The digital and legal divide: Silk Road, transnational online policing and Southern criminology

This chapter explores transnational online policing and the global digital divides that remain wedded to national governance theories, regulatory structures and surveillance practices, largely emanating from the Global North (Carrington et al., British Journal of Criminology, 56(1), 1–20, 2015). The bulk of the world’s digital infrastructure has been developed and is physically located in, or transmitted via, hubs owned by US corporations (Price, Monthly Review, 66(3), 43–53, 2014). This chapter demonstrates how the ensuing transnational ‘information feudalism’ (Drahos and Braithwaite, Information Feudalism. Earthscan Publications, 2002) also produces a form of transnational legal feudalism that reflects power disparities between other English-speaking nations, which are played out in distinct ways through US extraterritorial policing and online surveillance. The Silk Road cryptomarket reveals the importance of Southern Criminology in understanding the transnational implications of these developments.