Cybercrime Essay

Introduction

When a society acquire a technology, the society measures then weighs the benefits it could gain from the technology with the cost from possible misuse of the technology. As such, as useful as internet is, it could bring much harm when used for exploitation. In that regard, the problems of internet exploitation or cybercrime are causing significant damage especially in the international world. Within a nation, the government as an executive branch enforces the laws created by the judicial branch. However in the global society where there is no government or a recognized body of power that can enforce such international laws, the nations must rely on each other’s honesty and selflessness for the laws to be upheld. Nevertheless the political interests of each country often interfere with international law and portray the spirit of the law obscure.

Hence one of the most controversial of all is international law regarding cybercrime. The first convention on cybercrime was in 2001 in Budapest for European Council, therefore named Budapest Convention on Cyber Crime that became effective in 2004 where countries of Europe tried to “harmonize national laws, improve investigative techniques and increase cooperation among nations.” Now Budapest Convention contains 42 ratifications from countries of various continents. Such means has been effective within the European Council and the signed members in the sense of recognizing cybercrimes and the dangers it contain, however in global scale, there still needs to be more effort in unifying the international law against cybercrime. The victim countries cannot sufficiently retaliate against cybercrimes as global cooperation is meager in its effectiveness which leads to threat to glob...

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...duals who committed the crime. In this regard, it seems that only China is the one that’s been causing all the crimes, however that is not true. Because cybercrime is so beneficial and have low cost of punishment, it is done by various countries around the world. According to Edward Snowden, who released much confidential information regarding the U.S special operations, NSA has been constantly spying on many corporations, research institutes and Chinese government. Since there is no global council or enforcement that can adequately increase the cost of such criminal act, both victims can be the offenders of cybercrime, increasing the danger of information theft for almost all corporations worldwide. This instant show that countries may not want to harmonize and create a universal international cybercrime law because of the benefits they receive from the activity.