White
Collar Crimes with special emphasis on: Cyber Crimes
STEP
UP OR FIGHT A LOSING BATTLE
CYBER SPACE AS WAR FRONT BETWEEN LAW AND CRIME
CYBER LAW
SHOULD WALK ONE STEP UP TO CYBER CRIME
INTRODUCTION
Crime is the breach of one or more
rules or laws for which some governing authority, via mechanisms such as police power, may ultimately prescribe a conviction. While every crime violates the law, not every violation of the
law counts as a crime
Cyber Crime may be defined in a general way as an unlawful act wherein the
computer is either a tool or a target or both.
The first
recorded cyber crime took place in the year 1820.
The modern
thief can steal more with a computer than with a gun. Tomorrow's terrorist may
be able to do more damage with a keyboard than with a bomb
The internet
in India is growing rapidly. Life is about a mix of
good and evil. So is the Internet. For all the good it does us, cyberspace has
its dark sides too. It has given rise to new opportunities in every field we can think of
– be it entertainment, business, sports or education. There are two sides to a
coin. Internet also has its own disadvantages. One of the major disadvantages
is Cybercrime – Illegal activity committed on the internet. Cybercrimes can
be against persons, against property and against government. Computers
today are being misused for illegal activities like e-mail espionage, credit
card fraud, spam’s, software piracy and so on, which invade our privacy and
offend our senses. Criminal activities in the cyberspace are on the rise.
52 countries which had been surveyed
25% are Substantially or Fully Updated(10),
25% Partially Updated (9) and 75% No Updated Laws (33) on Cyber
Crime.
(
CYBER CRIMINALS Division may be
justified on the basis of the object that they have in their mind.
1. Children and adolescents between the age group of 6 – 18 years
2. Organised hackers-These kinds of hackers are mostly organised
together to fulfil certain objective.
3.
Professional hackers / crackers
4.
Discontented employees-This
group include those people who have been either sacked by their employer or are
dissatisfied with their employer.
1. MODE AND MANNER OF COMMITING CYBER CRIME:
ü Unauthorized
access to computer systems or networks / Hacking
ü Theft
of information contained in electronic form
ü Email bombing
ü Data diddling-
ü Salami attacks
ü Denial of
Service attack
ü Virus / worm
attacks
ü Logic
bombs
ü Trojan attacks
ü Internet time thefts
ü Web
jacking
2. REASONS FOR CYBER CRIME:
The reasons for the vulnerability of
computers may be said to be:
ü
Capacity to store data in
comparatively small space
ü Easy to access
ü
Complex- The computers work on operating systems and these are composed of millions
of codes.
ü
Negligence while protecting the computer system.
ü Loss of evidence- Loss of evidence is
a very common & obvious problem as all the data are routinely destroyed. )
MAIN Effects of cyber crime
1.
Economic Impacts of Cybercrime Are Significant
2.
Cybercrime Is a Threat to National Security
ANALYSIS
OF THE STATUTORY PROVISONS
Information
Technology Act 2000
The Information Technology Act 2000 was undoubtedly a welcome step
at a time when there was no legislation on this specialised field. The Act has
however during its application has proved to be inadequate to a certain extent.
The various loopholes in the Act are-
1.
The hurry in
which the legislation was passed, without sufficient public debate, did
not really serve the desired purpose
2.
“Cyber laws, in their very preamble and
aim, state that they are targeted at aiding e-commerce, and are not meant to
regulate cybercrime”[1] –
Mr. Pavan Duggal holds the same opinion.
3.
Cyber torts-
The recent cases including Cyber stalking
cyber harassment, cyber nuisance, and cyber defamation have shown that the
I.T.Act 2000 has not dealt with those offences.
4.
Cyber crime in the Act is neither
comprehensive nor exhaustive-
Mr. Duggal believes that we
need dedicated legislation on cyber crime that can supplement the Indian Penal
Code. The contemporary view is held by Mr. Prathamesh Popat who has stated-
"The IT Act, 2000 is not comprehensive enough and doesn't even define the
term 'cyber crime”.[2] Mr. Duggal has further commented, “India,
as a nation, has to cope with an urgent need to regulate and punish those
committing cyber crimes, but with no specific provisions to do so. It has to be
distinctly understood that cyber crime and cyberspace are completely new
whelms, where numerous new possibilities and opportunities emerge by the day in
the form of new kinds of crimes thence
I.P.C could not be a good answer for it..”[3]
5.
