Crime On The Internet Essay Research Paper

Crime On The Internet Essay, Research Paper

Jones Telecommunications &

Crime on the Internet

Overview

If cyberspace is a type of community, a giant neighborhood made up of networked computer users around the world, then it seems natural that many elements of a traditional society can be found taking shape as bits and bytes. With electronic commerce comes electronic merchants, plugged-in educators provide networked education, and doctors meet with patients in offices on-line. It should come as no surprise that there are also cybercriminals committing cybercrimes.

As an unregulated hodgepodge of corporations, individuals, governments, educational institutions, and other organizations that have agreed in principle to use a standard set of communication protocols, the Internet is wide open to exploitation. There are no sheriffs on the Information Superhighway waiting to zap potential offenders with a radar gun or search for weapons if someone looks suspicious. By almost all accounts, this lack of “law enforcement” leaves net users to regulate each other according to the reigning norms of the moment. Community standards in cyberspace appear to be vastly different from the standards found at the corner of Main Street and Elm in Any City, USA. Unfortunately, cyberspace is also a virtual tourist trap where faceless, nameless con artists can work the crowds.

Mimicking real life, crimes and criminals come in all varieties on the Internet. The FBI’s National Computer Crime Squad is dedicated to detecting and preventing all types of computer-related crimes. Some issues being carefully studied by everyone from Net veterans and law enforcement agencies to radical pundits include:

Computer network break-ins

Industrial espionage

Software piracy

Child pornography

E-mail bombings

Password sniffers

Spoofing

Credit card fraud

Computer network break-ins

Using software tools installed on a computer in a remote location, hackers can break into computer systems to steal data, plant viruses or trojan horses, or work mischief of a less serious sort by changing user names or passwords. Network intrusions have been made illegal by the U.S. federal government, but detection and enforcement are difficult. Limitations with the law as it is currently written can be seen upon examining Kevin Mitnick’s recent plea bargain, wherein there is little connection between his final plea and the crimes he allegedly committed.

Industrial espionage

Corporations, like governments, love to spy on the enemy. Networked systems provide new opportunities for this, as hackers-for-hire retrieve information about product development and marketing strategies, rarely leaving behind any evidence of the theft. Not only is tracing the criminal labor-intensive, convictions are hard to obtain when laws are not written with electronic theft in mind.

Software piracy

According to estimates by the U.S. Software Publisher’s Association, as much as $7.5 billion of American software may be illegally copied and distributed annually worldwide. These copies work as well as the originals, and sell for significantly less money. Piracy is relatively easy, and only the largest rings of distributors are usually caught. Moreover, software pirates know that they are unlikely to serve hard jail time when prisons are overcrowded with people convicted of more serious crimes. From the legal perspective, prosecutors in the Dave LaMacchia case found that matching charges to an alleged crime was not an easy task.

Child pornography

This is one crime that is clearly illegal, both on and off the Internet. Crackdowns may catch some offenders, but there are still ways to acquire images of children in varying stages of dress and performing a variety of sexual acts. Legally speaking, people who use or provide access to child porn face the same charges whether the images are digital or on a piece of photographic paper. Trials of network users arrested in a recent FBI bust may challenge the validity of those laws as they apply to online services.

Mail bombings

Software can be written that will instruct a computer to do almost anything, and terrorism has hit the Internet in the form of mail bombings. By instructing a computer to repeatedly send electronic mail (email) to a specified person’s email address, the cybercriminal can overwhelm the recipient’s personal account and potentially shut down entire systems. This may or may not be illegal, but it is certainly disruptive. Well-known journalists Joshua Quittner and Michelle Slatalla learned the hard way what it feels like to be targeted by mail bombs when their home computer was flooded with jibberish and their phone lines were rerouted for a weekend.

Password sniffers

Password sniffers are programs that monitor and record the name and password of network users as they log in, jeopardizing security at a site. Whoever installs the sniffer can then impersonate an authorized user and log in to access restricted documents. Laws are not yet set up to adequately prosecute a person for impersonating another person on-line, but laws designed to prevent unauthorized access to information may be effective in apprehending hackers using sniffer programs. The Wall Street Journal suggests i

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