Date: July 28, 1991 From: "The Moderataors" 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. ------------------------------