This article describes the recent developments in the nature of the phenomenon of contract killings by organized crime groups in the Netherlands. The crude and sloppy methods by hitmen of today can be explained in part by the inexperience of hitmen combined with the wide availability of heavy automatic firearms. However, the witnessed coarser methods of hitmen can also be attributed to the methods of the principals. Interviews and case reports illustrate a crude, intimidating approach by the principal and a sliding scale in the extension of deadly violence to a broader target group. The shift in deadly violence to wider circles outside the criminal underworld is a new development in the Netherlands. Contract killings of persons who are not involved in organized crime place a great amount of pressure on criminal trials. Attempts are made to influence participants in legal proceedings right up to the court hearings, both through the actual murder of actors and through threats and instilling fear within magistrates, lawyers, the media, and law enforcement.

In April 2018, serial killer Joseph DeAngelo, also known as the Golden State Killer, was spectacularly tracked down. After 13 years of groping in the dark, uploading his DNA profile to a commercial genetic genealogical DNA database helped to identify him within a few months. The use of such commercial DNA databases elicited both hope and dismay. In this contribution the authors address concerns about the use of this technology in the Dutch jurisdiction by situating it in the more than 25 years of careful legislation and forensic practice. They show that much care and attention has been given to the legal and societal aspects of forensic genetic technology and argue that the use of commercial DNA databases warrants a careful and thorough debate before it can be introduced in any sound way.

Three developments – technological advances in sequencing DNA data, the booming market for commercial DNA tests, and internationalization of collecting and sharing DNA data – are accelerating the use of DNA data worldwide. The authors discuss the impact of the increase in international and commercial use of DNA data and the way it puts public values (like privacy, autonomy, fairness) under pressure. When collecting, analyzing, and translating DNA data, privacy should be guarded, genetic discrimination has to be prevented, digital citizenship could be strengthened, and responsibilities for those applying DNA data should be strongly defined. By doing so, we can thrive for a future in which we make valuable use of DNA data.

This special issue of Justitiële verkenningen (Judicial Explorations) discusses three developments that have driven the use of DNA to grow: technological advances in DNA data sequencing, the booming market for commercial DNA testing, and the internationalization of the collection and sharing of DNA data. More and more DNA data is being distributed without any insight into what exactly happens to this data. While strict rules apply to the management and use of DNA data by the police and judicial authorities, this is not yet the case for data from commercial DNA tests. In this episode of Justitiële verkenningen, particular attention is paid to the rise of investigative genetic genealogy (IGG). This phenomenon means that the police and the judicial authorities use data from commercial DNA databases to track down suspects. The successes achieved in this way in deadlocked murder cases, including in the United States, are also discussed. It is clear that not everyone who sends DNA material to a DTC company foresees such an application, and this use is therefore controversial. Moreover, relatives of these customers are not systematically informed and they are usually not asked for permission. This special issue aims to contribute to the public debate on the consequences and risks of the dissemination of DNA data.

This article aims to contribute to the public debate on the consequences and risks of the spreading of DNA data related to direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing. Market developments drive DTC companies to find new business models. As a result of mergers and acquisitions and of the developments of new products and services, DNA data are often used differently than what they were originally collected for. Since DTC DNA data are not protected as well as health-related data generally are, it is hard to keep track of these data. This is partly due to legal and ethical issues such as unclarity of who owns DNA and problems with informed consent. Risks are identified with regards to privacy, information security, the right not to know, (un)equal opportunities, and national security. The author calls for an investment in knowledge and awareness in order to allow for a fair balance between opportunity and risk of DTC DNA products and services.

The smart city is the urban ideal of our time. Yet its high expectations often run counter against the performance of smart city projects in practice. The Rathenau Institute has studied a number of such projects in the municipality of Eindhoven, a leading city with respect to digital innovation in the Netherlands. To ensure that data is used in a proper manner with respect for public values Eindhoven has applied several strategies, such as privacy by design and the active involvement of its citizens. It has also set up a number of principles for the digital society which helped to negotiate contracts with private partners. Yet the authors’ analysis shows that important legal challenges remain. Some of the principles require more detailed specification. The authors also found that the law is not yet fully appropriated to the new digital context and needs to be adjusted accordingly.

