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-longest-war-a-visual-history-of-18-years-in-afghanistan-11583010024">mayhem, destruction and death</a> in Afghanistan. To battle its insurgency, the Afghan government also spends heavily on war, often at the expense of basic public services and economic development.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>A peace agreement in Afghanistan would allow the government to redirect its scarce resources. The government might also see substantial new revenue flow in from legal sectors now dominated by the Taliban, <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-us-and-taliban-sign-accord-afghanistan-must-prepare-for-peace-132303">such as mining</a>. </p>
<p>Stability is additionally expected to attract foreign investment in the country, helping the government end its dependence on donors like the <a href="https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2019-10-30qr-section3-funding.pdf">United States</a> and the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_20_2193">European Union</a>.</p>
<p>There are many reasons to root for peace in war-scarred Afghanistan. Its financial health is one of them.</p>
<p><em>This article was published on Dec. 8, 2020. Hanif Sufizada recently wrote for The Conversation about <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-afghan-american-scholar-describes-his-fear-filled-journey-from-the-chaos-at-kabul-airport-to-a-plane-bound-for-home-in-the-us-166387">his experience fleeing Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147411/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hanif Sufizada does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Because the Taliban’s insurgency is so well financed, the Afghan government must spend enormous sums on war, too. A peace accord would free up funds for basic services, economic development and more.Hanif Sufizada, Education and Outreach Program Coordinator, University of Nebraska OmahaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1066952018-11-11T21:00:34Z2018-11-11T21:00:34ZThe Tony Clement scandal shows all texting is sexting<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244919/original/file-20181111-116832-t9ytp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">MP Tony Clement has resigned from the Conservative caucus after admitting to sending "intimate" photos to women he met online.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What does the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/clement-letter-1.4897388">sexting scandal involving Tony Clement</a> — the MP who sent “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/clement-caucus-1.4898361">intimate” photos of himself to women he met online</a> — tell us, if not that all texting is sexting? Whenever we go online, use our phones, surf the net or click on a link, we are involved with our deepest desires, fears or enjoyment. </p>
<p>Because of this deep involvement with our desires, beneath the shiny surface of apps and the “like” buttons of Instagram and Facebook, there exists what the philosopher Slavoj Žižek calls the “obscene underside,” a murky world where we fall in love with our computers (as in the film <a href="https://www.cmstudies.org/page/CJ_after571_FlisBurn?"><em>Her</em></a>) and allow conglomerates to tell us what books to read and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/facebook-dating-1.4824745">who to date</a>. </p>
<p>But this paradise, where all our desires are at our fingertips, can go horribly awry. The wrong click or swipe suddenly lands us in all kinds of trouble. Trouble that can seem small — who remembers <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rickrolling">rickrolling</a>? — or big, as the news about Clement demonstrates.</p>
<p>A psychoanalytic way of thinking about online culture can help us understand why the former Conservative MP is not the first politician or public figure caught behaving badly with their smartphone, nor will he be the last. We all remember <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/07/anthony-weiner-accused-of-having-more-cybersex.html">Anthony Weiner, the New York state politician who kept sending “dick pics” to women he met online.</a></p>
<h2>Aggressively ‘liking’ online</h2>
<p>So, what do I mean by a psychoanalytic way of thinking about this?</p>
<p>A few hours after Clement resigned from the Conservative caucus, <a href="http://www.tonyclement.ca/letter-to-the-constituents-of-parry-sound-muskoka/">he posted a letter admitting to various acts of infidelity</a>. At first glance, there appear to be two different issues at play. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244713/original/file-20181109-116835-1f8b40b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244713/original/file-20181109-116835-1f8b40b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244713/original/file-20181109-116835-1f8b40b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244713/original/file-20181109-116835-1f8b40b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244713/original/file-20181109-116835-1f8b40b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244713/original/file-20181109-116835-1f8b40b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244713/original/file-20181109-116835-1f8b40b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A picture from Tony Clement’s Instagram feed.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>First, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/clement-letter-1.4897388">Clement allegedly exchanged or sent explicit pictures (and a video) to women on a number of occasions</a>. This resulted in <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/clement-caucus-1.4898361">at least two</a> potential extortion attempts that came through social media. </p>
