Cyber Slavery Infrastructures: A Socio-Technical Study of Forced Criminality in Transnational Cybercrime
Gargi Sarkar, Sandeep Kumar Shukla
TL;DR
Cyber slavery represents a technologically facilitated expansion of forced criminality that co-opts digital labor for transnational scams. The authors combine a 29,466-case Indian victim dataset with a systematic narrative review to build a five-tier victimization framework that models coercion through five lifecycle stages. They show a strong link between organized Indian networks, SIM/mule infrastructure, and cross-border cyber fraud, with a notable shift where some victims transition from coercion to voluntary involvement, challenging traditional victim-perpetrator distinctions. The study highlights legal and justice gaps, particularly in victim identification and retrospective criminalization, and argues for victim-centered, interoperable legal frameworks and humane digital-forensic practices to curb cyber slavery and protect victims.
Abstract
The rise of ``cyber slavery," a technologically facilitated variant of forced criminality, signifies a concerning convergence of human trafficking and digital exploitation. In Southeast Asia, trafficked individuals are increasingly coerced into engaging in cybercrimes, including online fraud and financial phishing, frequently facilitated by international organized criminal networks. This study adopts a hybrid qualitative-computational methodology, combining a systematic narrative review with case-level metadata extracted from real-world cyber trafficking incidents through collaboration with Indian law enforcement agencies. We introduce a five-tier victimization framework that outlines the sequential state transitions of cyber-slavery victims, ranging from initial financial deception to physical exploitation, culminating in systemic prosecution through trace-based misattribution. Furthermore, our findings indicate that a significant socio-technical risk of cyber slavery is its capacity to evolve from forced to voluntary digital criminality, as victims, initially compelled to engage in cyber-enabled crimes, may choose to persist in their involvement due to financial incentives and the perceived security provided by digital anonymity. This legal-technological gap hampers victim identification processes, imposing excessive pressure on law enforcement systems dependent on binary legal categorizations, which ultimately hinders the implementation of victim-centered investigative methods and increases the likelihood of prosecutorial misclassification, thus reinforcing the structural obstacles to addressing cyber slavery.