Stéphane Leman-Langlois – författare

In February 2021 the Canadian government published a considerably expanded list of domestic terrorist entities. While some, such as Blood and Honour, were already known, others – such as Atomwaffen Division, the Base, the Proud Boys, and the Russian Imperial Movement – emerged from the shadows. Until then many considered far-right groups in Canada a negligible phenomenon, at worst a local police matter.

The Great Right North charts the growth of these groups, illuminating how official and unofficial government attention generates the context in which they build their movements. The result of seven years of research – including social media scraping, analysis of print and video sources, and interviews with scores of leaders and adherents – it examines how far-right organizations operate, recruit, and finance their activities and explores why individuals choose to join. Breaking new ground by revealing the ideological underpinnings and fragmentation within these groups, the authors also highlight the role of digital platforms in their proliferation.

Most politicians have been quiet about the phenomenon of far-right extremism in Canada, insisting it is imported activism financed elsewhere. The Great Right North provides an essential primer – for journalists, those working in policy institutes and think tanks, and students and scholars – for understanding its vast and urgent homegrown challenges.

In February 2021 the Canadian government published a considerably expanded list of domestic terrorist entities. While some, such as Blood and Honour, were already known, others – such as Atomwaffen Division, the Base, the Proud Boys, and the Russian Imperial Movement – emerged from the shadows. Until then many considered far-right groups in Canada a negligible phenomenon, at worst a local police matter.

The Great Right North charts the growth of these groups, illuminating how official and unofficial government attention generates the context in which they build their movements. The result of seven years of research – including social media scraping, analysis of print and video sources, and interviews with scores of leaders and adherents – it examines how far-right organizations operate, recruit, and finance their activities and explores why individuals choose to join. Breaking new ground by revealing the ideological underpinnings and fragmentation within these groups, the authors also highlight the role of digital platforms in their proliferation.

Most politicians have been quiet about the phenomenon of far-right extremism in Canada, insisting it is imported activism financed elsewhere. The Great Right North provides an essential primer – for journalists, those working in policy institutes and think tanks, and students and scholars – for understanding its vast and urgent homegrown challenges.

This book is concerned with the concept of ''technocrime''. The term encompasses crimes committed on or with computers - the standard definition of cybercrime - but it goes well beyond this to convey the idea that technology enables an entirely new way of committing, combating and thinking about criminality, criminals, police, courts, victims and citizens. Technology offers, for example, not only new ways of combating crime, but also new ways to look for, unveil, and label crimes, and new ways to know, watch, prosecute and punish criminals.

Technocrime differs from books concerned more narrowly with cybercrime in taking an approach and understanding of the scope of technology''s impact on crime and crime control. It uncovers mechanisms by which behaviours become crimes or cease to be called crimes. It identifies a number of corporate, government and individual actors who are instrumental in this construction. And it looks at the beneficiaries of increased surveillance, control and protection as well as the targets of it. Chapters in the book cover specific technologies (e.g. the use of CCTV in various settings; computers, hackers and security experts; photo radar) but have a wider objective to provide a comparative perspective and some broader theoretical foundations for thinking about crime and technology than have existed hitherto.

This is a pioneering book which advances our understanding of the relationship between crime and technology, drawing upon the disciplines of criminology, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, surveillance studies and cultural studies.

The growth of technology allows us to imagine entirely new ways of committing, combating and thinking about criminality, criminals, police, courts, victims and citizens. Technology offers not only new tools for committing and fighting crime, but new ways to look for, unveil, label crimes and new ways to know, watch, prosecute and punish criminals. This book attempts to disentangle the realities, the myths, the politics, the theories and the practices of our new, technology-assisted, era of crime and policing.

Technocrime, policing and surveillance explores new areas of technocrime and technopolicing, such as credit card fraud, the use of DNA and fingerprint databases, the work of media in creating new crimes and new criminals, as well as the "proper" way of doing policing, and the everyday work of police investigators and intelligence officers, as seen through their own eyes. These chapters offer new avenues for studying technology, crime and control, through innovative social science methodologies.

This book builds on the work of Leman-Langlois’ last book Technocrime, and brings together fresh perspectives from eminent scholars to consider how our relationship with technology and institutions of social control are being reframed, with particular emphasis on policing and surveillance. Technocrime, policing and surveillance will be of interest to those studying criminal justice, policing and the sociology of surveillance as well as practitioners involved with the legal aspects of law enforcement technologies, , domestic security government departments and consumer advocacy groups.