<p>Second, when this news broke, some women who knew him through <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-the-wednesday-edition-1.4895585/canadian-women-comment-on-tony-clement-s-aggressive-instagram-behaviour-1.4896383">social media</a> said on Twitter that they were not surprised by these allegations. He was known to them, as Canadian journalist Kim Fox, an editor at <em>the Philadelphia Inquirer</em> discussed on CBC Radio’s <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-the-wednesday-edition-1.4895585/canadian-women-comment-on-tony-clement-s-aggressive-instagram-behaviour-1.4896383?fbclid=IwAR18pIKGr4xsLGtxw6GwOBRUXNkcGjWCOSejdrbLvziQJLEdLJj7c5ACvfM"><em>As It Happens</em></a>. Fox said he was known for “aggressive” liking of women’s posts on Instagram, especially on selfies.</p>
<p>Clement’s behaviour, Fox said, kept Instagram from being a safe space for women.</p>
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<h2>‘Digital fantasy’</h2>
<p>I teach a graduate course called “Digital Fantasy,” where we examine online culture from a psychoanalytic perspective, drawing on the work of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Žižek, and also critics like Angela Nagle (author of <a href="http://www.zero-books.net/books/kill-all-normies"><em>Kill All Normies</em></a>) and Jodi Dean (<a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Blog+Theory:+Feedback+and+Capture+in+the+Circuits+of+Drive-p-9780745649696"><em>Blog Theory</em></a>). </p>
<p>Freud tells us that we often do things for reasons we do not understand — the unconscious. Lacan argues that those closest to us — our neighbours — can provoke the greatest anxiety, and the same is true online, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Žižek emphasizes how our search for enjoyment paradoxically results in <em>less</em> enjoyment, and who hasn’t felt that after an hour going down a YouTube rabbit hole? Nagle examines how online culture fosters extreme viewpoints: “millenial snowflakes,” “alt-right dweebs,” and the rise of figures like Donald Trump. Dean points out how that the longer we spend online the more we think <em>I could be doing something more useful</em>, as if we would otherwise be reading a Russian novel. </p>
<p>In general, a psychoanalytic approach teaches us that the problem with online culture isn’t that now we can see, read or learn about anything, but that such plenitude is never enough. </p>
<p>Because I am on Instagram myself, and roughly the same age group as Clement, I checked in with some of my female students to ask: Is this a thing? Aggressive liking? </p>
<p>Well, you can just block someone, one student said. If it’s someone you know, then no problem, added another. It’s kind of how you get someone’s attention, the first pointed out. This is not to say someone may not feel creeped out with a deluge of likes. </p>
<p>Of course <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ruthless-pursuit-of-online-likes-gives-you-nothing-100862">we post selfies and other pictures on the socials for that attention </a>. And the technology contributes, I would argue, to this obsessive behaviour — especially on Instagram, where to like something, you press a heart. </p>
<p>So if your student or your boss puts a picture up, you have to think about loving them just a little, even if you just think their cat is cute.</p>
<h2>All texting is sexting</h2>
<p>This takes us back to my original thesis: all texting is sexting. </p>
<p>Think of where you keep your phone — on your body, sometimes in your pocket next to your genitals, in your purse with your wallet. You put it next to you when you go to sleep and it’s the first thing you touch when you wake up — perhaps even before you talk to your partner. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244716/original/file-20181109-116850-1usbcr9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244716/original/file-20181109-116850-1usbcr9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244716/original/file-20181109-116850-1usbcr9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244716/original/file-20181109-116850-1usbcr9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244716/original/file-20181109-116850-1usbcr9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244716/original/file-20181109-116850-1usbcr9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244716/original/file-20181109-116850-1usbcr9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Our phones and use of apps are intimate things. Here’s a picture from Tony Clement’s Instagram feed.</span>
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</figure>
<p>The structure, the technology of social media, of the internet, of digital devices — they all lead us to blur the boundaries of public and private. Who has not had that frisson with someone else, when sitting with their partner, at a boring dinner party or watching your child skate, that distraction of texting a friend? </p>
<p>Think, even, of the generic word we have for this technology: digital. What a few years ago might have seemed like an anodyne description, now in the era of swiping right and pinching photos, has come to seem downright carnal. </p>
<h2>‘The obscene underside’</h2>
<p>What Clement’s debacle tells us is that Žižek’s “obscene underside” of the internet is not simply the trolls and other basement-dwelling knuckle-draggers, with their racist rants and misogynistic comments on blogs. </p>
<p>This “obscenity” is not just “dick pics” or “aggressive liking.” Rather, it points to a fundamental ambiguity in communication that has been exacerbated with online and social media. </p>