Public values and citizen participation are key terms in smart city discourse that are propagated by all its actors, from governments to corporations and civil society. Nevertheless, the design and development of smart cities are hardly ‘public’ as some publics and some forms of participation are never included. This is particularly visible in current protests against a key enabling technology for smart cities, 5G. These contestations tend to be considered ill-informed and irrational, while their methods are seen as conflictual rather than helpful. In this article the author argues that the public value approach to smart cities is rooted in a deliberative perspective of democracy, while the tensions that are produced by 5G and other forms of anti-technological protest are better understood as part of agonistic democracy. Such conflicts about the new smart technologies that are currently hidden from public sight need to be articulated and constructed as contentious issues for electoral politics, in order for the smart city to acquire its democratic legitimacy.

While smart city initiatives claim to be ‘citizen-focused’ or ‘citizen-centric’, there are several troubling aspects of how citizenship and social relations are produced within them. First, they prioritize technological solutions to social and urban problems from the perspective of businesses and states, rather than serving local communities. With a focus on digital technology, they also exclude a wide range of marginalized publics from the possibility to participate in the smart city and only rarely address issues of social differences in cities. The smart city thus creates new or exacerbates existing challenges to the possibility of all city dwellers to fully enjoy urban life with all of its services and advantages, as well as taking direct part in the management of cities – in other words, it creates challenges for ‘the right to the city’. In this article, the author thus explores the notion of the right to the city in order to inform and recast the smart city in emancipatory and empowering ways, one that would work for the benefit of all citizens and not just selected populations.

This article deals with the relationship of smart security technologies to broader modes of exercising power and subjugating individuals. It claims that the notion of psychopower is precisely what is missing from post-Foucaultian accounts of the smart city. In the article psychopower is defined as the manipulation of our consciousness in order to channel our desires toward ‘normal’ social behavior, drawing a line between what is ‘acceptable’ and what is ‘unacceptable’. Psychopower raises a series of concerns related to its democratic legitimacy and accountability as behaviorally informed conditioning of the mind runs the risk of constant surveillance, where human agency is diluted in a techno-utopian vision that promises to improve city-wide efficiency, decision-making, and security.

Steering on public values in Dutch smart cities, let alone their regulation, is complicated. This article situates this difficulty in the vested interests that Dutch local authorities have in public-private smart city projects, and in the fact that public values are narrowly defined in relation to the technology; not in relation to a vision for the city in which its communities thrive. A way out of this deadlock, the article proposes, is to understand smart cities in the Netherlands beyond the typically Dutch consensus politics (the ‘polder’) and, instead, as part of a broader (urban) governance tendency to push urban technologies through the recital of fixed urban problems and public values. Consequently, state regulation of the (Dutch) smart city should principally enable (local) public and political involvement in defining urban problems and urban dreams, and thus in deciding the public values that are at stake.

The recently cancelled Quayside smart city project in Toronto by Sidewalk Labs is an example of a top-down, tech-driven, intransparant model of a smart city, where government and citizens got sidetracked in the planning process. This article analyses what went wrong and proposes an alternative approach. Experts in the field – from data scientists to philosophers, sociologists and activists – propose a different kind of smart city. The open smart city is based on principles of open data, public digital infrastructure, and civic participation. It uses technology to strengthen public values, civic participation and human rights, instead of undermining them.

In this article, the authors draw on a netnographic study conducted between May and July 2019 on phishing on Telegram Messenger. The results indicate that Telegram, just like cryptomarkets and online forums, seems to function as a criminal marketplace. In the groups analyzed the authors see users who both offer and are looking for specific goods and services related to the crime script of phishing. Furthermore, the information on Telegram contains specific modi operandi that are offering comprehensive and step-by-step guides to successfully complete specific financial cybercrimes. Therefore, based on this explorative study the authors argue that Telegram can be seen as a digital offender convergence setting.