Ambiguity in the definitions-
The definition of
hacking provided in section 66[4] is very wide and
capable of misapplication. There is every possibility of this section being
misapplied and in fact the Delhi court has misapplied it.
Further section 67[5] is also vague to
certain extent. It is difficult to define the term lascivious information or
obscene pornographic information. Further our inability to deal with
the cases of cyber pornography has been proved by the Bal Bharati
case.
6. Uniform law-
Mr. Vinod Kumar[6] holds the opinion that
the need of the hour is a worldwide uniform cyber law to combat cyber crime.
7. Lack of awareness- If the people are vigilant about their
rights the law definitely protects their right. E.g. the Delhi high court in
October 2002 prevented a person from selling Microsoft pirated software
over an auction site.
8. Jurisdiction issues-
10. Raising a expert cyber army-
By using the word ‘cyber army’
I am laying emphasis on the need for a well equipped task force to deal with
the new trends of hi tech crime. Further the establishment of the Cyber
Crime Investigation Cell (CCIC) of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) [7] is definitely a welcome step in this direction. For getting
expert members of CCIC government can establish a college for this.
There are cases of cyber crime in which there is no proof, sometimes
charge sheet not filed and sometimes Pakistan not cooperating
11. Cyber savvy bench-
Cyber savvy judges are the need of the day.
Judiciary plays a vital role in shaping the enactment according to the order of
the day. One such stage, which needs appreciation, is the P.I.L., which
the Kerela High Court has accepted through an email. The role of
the judges in today’s word may be gathered by the statement- judges carve ‘law
is’ to ‘law ought to be’. Mr T.K.Vishwanathan, member secretary, Law
Commission , has highlighted the requirements for introducing
e-courts in India.
12. Dynamic form of cyber crime-
Speaking on the dynamic nature of cyber
crime FBI Director Louis Freeh has said, "In short, even though we have
markedly improved our capabilities to fight cyber intrusions the problem is
growing even faster and we are falling further behind.”
13. Hesitation to report offences is the main
problem.
Reasons for
it include the following:
ü Financial market
impacts
ü Reputation or confidence
effects
ü
Litigation concerns
ü
Signal to attackers
ü Inability to share
information.
ü Job security
ü Lack of law
enforcement action.
CONCLUSION
Hart in his work “The Concept of Law”, says ‘human beings are vulnerable
so rule of law is required to protect them’. Applying this to cyberspace, we
may infer that computers are vulnerable so rule of law is required to protect
and safeguard them against cyber crime.
Even now INDIA
uses “CAUSE OF ACTION” Formula for dealing with the Cases related to Cyber
Crime. National governments should examine their
current statutes to determine whether they are sufficient to combat the kinds
of crimes. Where gaps exist, governments should draw on best practices from
other countries and work closely with industry to enact enforceable legal
protections against these new crimes. Capacity of human mind is unfathomable.
It is not possible to eliminate cyber crime from the cyber space totally but it
is quite possible to check them. History is the witness that no legislation has
succeeded in totally eliminating crime from the globe. The only possible step
is to make people aware of their rights and duties (to report crime as a
collective duty towards the society) and further making the application of the
laws more stringent to check crime. Undoubtedly the Act is a historical step in
the cyber world. Further I all together do not deny that there is a need to
bring changes in the Information Technology Act to make it more effective to
combat cyber crime.
In India cyber
crime is not much prevalent but in near future it is going to be a major issue
for the government to deal with. As India is emerging power so development in
technology will increase which will result in more misuse of technology by the
Cyber Criminals. Cyber crime will economically and personally affects the
individual and public of any country at large. State of mind of a cyber
criminal is unpredictable so Government should emphasise more on precaution as
compared to cure the old saying exactly fits here “Prevention is always better
then cure”. Cyber crime is going to increase rapidly as Cyber crime is same as
technology it will develop with development of technology. New-new techniques
will be developed by cyber criminals to commit cyber crime. There should be
specific statutory provisions for this particular branch of crime as till yet
India has general statutory provision regarding Cyber Law. Establishment of
cyber cell branch at central, State, and District level only deals with this
type of problems and it could be attach with the CBI. When a cyber crime
committed by someone then action should take immediately on basis of complaint
otherwise there is opportunity for offender to destroy the evidence and escaped.