<p>Do I want my pictures to be looked at, or am I worried about surveillance? I want you to “like” me … but not too much.</p>
<p>I am not saying we need more rules, what used to be called “netiquette” for online behaviour. Don’t like more than three or four pictures, and so forth. </p>
<p>If we don’t need more rules, what do we need?</p>
<p>We should accept that there’s no getting around the messy, sexy, possibilities of miscommunication. We posses the desire to flirt, to engage. But this is not an invitation to harass each other.</p>
<p>Sexting did not begin with the internet. What people who proclaim the superiority of literature over texting forget is that the novel began as an “espistolary” form, as a collection of letters. And if you want to see some really sexy texts, read <em><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49540.Les_Liaisons_dangereuses">Les Liaisons dangereuses</a></em> (<em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301479/dangerous-liaisons-by-pierre-choderlos-de-laclos/9780140449570/">Dangerous Liasons</a></em>), a French novel of letters by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos and a <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301479/dangerous-liaisons-by-pierre-choderlos-de-laclos/9780140449570/">“damning portrayal of a decadent society.”</a> First published in 1782, it could give Tony Clement a few lessons.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106695/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clint Burnham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Former Conservative MP Tony Clement, dropped from caucus over a public sexting scandal raises questions for all of us about what is too much in our ‘casual’ daily online exchanges.Clint Burnham, Professor and Chair of Graduate Program, Department of English, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/768582017-08-15T06:32:40Z2017-08-15T06:32:40ZGovernors gone wild: Mexico faces a “lost generation” of corrupt leaders<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182010/original/file-20170814-27094-1jlfjx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Deep-set institutional corruption has led to a generation of misbehaving governors.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/photo-1242251/">Pixabay</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the colonial period, the Spanish Americas were governed under the 14th-century <a href="https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/134393.pdf">formula</a>, “<em>Obedézcase, pero no se cumpla</em>”: obey, but do not comply. This double legal standard acknowledged the king’s authority while preventing royal law from encroaching upon local customs and guild privileges. </p>
<p>The affirmative command (obey) came with a built-in negation (do not comply), undermining the rule of law. For Spanish colonies like Mexico, that meant three centuries of whimsically applied justice, which allowed corruption to flourish. Historically speaking, then, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=fDKdAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">institutionalised public malfiesance</a> is pretty old news in Mexico. </p>
<p>And yet, by any measure, graft in Mexico has reached stunning new highs this year. Over the past five months, three state governors have been arrested abroad while trying to escape justice, and fully eleven of the country’s 32 total governors are currently under investigation or fighting prosecution for corruption.</p>
<p>Today, nearly 90% of Mexicans see the state and federal government as deeply corrupt, according to <a href="http://www.beta.inegi.org.mx/proyectos/enchogares/regulares/encig/2015/">the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography</a>. Citizens regard corruption as the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/alternative-leadership-in-fighting-corruption-the-mexican-case/">second most important problem</a> facing the country, after crime and violence.</p>
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<h2>Runaway governors</h2>
<p>Among the country’s many incriminated governors is Roberto Borge, whose state, Quintana Roo, is home to the tourist meccas of Cancun and Tulum. </p>
<p>In June, he was <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2017/06/05/mexico/1496640277_603982.html">apprehended in Panama</a> after fleeing accusations of, among other crimes, <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/02/hoteles-despojados-tulum/">using thugs</a> to drive people off beachfront hotels and homes after court officers connected to his network had seized the properties from their owners. </p>
<p>The August 2016 incidents <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/world/americas/mexico-tulum-corruption-evictions.html?_r=0">made world headlines</a>, spooking international tourists already uneasy about Mexico’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-mexico-actually-the-worlds-second-most-murderous-nation-77897">homicide epidemic</a>.</p>
<p>Borge was the third rogue governor rounded up in 2017. In April, after five years on the run, Tomás Yarrington, who lead the Gulf coast state of Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2005, was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tom-s-yarrington-fugitive-mexican-governor-tamaulipas-caught-italy-police-florence-corruption-a7676651.html">arrested</a> in Italy in a joint operation by Interpol and the Mexican police. </p>
<p>He stands <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2017/04/10/mexico/1491853848_822804.html">accused</a> of taking millions in bribes from both the Gulf and the Zeta cartels, two of the most vicious criminal organisations that have <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">terrorised Mexico for the past decade</a>.</p>
