Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Everything is stored on the internet including highly classified government information, and your bank information. How do we make sure no one steals, views, or sells your passwords, and private information? Congress passed a law in 1986 called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to protect the government’s information. Many laws have been passed that revises the CFAA. The CFAA has imprisoned many people, and many people want changes to the CFAA today.
The CFAA was made to cover the majority of computer crimes. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was created because the United States Secret Service, and other government agencies needed a law to allow them to investigate cyber-crimes. The United States government also needed a way to discourage and stop people from hacking, accessing data, and many other internet crimes from a government computer. With computers on the rise, and the government converting to computers, the government needed a way to discourage and prosecute someone that damaged or gained access to the government’s information, and any other kind of computer. This law was also made to protect any kind of businesses computers or servers. The CFAA also is considered a net that Congress throws all the bad fish in. Including “fraud, hacking, piracy, DOS (Denial of Service) attacks, trafficking passwords, (selling, stealing, and buying passwords), and distributing malicious code.” To summarize the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act it protects “anything that connects to the internet”.
Computers were on the rise (being used more often), and so were computer crimes. How did Congress prosecute these criminals? They didn’t because couldn’t. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was the solution to intern...
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The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of 1986 is a foundational piece of legislation that has shaped computer crime laws for the United States. It was spawned from Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, Section 1030 that established three new federal crimes to address computer crimes. According to Sam Taterka, “Congress tailored the statute to three specific government interests: national security, financial records, and government property” (Taterka, 2016). The statue was criticized for the narrow range of issues it covered and vague language.
Computer misuse Act It is an act of the parliament of the UK redacted in 1990 as a measure to cope to the new technological threats. Old traditional forms of crime such as harassment and fraud offences are being committed electronically via computers or internet nowadays. Lately are appearing new forms of e-crime using new technologies such as Denial of Service ( DOS ) attack and phishing by offenders with good technical knowledge in IT.Thus laws in our society needs to be updated to deal to the new forms of crime. Computer misuse Act has been enacted after some cyber attacks, for instance the hacking attack against British Telecom commited by Robert Schifreen and Stephen Gold, between 1984 and 1985, using conventional devices such as a
Computers have become a big part of our lives. They are being used more and more and the Internet has brought with it a big amount of computer criminals. In 1988, Victoria created the first Australian computer crime laws.
Computer crime has been an issue since the beginning of computers. Wherever there is something good, there is always someone who takes advantage of it. This can be seen in cyber crime, which has been on the rise in recent years. According to the Los Angeles Times, the median cost of computer crime to a company per year has risen from $3.8 million dollars in 2010 to $5.9 million. (Rodriguez, 2011) This suggests that computer crime is becoming an even bigger hazard to companies. A recent example of this was the data breach committed against Target in 2013.
There are many laws in place by the United States government to protect consumers. This term paper will examine one law in particular, The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986. “The ECPA applies to both government and private entities, but appears to be more restrictive concerning government interception and access.” [1] The ECPA was put in place to protect individual’s electronic communication rights from being violated. Without a law of this type, our on-line world would be a welcome mat for anyone who wanted to invade our lives.
...out their own business might be affected.According to Stiennon, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 will force “utility operators, banks, and earth resources companies to comply with frameworks based on outmoded asset and vulnerability methodologies will distract them from implementing threat based defenses” (Stiennon) which means this act might affect on the computer companies’ business, their own business privacy and the relationship with the users. The business people might pay more attention on the relationship with the users and the companies’ profit. If the users stop using anything relate to the internet filed, the computer companies’ business will have a hard time. People who have this view think this act is only taking both sides benefits away.It is wasting money and hurting both sides.
Today, surveillance is heavily present in the U.S., and as a result citizens continue to face a threat of their privacy being invaded. Since 9/11, the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of
Internet can give out a lot of advantages and new things to learn and experience, but it carries a risk of personal information leakage. Even a simple browsing history can show our most private interests. Hence, there are laws and legislation made to protect the confidential information. It acts as the barrier and protector against any unwanted outflow of information to computer criminals.
Emily often eats her favorite sandwich in a certain restaurant. Once, she mentioned the restaurant in a text message to her friend with whom she wanted to meet there. Then, she searched for some movies on the Internet. She did not believe to what she had seen. All of the pages she visited had small advertisement banners on the sides promoting near restaurants that offer the sandwich she likes. She was frightened and began to question what all the Internet knows about her and who all can access her private information. Since more and more of daily activities are moved to the online world, larger amount of private information is shared on the Internet. Schools, government offices, banks, and many other institutions frequently require the use of the Internet. Citizens of the United States who enter Internet web sites, often unwittingly, expose themselves to large scale tracking and personal information sharing from which they can hardly escape while putting their personal information in jeopardy of abuse; therefore, the United States should outlaw the sharing of personal information acquired through the Internet with third parties in order to protect citizens’ privacy.
Tan, L. M., and M. Newman. 1991. “Computer Misuse and the Law.” International Journal of Information Management 11 (4): 282–291.
On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by a group of Islamic terrorists who hijacked four airplanes and carried out three simultaneous suicide attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. As a result of the multiple crimes, the United States’ government increased national security and prioritized our nation 's’ defense, often at the expense of the people’s privacy, by enacting policies like the Patriot Act (What is the USA Patriot Web 2011). This left personal emails, text messages, internet history, and personal belongings exposed to the government. Although the government reduced the public’s rights to privacy, it is a necessary step to ensure national safety and security.
Internet privacy and security has become the concern of many individuals throughout recent years. There are a very limited amount of laws that have been enacted to combat computer or cyber related crimes. This has become an issue because as the internet grows increasingly popular so does the criminal and immoral behavior that abounds on it. With these crimes gaining in impact, effectiveness, and frequency, there needs to be more repercussions for these crimes. The United States government needs to increase restrictions on the amount and type of data on individuals from the internet, to prevent the government from invading privacy of citizens and to prevent companies from storing browser histories of individuals, to then sell that information to ad agencies and other companies.
Throughout our class this semester we have learned about different types of ways that cyber criminals can invade someone’s privacy such as, hacking, phishing, and spamming. In addition we have also briefly discussed some major cyber-attacks. Moore’s work looks more closely at these features. Some of the important cybercrime topics that Moore covers are digital child pornography and the abuse of children in cyber space, online harassment and cyber stalking, and identity theft. In addition to these, it is important to also look at the strategies law enforcement must take to stop cyber criminals. Furthermore, some important law enforcement topics throughout the tex...
These types of crimes have become a matter of importance for the consumers as well the business firms because it involves large eviction of the amount in terms of money. In these types of crimes, computer and Internet are the primary factor (Spinello, 2000). A high percentage of population is using computers in the Australia, United States as well as other developed nations. These people are much more connected with the world by the use of internet. They are using the computer for fun, business, e-commerce, e-marketing, etc.; thus, it has become an essential part of life and daily routine (Wall, 2008).
Crimes like the various forms of networking hacking existed before the technology boom, but with computers and other pieces of technology, these crimes became easier to commit and many times get away with. Cybercrime is a concern that has been attracting media attention since 1945, when the United Nations created an international cooperation and collective security network of 192 countries to cooperate and solve international problems and one of a growing issue is cybercrime (Portnoy and Goodman, 2009). Now that technology is developing fast daily, individuals and businesses are more likely to attain this problem. I could see that cybercrime will be the top threat to the United States. Not only our country but also the people of our