Computer security consultant
Ankit Fadia is of the opinion that instead of trying to tighten cyber laws, we
need to concentrate more upon training the law enforcement agents and police
departments.
Prevention is always
better than cure. 5P mantra for online
security: Precaution, Prevention, Protection, Preservation and Perseverance.
MY SUGGESTIONS
Recommendation to
Government
·
From my way every individual
should get an Internet ID (Identification) and Password with which he can use
Internet. It is complex step but by doing so it will be much easier in
minimising cyber crime. Since if every individual will have his/her own ID then
they will think thrice before committing crime. Because the ID by which they
are using Internet has all information about the customer his name, his address
etc., By doing so people will hesitate in doing cyber crime because they will
be caught up easily if they commit crime. This step should be taken by all over
the world government if it utilises or is good. If not this then at least every
cyber cafe should have username and password to access internet.
·
Customer coming to cyber cafe for should
not be allowed to carry any hardware equipment with him.
·
No USB port and DVD/CD ROM in cyber cafe
C.P.U.
·
Cyber Crime Cell centres should be
increased at least in every developed city.
·
For awareness of cyber crime and where
to register FIR for Cyber Crime, government should take help of electronic
media and print media.
·
Motivation for establishment of NGO regarding
cyber crime.
·
Law should emphasise more on precaution
then on punishment.
·
IICCC or I2C3 should be established that
is Indian Internet Crime Complaint Centre. It should act as a link between
C.B.I and Cyber Cell.
·
Cases related to cyber crime should be
handled immediately and speedily. As there is scope for the accused to destroy
the evidence if he gets time. Thence for speedy investigation of accused
government should allow online registration of FIR. So it will be helpful in
prohibiting the accused to destroy the evidences.
·
Hacker should be motivated for doing
ethical-hacking that will help in curbing cyber crime.
- Government
should seek help of Hackers while enacting Cyber Law. Data bearer security
record should be kept. For example in rapidshare.com, but in any other
sites there is no such restriction as that keep record on only per
connection not on a particular system that is being working under
sub-address of main connection.
- A software
should be installed which should get installed as soon as operating system
is installed. That software will ask for username and serial key of
particular personal computer, and if so serial key matches with original
serial key of his Pc and serial key which he had entered then he should
get access to internet. So before the internet browser opens it should ask
for username and serial key.
- And from
way hackers mostly know much about programming but we do something with
hardware it is really difficult for them to understand easily. So Software
companies should emphasise more on hardware for protection of software and
for limited access to internet as firewall does.
- As far as I
think so the First Page of Every Site should be secured much, meaning that
the user can not right click on the first pages of sites. Ex- googlebooks.com
some sites are still there which provide limited access to user, so that
users cannot copy the document.
- If in
e-mail spams can be identified by the server then why it cannot delete
them, it should delete them.
Technical Crime
World Submit should be held, in
which best hackers in world should also be invited, the foremost thing which
should be discussed is Cyber Law of which country will have Jurisdiction over if cyber crime being
committed. There is one way out to curb this problem; there should be universal
Law that is one Cyber Law for all the countries and one apex court should also
be established which should consist of eminent judges from each country.
(Precaution
for citizens
·
To prevent cyber stalking avoid disclosing any information pertaining to
one self.
·
Always avoid sending any photograph online particularly to strangers
·
Always use latest and update antivirus software to guard against virus
attacks.
·
Always keep back up volumes so that one may not suffer data loss in case
of virus contamination
·
Never send your credit card number to any site that is not secured, to
guard against frauds.
·
Always keep a watch on the sites that your children are accessing to
prevent any kind of harassment or depravation in children.
·
It is better to use a security programme that gives control over the
cookies and send information back to the site as leaving the cookies unguarded
might prove fatal.
·
Web site owners should watch traffic and check any irregularity on the
site.
·
Use of firewalls may be beneficial.
·
Web servers running public sites must be physically separate protected
from internal corporate network.)
I would conclude with a word of caution for the
pro-legislation school that it should be kept in mind that the provisions of
the cyber law are not made so stringent that it may retard the growth of the
industry and prove to be counter-productive.
No comments:
Post a Comment