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<p>Six days after Yarrington’s capture, former Veracruz governor Javier Duarte (2010-2016) was <a href="http://www.proceso.com.mx/482429/pgr-detiene-al-exgobernador-javier-duarte">tracked down</a> in Guatemala after months on the lam. He allegedly stole almost <a href="http://www.sinembargo.mx/04-11-2016/3111579">US$3 billion</a>, bankrupting his home state in the process. </p>
<p>An investigation by the newspaper <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/2016/06/las-empresas-fantasma-en-veracruz-asi-desaparecio-el-gobierno-645-mdp/">Animal Político</a> found that US$35 million destined for social programmes was paid instead to phantom companies. The Veracruz government has also accused Duarte of <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/01/yunes-veracruz-falsas-quimioterapias/">diverting health funds</a> meant to pay for chemotherapy for young people with cancer. Rather than receive the medication Avastin, children were dispensed <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/estados/2017/01/18/medicamento-clonado-en-veracruz-no-es-quimio-roche">distilled water</a>.</p>
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<p>Among Duarte’s <a href="http://www.milenio.com/policia/casas_de_javier_duarte-detenido-guatemala-corrupcion-cateos-pgr-noticias-milenio_0_939506126.html">illicit gains</a> seized by the Mexican government are apartments, luxury ranches, dozens of bank accounts (in Mexico and abroad) and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38207924">works of art</a> by Joan Miró, Rufino Tamayo and Fernando Botero, among others.</p>
<p>His family had no regrets about their ill-begotten wealth. In a notebook believed to belong to Duarte’s wife, Karime Macías, the phrase, “Yes, I deserve abundance” appears no fewer than <a href="http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/articulo/si-merezco-abundancia-escribia-karime-macias-esposa-de-duarte-en-sus-diarios">45 times</a>.</p>
<h2>Power (back) to the people</h2>
<p>The exploits of Mexico’s fugitive governors, which alternately entertained and appalled Mexicans for most of this spring, were a blow to Mexico’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-many-mexicans-this-government-spying-scandal-feels-eerily-familiar-79981">scandal-plagued</a> president, Enrique Peña Nieto. </p>
<p>Duarte was close to the president, who once <a href="https://www.debate.com.mx/politica/Esto-opinaba-Pena-Nieto-de-Duarte-20170416-0025.html">praised him</a> for his honesty, and all three runaway governors are affiliated with his ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). In 2012, then-candidate Peña Nieto claimed that the party was renewing its ranks with “new politicians who are doing things differently”, naming Borge and Duarte specifically.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Mexico’s president extolling a ‘new generation of governors’.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Five years later, political analysts in Mexico are now considering the current political class a <a href="http://www.infobae.com/america/mexico/2017/04/22/mexico-16-ex-gobernadores-investigados-por-corrupcion-y-la-pregunta-por-la-ruta-del-dinero/">lost generation</a> of public servants. </p>
<p>The president (who has since “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2VbvikdxMg">forgotten</a>” praising Duarte and his ilk), <a href="http://www.proceso.com.mx/482599/capturas-duarte-yarrington-mensaje-contra-la-impunidad-pena">touted</a> his arrest and that of Yarrington as a “firm message” that corrupt public officials will have to “answer for their actions”. </p>
<p>His administration says it aims to create a <a href="http://www.senado.gob.mx/comisiones/anticorrupcion/docs/corrupcion/MMH.pdf">national anti-corruption system</a> that would, at least on paper, give the federal government ample tools to combat corruption. But the <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/nacion/politica/2017/07/12/acusan-senado-de-incumplir-con-nombramiento-de-fiscal">Senate</a>, which is dominated by PRI and by its main opposition, the National Action Party (PAN), has for years failed to appoint an anti-corruption prosecutor. </p>
<p>In any case, a <a href="http://bibliodigitalibd.senado.gob.mx/handle/123456789/3506">study</a> by a Senate think tank now shows that scandal-weary citizens are already distrustful of the government’s proposed anti-corruption efforts, even before they’ve launched.</p>
<p>The legislature’s failure to act, coupled with the administration’s recent appointment of the PRI senator Raúl Cervantes Andrade as attorney general, has triggered national alarm about nepotism and profiteering.</p>
<p>New <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/1_240217.pdf">constitutional rules</a> mandated the president to appoint an <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/nacion/seguridad/2016/11/29/enterate-que-es-la-fiscalia-general-de-la-republica">independent attorney general</a> for a nine-year term. But Cervantes is a close ally of Peña Nieto, and as senate president he helped the president <a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2016/11/06/1126535">secure major legislative victories</a>.</p>
<p>Critics fear his term will amount to a decade of impunity for Peña Nieto, Duarte, Yarrington and other corrupt Mexican leaders.</p>
<h2>The lost transition</h2>
