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Domestic Violence A "No Win" Situation
By Rania Asif |
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| "New ways to do old tricks"
We live in an exciting time in history. By Rania Asif |
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Cyber Crimes
By Rania Asif
Sierra Vista, Arizona
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"New ways to do old tricks"
We live in an exciting time in history. The widespread availability of computers and Internet connections provides unprecedented opportunities to communicate and learn. Unfortunately, although most people use the Internet as a powerful and beneficial tool for communication and education, some individuals exploit the power of the Internet for criminal or terrorist purposes. This modern and relatively new category is called cyber-crime, hi-tech crime or e-crime and include crimes such as hacking, credit-card fraud, id theft, child pornography, software piracy, terrorist activities, harassment & stalking, un-authorized usage and virus introduction etc etc.
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| While researching for this article, I found an interesting but not very flattering piece of information about the origin of computer virus on a website www.exn.ca. "Brian" the first ever virus was written in 1986 in Lahore, Pakistan. It interested me particularly because I am from Pakistan.
This particular crime category is such that although so wide spread but still to date there are no precise, reliable statistics on the amount of computer crime and the economic loss to victims. Partly because many of these crimes are apparently not detected by victims, many of these crimes are never reported to authorities, and partly because the losses are often difficult to calculate. Nevertheless, there is a consensus among both law enforcement personnel and computer scientists who specialize in security that both the number of computer crime incidents and the sophistication of computer criminals is increasing rapidly.
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How true as stated on the website (www.cybercrime.net):
"The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by ones and zeros--little bits of data--it's all electrons....There's a war out there, a world war. It's not about who has the most bullets. It's about who controls the information--what we see and hear, how we work, what we think. It's all about information."
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| Undeterred by the prospect of arrest or prosecution, cyber criminals around the world lurk on the Net as an omnipresent menace to the financial health of businesses, to the trust of their customers, and as an emerging threat to nations’ security. Headlines of cyber attacks command our attention with increasing frequency. Here while not sufficient enough but steps of self protection are extremely essential, precautionary measure should be adopted by computer users such as high security passwords, erection of firewalls, installation of anti-virus and spywares etc. As these offenses vary by both the criminal act and the jurisdiction, Self-protection remains the first line of defense.
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In these high-tech crimes the criminal intent, mens rea, of a specific computer crime may be difficult to prove. How does an investigator distinguish between a hacker who intentionally steals or destroys electronic files and someone who accidentally destroys files while simply perusing them? Similarly, the physical act of a computer-related crime, actus reus, may be demonstrated best by an electronic impulse that, unfortunately, is difficult to define and track, considering that a computer crime can occur in 3 milliseconds using a program code that tells the software to erase itself after the computer executes the action. Essentially, this eliminates the evidentiary trail.
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Industry-wide efforts are underway to address prevention, response, and cooperation. Around the world, various industries have been establishing information sharing and analysis centers (ISACs) to share real-time information related to threats, vulnerabilities, attacks, and countermeasures. Where victimization has already occurred, I unexpectedly came across some useful websites such as (www.cybercrime.net). Many of these online websites exist and offer help and guidance to victims where one can also initiate reporting of such crimes. Which I feel are a source of comfort zone for all victims of these horrifying cyber crimes.
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| Despite the progress being made in many countries, most countries still rely on standard terrestrial law to prosecute cyber crimes. Although I was surprised to see numerous already existent cyber laws on websites like (www.cybercrimes.gov) I believe, that further new improved, more practical and to date laws should be introduced which assure stronger penalties for cyber thieves and e-criminals. I also think that there is a well established need for a model approach, with the globalization of cyber laws.
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