The prevalence of online crime increases. Social engineering, such as email phishing, is often an important element in an attack. Several interventions have been developed to reduce the success of these types of attacks. The current study investigates whether interventions can help reduce vulnerability to social engineering attacks. The authors investigate which types of interventions and specific elements are most successful. They selected studies with an experimental design that tested at least one intervention. A total of 19 studies with 37 effect sizes, based on a total sample of N=23,146 subjects, were found. The available training courses, intervention materials and effect sizes were analysed. Overall, positive effects of interventions were found. However, there are substantial differences in effect for the different types of interventions. Effective interventions are relatively intensive and have a specific focus. The authors conclude with the design of the best possible intervention given the results of their research.

Online fraudsters seem to adapt to new digital opportunities. While the academic literature about phishing mainly focuses on phishing through emails, fraudsters also appear to use new means of communication and platforms to find and deceive their victims. Based on analysis of 728 police reports from the period from June 20th to August 20th 2019, this article provides a descriptive study on the new phenomenon of payment request fraud on the Dutch advertisement platform Marktplaats.nl (similar to eBay). The article will provide a thorough description of the crime script and its success factors. As fraudsters now use new means of communication, it will also be assessed to what extent they use new persuasion techniques, and to what extent victims may have different characteristics. The research, therefore, focuses on the modus operandi, persuasion techniques used by the fraudsters, and victim characteristics.

This contribution treats debt recovery as an important cause for the emergence and worsening of the debt problem. It is explained that when a bailiff seizes wage, the debtor often has too little left to live on. In addition to seizure of wage, the bailiff can also seize the bank account or seize household goods in order to sell these. The author describes how this can lead to new debts and what legislation is being prepared to modernize this situation. In case of problematic debts, multiple creditors are collecting from the same debtor, which requires coordination. The recovery by creditors facilitated by the current rules focuses on the claims of individual creditors. However, as soon as problematic debts are involved, an integrated approach is necessary, in which the common interest, the interest of all creditors and that of the debtor, takes precedence over self-interest.

In order to improve the effectiveness of offender supervision many studies have been conducted into risk factors for delinquency. Evidence was found that debts and crime are interrelated. However, understanding of potential underlying risk factors in this relationship is limited. Results of an analysis of client files (N=250) show that debts among probation clients are highly prevalent and problems with respect to education, work and mental and physical health seem to be important underlying factors in the relationship between debts and crime. In addition, interviews were conducted with both probation workers (N=33) and clients (N=16) to get insight into the possibilities to adequately support clients with regard to debts in order to stimulate successful resocialization. Results underline the importance of paying attention to possible underlying factors to effectively supervise clients.

In the field of policymaking, there is a growing need to take advantage of the opportunities that big data predictions offer. A strong point of big data is that the large amounts of data that are collected nowadays can be re-used to find new insights. However, for effective use in policymaking it is also important to take into account the relating limitations and challenges. For example, the quality of the data used can be a problem. Outdated data and data of which the semantics have changed, may result in predictions that are no longer correct. In addition, it is difficult to apply predictions to individual cases or people. In this article authors provide various practical recommendations for dealing with these problems. As long as people are aware of the limitations and handle the results with care, big data models can be a useful addition to traditional methods in the field of policymaking.

This article outlines the need in the Netherlands for socially effective justice that better resolves citizens’ problems. The author argues that new forms of dispute resolution should be integrated in the justice system. The author first describes various types of innovations. Then he outlines the obstacles to innovations. A major obstacle is that many stakeholders in the existing legal system are simultaneously the gatekeepers for the admission of innovations. It is necessary to create an infrastructure that welcomes, reinforces, tests, finances and imports new treatments for legal problems.

In 2018 the Dutch parliament accepted new cybercrime legislation (the Cybercrime III Act) that creates several new online criminal offences and gives law enforcement agencies new investigative powers on the Internet. This article describes the background of Dutch cybercrime legislation and the contents of the Cybercrime III Act. The newly introduced cybercrimes are discussed as well as the new investigative competences. Particularly the legitimacy and the necessity of the investigative power of the police to hack computer systems of suspects may significantly interfere with the right to privacy.