<p>The PRI, which ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century, has long been tainted by corruption. For 71 years the party used it as an instrument to <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=bGf12wNht6wC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=transa&f=false">dominate Mexico’s technically democratic electoral system</a>, distributing wealth and power among its loyal ranks.</p>
<p>When the PAN’s Vicente Fox was elected as the first non-PRI president, in 2000, Mexicans hoped a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/815359.stm">new era</a> had begun. Shortly after he took office, President Fox appeared in a series of TV spots claiming that the time to “clean the government of corruption” had arrived.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">President Fox promised to root out corruption. Instead, it mutated.</span></figcaption>
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<p>But both Mexicans and their newly elected government soon learned how deeply institutionalised corruption was in Mexico. In May 2001, Fox’s secretary of foreign affairs, Jorge G. Castañeda, confessed to the Spanish newspaper <a href="https://elpais.com/diario/2001/05/11/internacional/989532015_850215.html">El País</a> that the democratic transition was proving harder than he and the president had foreseen. </p>
<p>“The most damaging legacy of PRI’s authoritarianism is not political repression but corruption”, Castañeda said in the May 2001 article.</p>
<p>Rather than end corruption, Fox’s triumph changed it in unexpected ways. </p>
<p>As the public intellectual Jorge Carpizo once acknowledged, appointing governors was one of a PRI president’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?redir_esc=y&id=WyKyD7on22QC&q=gobernadores#v=onepage&q=designaci%C3%B3n%20de%20los%20gobernadores&f=false">unwritten constitutional powers</a>. During the party’s uninterrupted seven-decade reign, just a handful of non-PRI governors <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Institutional-Revolutionary-Party">ever won state election</a> (and only starting in the 1990s), and governors were expected to be subservient to the president. </p>
<p>Once the PRI lost power in 2000, state leaders no longer owed loyalty to the president. With limited federal oversight, governors – whose powers include <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Q7fCyi5u3nIC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=governors+power+mexico&source=bl&ots=8bzuMGpj03&sig=ueIY8mRacr2ikDgpQ1BKsJBGQqc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPpKfOldbVAhUEzbwKHZkkBYMQ6AEIWDAJ#v=onepage&q=contents&f=false">controlling</a> state legislatures, auditors and prosecutors – enjoyed unchecked power over federal funds allocated to their states. Many have since ruled with high impunity.</p>
<p>Castañeda <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Transici%C3%B3n.html?id=1kROAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">claims</a> that he saw this coming, and advised Fox to orchestrate a clean break with the PRI, prosecuting corrupt PRI officials.</p>
<p>But the president, who needed the PRI’s votes in Congress to implement his agenda, rejected this idea, calling his foreign secretary “crazy” and a “<em>cabrón</em>” (dumbass). With this hearty dismissal went Mexico’s chance at a complete transition into democracy and the rule of law.</p>
<p>The generation of governors that emerged has been called the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/world/americas/in-mexico-mounting-misdeeds-but-governors-escape-justice.html">most corrupt in Mexican history</a>.</p>
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<h2>From the new PRI?</h2>
<p>In 2012, Mexicans voted PRI into office again, putting the future of accountability for such corruption in the hands of the party that spawned it. The odds of federal action seem bleak.</p>
<p>Back during the colonial period, people who were <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=EVwBDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=visitador+corruption&source=bl&ots=ky5Zyvxezj&sig=uKwCUm8abEIHMdI-qsXYneLrejg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjikILTwNbVAhVFurwKHYUcA1sQ6AEIKDAB#v=onepage&q=contents&f=false">victims</a> of abuses (<em>abusos</em>), bribery (<em>cohecho</em>) and other forms of corruption (<em>mala administración</em>) could file a complaint against public officials, and the king would send an <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=kHFIDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA104&lpg=PA104&dq=visitador+colonial+corrupcion&source=bl&ots=4Sygw2TaQE&sig=YnC3VZOAxeWn4LQQULrbnkYghT4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidva_9v9bVAhWJXbwKHV4XBawQ6AEINjAC#v=onepage&q=visita&f=false">investigator</a> to check things out. If appropriate, the king’s envoy could suspend the investigated official and give out preliminary punishments for his misdeeds.</p>
<p>Today it’s civil society that’s playing the investigator role. In modern Mexico, stronger <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LFTAIP_270117.pdf">transparency laws</a> and a freer media are helping citizens and watchdog groups uncover and, if not end, then at least turn corruption incidents into major public scandals.</p>
<p>In June, activists and journalists revealed that the Peña Nieto administration had been <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-many-mexicans-this-government-spying-scandal-feels-eerily-familiar-79981">spying on its political enemies via their cellphones</a>.</p>
<p>Even Mexican youngsters are old enough to be fed up. Last spring, ten-year old Ángel Jacinto Toh Nun of Quintana Roo <a href="http://www.telemundo.com/noticias/2017/04/28/discurso-de-nino-diputados-contra-la-corrupcion-recibe-aplausos-en-mexico">took the stage</a> during the annual “Children’s Parliament” to denounce corruption, berating politicians for “doing everything to conserve their privileges, without caring about the misery Mexicans are going through”.</p>
