This is the fourth posting from the MOOC Edx course on globalisation from the University of Texas at Austin.

Cybercrime is the ultimate crime of globalisation since it operates on the internet that has become the nervous system of the globalisation process itself. The internet has expanded faster than anyone's capacity to regulate it. It has evolved faster than our ability to construct safeguards against its abuse.

This is the democratic and equalising aspect of globalisation in action.

The large numbers of computers put online by the growing population of honest computer-literate people can be hijacked into serving the purposes of online users who construct botnets that can recruit thousands of computers around the world into a criminal network operation. The internet offers remarkable opportunities for individuals or small groups to mount massive electronic attacks against the websites and other electronic operations of nation-states, multinational corporations, or other powerful institutions located anywhere in the world.

Cybercrime represents the nightmare version of the global connectivity, it abolishes time and space and enables personal contact across great distances. Cybercrime makes possible the ultimate perversion of online intimacy.

http://youtu.be/I2D43YtfAgI