Studies in Ethics Law and Technology

There should eventually be some articles of interest to SGOC members in this, although the first issue is all about human enhancement. You can add it to your RSS feeds. The first comment tells you how to enable an RSS feed for this blog too.

Glasgow gang levels match London

BBC article includes link to a report by the "Right-leaning" [their words] Centre for Social Justice. These are teenage gangs rather than Scottish McMafias.

A Tiny Staff Tracking People Across the Globe

It says that scholars send their students to this journal. It apparently researches migration patterns. Probably has implications for People smuggling and trafficking

Tax Scheme Blamed for Damage to Artefacts

Talk about serendipity! Lord Renfrew would be pleased to see this entry in the blog. He always felt that economic crime analysts paid too little attention to art and artefact smuggling. The theme of the article here is that the nature of the US tax system produces a particular system of looting of low value objects for donation to museums at a higher value to save tax payment. I think I understand it.
But it raises the same issues as the previous post. If you dont risk profile your legal measures, you can unwittingly invent a crime. [Discuss]
Its a serious final year exam paper we are writing this morning!

France said to sugest new controls for its banks

I was wondering when the French would get around to this. I dont think the Societe Generale disaster can be called organised crime, but it does demonstrate a failure of mechanisms of fraud prevention and opens another area for researchers, namely the relationship between crime and business and the consequences of the mechanisms now in place within the banking system to alert the authorities to "suspicious transactions". The state has coopted the banks in its search for "terrorists" and organised criminality, yet the banks' response remains one of box-ticking rather than cultural change.
But do we want a world where bankers are police officers? Sounds like a finals question...

Al Qaeda Commander Moved Freely in Pakistan

This article in the Washington Post raises questions related to the previous post about Venezuela. Our understanding of networks and their relations with states is very primitive. Equally our understanding of sub-state actors leaves a great deal to be desired. There are several PhDs to be carried out in these areas.

Chavez and FARC

Article that is part of a common genre: all opponents of the USA deal drugs. No real evidence, just a series of allegations by defectors and anonymous "diplomats". Nevertheless, this is a proper subject for research, as it raises issues about the relationship between organised crime, the state and "terrorists", insurgents and liberation movements.
Are liberation movements as likely to be penetrated by organised crime as state structures? How do the networks interact?
Does the fact that one group of border guards takes bribes from drug traffickers mean that the whole Venezuelan Army is corrupt?
Equally, if a local FARC commander facilitates drug smuggling does that imply connivance from the organisation as a whole?
These are legitimate questions to raise, but the evidence presented here doesn't really answer them. I suppose its fine for journalists to be used by propagandists, but can an investigative academic researcher provide a theoretical framework and a series of empirical tests against which these questions can be objectively explored? or does it always depend on who finances the research?

Child traffickers? What child-traffickers?

Child trafficking story of last week dissipates into thin air....allegedly!

Of course you have nothing to fear if you are innocent

End of a long saga? No, I suspect it will be the start of a new one. OLAF, the European anti-fraud office really doesnt like being criticised. So I won't!

The albatross hanging over Gazprom's fate

Continuing coverage by Moscow Times of Mogilevich, Gazprom and RosUkrEnergo. What's all this got to do with organised crime? Well, it provides glimpses into the murky world of silovki, oligarchs and crime groups in Russia, and also into the battle between oligarch groups in the Ukraine which link to the political parties and factions within them. Sadly, only glimpses, though.