<p>“You, members of Congress”, he thundered, “what are you doing to put Roberto Borge behind bars? Are you afraid, or did they [just] find your price?”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Even the youngest Mexicans are speaking out against corruption.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the current climate, such questions, once posed, aren’t likely to fade into silence. Sooner or later, the government will be compelled to answer, if only at the ballot box: Mexico’s next general election is less than a year away.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Three Mexican governors have been arrested in 2017 abroad after fleeing justice, and nearly 90% of the country’s citizens see the government as deeply corrupt.Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/678912016-10-28T18:02:28Z2016-10-28T18:02:28ZHow to get the most candy on Halloween (without resorting to extortion)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143690/original/image-20161028-15821-628yv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Seems those sharp fangs worked.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Trick or treat via www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx?Id=7300">Halloween</a> is here, the night every year when children dress up in costumes and go “<a href="http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ985578">trick or treating</a>.” </p>
<p>On the surface, that activity appears to be a relatively benign one. What could be more innocent than cute youngsters collecting sweets?</p>
<p>Halloween, however, is actually one of our only <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/10/30/whats-the-point-of-trick-or-treating/let-halloween-be-the-weird-holiday-that-it-is">holidays based on extortion</a>. When children scream “<a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trick%20or%20treat">trick or treat</a>,” they are essentially demanding candy in exchange for not doing a prank or something else that is nasty.</p>
<p>Some children on Halloween <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/the-acquisition-of-routines-in-child-language/1FEFAF13976D9B8ED7DB0819E92D9A31">are learning how to ask strangers for candy</a>. Learning to interact politely with strangers is a valuable lesson. Other costumed kids, however, are figuring out how to shake down people for sweets and that threats of mischief are sometimes effective ways to get what you want.</p>
<p>Is there a better way than extorting people with tricks to get more treats? </p>
<p>A number of years ago when my children were young, I ran a simple, economic experiment to find out. We wanted to discover a way to <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2012/10/31/life/freakonomics-radio/maximizing-your-halloween-candy-haul">maximize the amount of candy</a> they could collect without threatening adults. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143731/original/image-20161028-15793-1am7x0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143731/original/image-20161028-15793-1am7x0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143731/original/image-20161028-15793-1am7x0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143731/original/image-20161028-15793-1am7x0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143731/original/image-20161028-15793-1am7x0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143731/original/image-20161028-15793-1am7x0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143731/original/image-20161028-15793-1am7x0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Want more candy? Consult an economist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Candy viewing via www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The experiment</h2>
<p>The experiment was important to my children because I tried to never buy them candy. Thus their primary source of candy was this one holiday. If they got a large enough haul at Halloween, they would have enough candy to last till the following one.</p>
<p>We lived in a small Ohio town that was perfect for experimenting. The town was divided into three neighborhoods separated by large and busy main roads. The north neighborhood had mansions and millionaires. The central neighborhood was middle-class. The south neighborhood, where we lived, was the poorer part of town.</p>
<p>What made the town great for experimenting was that it was possible to walk to all the different sections in a single night if you were interested in answering the question, “Where do you go to get the most candy?” By visiting all the neighborhoods in one evening, variables like weather, economic conditions and the particular day of the week were all taken into account.</p>
<p>One year, I was able to convince my children to test all three neighborhoods. At first I tried to persuade them that finding out the answer was important for understanding where in future years they could collect <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/29/trick-or-treat-how-to-maximize-halloween-haul.html">the maximum amount of candy</a>. Even as children of an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcMxc7kEkx_0HCkI_Dxo7ow">economist</a>, they were unimpressed by this argument. I ended up promising to buy them enough candy to make up any shortfall if they went along with dad’s wild idea.</p>
<h2>The results</h2>
<p>The results of the experiment were pretty clear. </p>
