Organized Crime And Counterintelligence

Sammanfattning: Since 9/11, the threat of hostile non-state actors using counterintelligence has become a growing subject of research. This opens up a new way of thinking about domestic organized actors’ countermeasures. In Sweden, organized crime is a serious concern for the police. The new revelation of organized crime using Encrochats encryption service begs the question of what countermeasures organized crime is adopting to counteract the police collection of information. The focus of this study will be on organized crime countermeasures in the region of Skåne, Sweden. The study presents a hypothetico-deductive examination of the different types of counterintelligence to assess their overlap with countermeasures used by organized crime, based on Hank Prunckun's theory of counterintelligence. It will rely on how countermeasures are described in police reports and investigations, judicial hearings, publicly sponsored television and radio, and newspapers. Because it is impossible to falsify the hypotheses, the study concludes that it is possible to understand organized crime countermeasures as counterintelligence. Organized crime appears to be employing a vertical hierarchical paradigm to conduct counterintelligence, using youth to perform minor chores, without any indication of technological competence, based on the patterns and relationships found in the presented data.