Computer Security And The Law

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I. Introduction

You are a computer administrator for a large manufacturing company. In

the middle of a production run, all the mainframes on a crucial network grind to

a halt. Production is delayed costing your company millions of dollars. Upon

investigating, you find that a virus was released into the network through a

specific account. When you confront the owner of the account, he claims he

neither wrote nor released the virus, but he admits that he has distributed his

password to "friends" who need ready access to his data files. Is he liable for

the loss suffered by your company? In whole or in part? And if in part, for how

much? These and related questions are the subject of computer law. The answers

may very depending in which state the crime was committed and the judge who

presides at the trial. Computer security law is new field, and the legal

establishment has yet to reach broad agreement on may key issues.

Advances in computer security law have been impeded by the reluctance on

the part of lawyers and judges to grapple with the technical side of computer

security issues[1]. This problem could be mitigated by involving technical

computer security professional in the development of computer security law and

public policy. This paper is meant to help bridge to gap between technical and

legal computer security communities.

II. THE TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

A. The Objectives of Computer Security

The principal objective of computer security is to protect and assure

the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of automated information

systems and the data they contain. Each of these terms has a precise meaning

which is grounded in basic technical ideas about the flow of information in

automated information systems.

B. Basic Concepts

There is a broad, top-level consensus regarding the meaning of most

technical computer security concepts. This is partly because of government

involvement in proposing, coordinating, and publishing the definitions of basic

terms[2]. The meanings of the terms used in government directives and

regulations are generally made to be consistent with past usage. This is not to

say that there is no disagreement over the definitions in the technical

community. Rather, the range of such disagreement is much narrower than in the

legal community. For example there is presently no legal consensus on exactly

what constitutes a computer[3].

The term used to establish the scope of computer security is "automated

information system," often abbreviated "AIS." An Ais is an assembly of

electronic equipment, hardware, software, and firmware configured to collect,

create, communicate, disseminate, process, store and control data or information.

This includes numerous items beyond the central processing unit and associated

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