<p>The rich homes offered the largest and nicest pieces of candy. However, there were two problems with ringing doorbells in the wealthy part of town. Relatively few people were home, which meant few places to ask for treats. Additionally, the distance between houses giving out candy was quite large. This meant it took a long time to collect any meaningful amount of candy. Since the rich part of town was clearly a bust, we all agreed to try a different neighborhood.</p>
<p>The poorer part of town was also not great for collecting candy. My kids recognized some of their friends, but they felt the candies being given out were not the kind they really liked or wanted to eat for the rest of the year.</p>
<p>This is not surprising since Halloween candy is expensive. Americans are expected to spend US$2.7 billion on Halloween candy this year, according to the <a href="http:/www.candyusa.com/news/candy-makers-share-five-not-scary-facts-halloween/">National Confectioners Association</a>. This means the average U.S. household will be spending $22 on just candy alone. This is about twice as much as the typical <a href="http://www.bls.gov/cex/2015/combined/income.pdf">poor family spends on food per day</a>. Buying that much candy could cost a low-income household two days of meals!</p>
<p>The children loved the middle-class neighborhood. The distance between houses was not that large and many of the houses were giving out all of my children’s favorite candies. The haul was so much they had enough candy to easily last an entire year.</p>
<h2>Is there a better way?</h2>
<p>So, what lessons did I learn from our little economic experiment?</p>
<p>First, extortion isn’t necessary. Instead of letting kids shout “Trick or treat,” encourage children to say “Happy Halloween.” Removing the threat of a trick will likely make no difference to the amount of candy collected since it is an idle threat anyway for (most) children.</p>
<p>Then take the kids to the neighborhoods with the highest ratio of candy to steps between homes and have a great time. I just ask one small favor. If you or your children get a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/effects-of-eating-too-much-sugar-2014-3">bellyache or toothache from eating too much candy</a>, don’t blame me.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67891/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jay L. Zagorsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>‘Trick or treating’ typically involves demanding candy under the threat of mischief. But is there a better way to maximize your candy haul on Halloween?Jay L. Zagorsky, Senior Lecturer, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/602662016-08-22T10:17:02Z2016-08-22T10:17:02ZLatin America’s problem with violence is deeply entwined with inequality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134167/original/image-20160815-13033-11klhzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Flotsam mixes with the marginal São José community, overlooked by new-build apartment blocks in Brazil.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/daveiga/4632330905/in/photolist-84kUAe-8iuTun-5UnHFF-rbM8S3-rbLwoW-o8CNr-rtkPwD-foSizN-4AMfB3-foBDLg-825c2M-PJ1YJ-7XR2NK-rbMeSQ-734ety-aEtMgN-hU47X-e4Qjab-81WYWg-e4QadS-5RzmYA-7CCGBo-92DLfQ-92ABR6-ze5kx-dCyRP6-aHmkLr-aEv4tQ-92ACzP-9G1CS8-foC33Z-gVcRu-9yrepi-bTPTot-7CySwV-e4QqeJ-acYjN2-92ACSr-92DMrh-92ADQc-qwyqzt-92DLbJ-rbTXri-foSjbJ-foBEmi-e4JvRX-92ADMk-92DKdU-92DM9J-5DehLB">Fernando da Veiga Pessoa Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Latin America has traditionally been the world’s <a href="http://www.cepal.org/en/articles/2016-latin-america-worlds-most-unequal-region-heres-how-fix-it">most unequal region</a>, but it has recently shown signs of change. Through the 2000s, high international prices for exports have <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=41748.0">brought inequality levels down</a>. Governments have made more concerted efforts to tackle poverty, mounting schemes such as <a href="http://ftp.iza.org/pp49.pdf">conditional cash transfer</a>, where recipients must meet certain criteria to access welfare benefits. </p>
<p>But despite all of this, levels of inequality remain high – and all the while, <a href="http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2013/11/12/citizen-insecurity-thwarts-latin-america-s-development-says-undp.html">violence and insecurity have increased</a> across much of the region. </p>
<p>This comes in part from the growth of drug-related organised crime, as well as the <a href="http://www.cfr.org/transnational-crime/central-americas-violent-northern-triangle/p37286">youth gangs</a> that have proliferated in much of the region – but extreme inequality is a big part of the problem too.</p>
<p>The nature of violence and insecurity in Latin America reflects how unevenly the region has <a href="http://ftp.iza.org/dp7236.pdf">developed economically and socially</a> since the boom years of the 2000s. <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-really-behind-central-americas-sky-high-murder-rates-53468">Central American countries in particular</a> have the worst problem with gang violence in Latin America, and some of the highest murder rates in the world. Part of the reason is because – with the exception of Costa Rica – these countries have especially weak ineffective governments, which have had less success at tackling inequality than various of their South American neighbours. </p>
<p>This means that levels of inequality in Central America are relatively higher than the rest of Latin America. Again, this has opened up a space for crime, and Mexican and South American drug cartels alike have <a href="https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/drug-trafficking/mexico-central-america-and-the-caribbean.html">strengthened their footholds</a> in these especially precarious states.</p>
