List: best-of-security
Subject: BoS: Legal Aspects of Computer Crime
From: Julian Assange <proff () suburbia ! net>
Date: 1995-09-13 6:21:00
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Legal Aspects of Computer Crime
"echo subscribe lacc|mail lacc-request@suburbia.net"
REASONS FOR INCEPTION
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The growing infusion of computers and computing devices into society
created a legislative and common law vacuum in the 1980's. State
prosecutors attempted to apply traditional property protection and
deception laws to new technological crimes. By and large they were
successful in this endeavor. There were however a very few but well
publicized failed cases against computer "hackers" (most notable R
vs Gold - UK House of Lords). In an atmosphere of increased
government reliance on computer databases and public fear and
hostility towards computerization of the workplace, the world's
legislatures rushed to criminalize certain types of computer use.
Instead of expanding the scope of existing legislation to more fully
encompass the use of computers by criminals, changing phrases such
as "utter or write" to "utter, write or transmit" (the former being
the prosecutions undoing in the well publicized Gold case) as had
been done with copyright law, an entirely new class of criminal
conduct was was introduced. The computer had been seen not just as
another tool that criminals might use in committing a crime but
something altogether foreign and removed from the rest of society
and established Law. The result was a series of nievely drafted,
overly broad and under-defined statutes which criminalized nearly
all aspects of computer use under certain conditions.
In the second quarter of the 1990's there was a fundamental shift in
computer usage. At work it is rare now to see a white collar worker
not in the possession of a computer. At home over one third of
households have computer systems. The computer is no longer
"altogether foreign and removed from the rest of society". Even our
notoriously slow moving legal profession is adopting it as an
essential tool. But there is another change. A qualitative one
important to our discussion.
When you connect hundreds of thousands of computers and thus the
people that use them together you find something remarkable occurs.
An event that you could never have predicted by merely summing the
discrete components involved. A unique virtual society forms.
Society's are based around a common knowledge of history, beliefs,
and current events. Each member of a society can be pinpointed as
belonging to the society in question by the ideas, beliefs and
knowledge they hold in common with its other members. Any new member
to a society learns this knowledge only because it is passed onto
them; directly by other members or indirectly via its media, works of
literature or observation.
Successful large scale computer networks like the Internet form for
one reason and one reason only; information sharing. When a critical
mass of diversity, interests, user population and information exchange
is reached, a situation develops that mirrors in all important
aspects a vibrant and evolving society. Members of these computer
network societies have nearly equal ability to convey their thoughts
to other members and do so in a timely manner without unwanted
distortion. This is a remarkably democratic process compared to the
very real self censorship and top heavy direction that is so
manifest in traditional broadcast and publishing industries.
But unlike the physical societies that have here-to been the norm,
the electronic network society is not isolationist. It continues to
draw from, mesh and feed its beliefs into the traditional societies
it was populated out of. This coupling process between computer
networks and traditional societies is expected to continue - at
least for English speaking countries, until a stage is reached were
it is difficult to find any boundary between the two.
The majority of citizens will then fall most completely under the
gamut of the appalling drafted computer crimes legislation many
times every day of their lives. In the vast majority of legislation
directed to address computer crime everything which can be performed
on a computer unless "authorized" is defined as illegal. Granted an
individual can authorize themselves to do anything they wish with
their own computer, but in a networked topology a typical computer
user may use or otherwise interact with hundreds or even thousands
of other peoples computers in any given day. In Law it has
previously been the case that which was not expressly forbidden was
permitted. Currently the digital equivalent of moving a chair is
illegal and carries with it in most countries a 5 to 10 year prison
term. It is a sad reflection on the legislature of the day that the
computer medium was criminalized, and not the crime.
It is unlikely that law reform will occur until current political
concern over computer networks such as the Internet is moderated. If
anything the push so far from political drafters has being to once again
introduce brand new medium criminalizing legislation rather than
revitalizing the existing codes. This unfortunate "labeled arrow"
approach will continue as long as there exists an ill informed and
technologically ignorant legislature that finds itself pliant to the
whims of sensationalist media and honed to their dubious targets.
It is however within the above unfortunate lack of appropriate
legislation, precedents and judicial guidance that practitioners,
prosecutors, law enforcement personnel and drafters of future
legislation have to work.
This list has been created in an attempt to mitigate the lack of
resources we have to work with. It is hoped that by bringing
together knowledgeable people in the aforementioned fields together
with para-legal personnel and informed lay persons, information and
resources relevant to the difficult task of analyzing, presenting in
court or otherwise dealing with computer crime law and computer
crimes may be shared and intelligent discussion stimulated.
nb. this list it is also an appropriate forum to discuss computerized
legal, law enforcement and criminology databases, such as Netmap,
Watson, PROMIS, Lexis, APAIS, CRIM-L, et cetera.
GUIDELINES
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Computer forensics information. "opinion".
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--END
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+----------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Julian Assange | "if you think the United States has |
| | has stood still, who built the largest |
| proff@suburbia.net | shopping centre in the world?" - Nixon |
+----------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+