Date: July 28, 1991
From: "The Moderataors" <
[email protected]>
Subject: File 4-- "Computer Crime" paper by Brian Peretti available
Brian J. Peretti has finished the latest draft of his paper:
"Computer Crime: Current Practices, Problems and Proposed Solutions".
Here is a brief excerpt from the introduction. The complete paper is
available in the CuD ftp sites.
++++++++++++++++++
Within recent years, computer crime has become a
preoccupation with law enforcement officials. In California, a
group of West German hackers using phone lines and satellite
hookups, gained unauthorized access into civilian and military
computers and stole sensitive documents that were sold to the
Soviet Union. A young New York programmer broke into a
Washington computer to run a program that he could not run from his
personal computer. After Southeastern Bell Stated that a document
published in an electronic publication was valued at more than
$75,000 the publisher was arrested and brought to trial before the
discovery that the document could be publicly bought from the
company for $12.6 The Chaos Computer Club, a Hamburg, Germany,
club, went into government computers and access information
and gave it to reporters. In May, 1988, the United States government
launched Operation Sun Devil, which lead to the seizure of 23,000
computer disks and 40 computers. In addition, poor police
performance has also been blamed on computers.
Since its creation, the computer has become increasing important
in society. The law, as in the past, has not been able to evolve
as quickly as the rapidly expanding technology. This lack
of movement on the part of governments shows a lack of understanding
with the area. The need to create a comprehensive regulation or
code of ethics has become increasing necessary.
Due to the nature of computer systems and their
transnational connections through telephone lines, an
individual state's action will only stop the problems associated with
computer crime if many states join together. The patchwork of
legislation that exists covers only a small part of the problem.
To adequately address computer crime, greater efforts must be
made within the computer community to discourage unauthorized
computer access, countries must strengthen and
co-ordinated their computer related laws, as well as proper
enforcement mechanism created, computer program copyright laws be
enhanced and computer systems should be created to allow those who
wish to explore computer systems which will not disrupt the users of
computer systems.
This paper will first set out a definition of computer crime and why
laws or regulation by the computer community must be created.
Section II will then discuss the United States law concerning
computer crime and why it needs to be strengthened. Section III
will discuss the proposed Israeli computer crime bill, Britain's
Computer Misuse Act and Ghana's proposed law. Section IV will
discuss what can be done by both the government and computer owners
and users to make computer crime less possible.
<The rest is available from the CuD ftp archives>
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