<p>Government initiatives to combat inequality and poverty, such as Venezuela’s <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/213">Plan Bolivar 2000</a>, have done little to make the region safer. Generally focusing on education, public health and vaccination programmes, they have principally targeted rural areas even though violence is increasingly an urban phenomenon. </p>
<p>To some extent that’s an understandable decision, since consumer demand as well as construction have created employment and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/11/latin-america-urbanisation-city-growth">bolstered development in poor urban areas</a>. Yet levels of inequality within cities have remained high. Gang activities usually occur in poor areas of cities, and although what economic progress there has been been has benefited the region’s larger urban centres, anti-poverty programmes have done little for marginal urban areas. </p>
<p>All the while, increasing incomes in poor areas, and the subsequent opening of small businesses, have exacerbated levels of extortion. This leaves many areas of major cities such as <a href="http://perureports.com/2016/05/17/peru-moves-police-interior-battle-lima-crime-wave/">Peru’s capital, Lima</a>, to be tormented by organised crime.</p>
<h2>From bad to worse</h2>
<p>The most notorious criminal groups at work are the maras, <a href="http://bit.ly/2bv57V2">youth gangs</a> started by young Central Americans displaced to Los Angeles by the civil wars of the 1980s. When those wars ended, the gangs <a href="http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/history-mara-salvatrucha-el-salvador">took their business back home</a> to countries such as El Salvador, where they operate to this day. Along with these groups, many other types of urban gangs <a href="http://www.wola.org/sites/default/files/downloadable/Citizen%20Security/2011/Tackling_Urban_Violence_in_Latin_America.pdf">have also cropped up</a> throughout the region.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134146/original/image-20160815-13035-482gih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134146/original/image-20160815-13035-482gih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134146/original/image-20160815-13035-482gih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134146/original/image-20160815-13035-482gih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134146/original/image-20160815-13035-482gih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134146/original/image-20160815-13035-482gih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134146/original/image-20160815-13035-482gih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">San Juan de Lurigancho district in Lima, Peru.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/7518030@N04/7157767087">KaMpEr flikr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Central America, as well as in countries such as Venezuela and Brazil, urban gangs often take the place of law enforcement. In theory, they offer a <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28429/1/Gangs_as_non-state_armed_groups_(LSERO).pdf">degree of protection</a> to local residents in return for extortion money or control over the sale of drugs in an area. This sort of alternative law enforcement is an effect of widespread <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/06/murder-map-latin-america-leads-world-key-cities-buck-deadly-trend">police absence</a> in poor urban areas. Indeed, when police do enter such areas they themselves are <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/insights/I0833en.pdf">frequently involved in violence and corruption</a>, meaning they are not welcome.</p>
<p>The state of the legal system only makes things worse. Residents of these areas are <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu-projects/drivers_urb_change/urb_society/pdf_violence_rights/gargarella_removed_from_people.pdf">generally are not able to access lawyers</a>. This means that they are not able to seek compensation through courts, which are, in any case, still often open to <a href="https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/14366/uploads">corruption</a>. Such weak state authority leaves a power vacuum in poor areas, which in turn allows violence and lawlessness to thrive. This in turn creates a space in which gangs can operate.</p>
<p>That violence has increased even as economies have thrived shows how deeply entwined violence and inequality are. Addressing these would involve a widespread reform of key institutions such as the police and court systems, but the sheer scale of the challenge <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTLAWJUSTINST/Resources/0609_latin_judicial_reform.pdf">should not be underestimated</a>. </p>
<p>If Central American economies remain stagnant, there is a risk that their still-high levels of inequality could start to rise again. That would drive down consumer spending and depress urban economies, offering urban gangs a perfect environment to recruit new members. As things stand today, the best we can hope for is that the security situation remains constant. At worst, with rates of inequality threatening to go up again, we can expect it to get worse in many areas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Pyper does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Money and resources in Latin America often don’t reach those who need them most – and criminal gangs are on hand to take advantage.Neil Pyper, Associate Head of School, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.