Cybercrime Laws in Different Countries
Define cybercrime and its categories.
Research on the Internet how cybercrime is handled legally in three different countries of their choice.
Compare and contrast each country’s laws.
Discuss how their understanding of the differences among cultures will affect their ability to make decisions within their company.
Discuss what ethical issues arise as a result of differences in cybercriminal prosecution across cultures.
Cybercrime Laws in Different Countries
Cybercrime and its Categories
Cybercrime is a criminal act whose platform is a computer and a network. The equipment and system can be used either as a tool or a target. Different types of cybercrimes take place. Examples of these cybercrimes are defamation, forgery, mischief, theft, and fraud that are traditional. There other causes of cybercrimes such as human error, which can either be accidental or intentional. Employees can cause a human error in an organization or people from the outside. Cybercrime leads to loss of identity, harassment, stalking, and invasion of privacy, among others.
There are several categories of cybercrimes. They involve hacking and cracking, which the act of breaking into the network or a computer. Hackers use programs to break into the systems. In most cases, hackers commit this kind of crime for their monetary gain (Cyber Crime & its Categories, 2011). They use credit card information to transfer money from different bank accounts then later transfer it to their account. The web crackers inject viruses into the system, intending to damage it. Web hijacking involves hacking the webserver by dominating the website of another person.
The second category is unauthorized access, which involves instructing, communicating, or gaining entry into the memory function resources of a computer itself, the computer network or system. The third category is cyber fraud. The internet has its positivity and negativities. The fraudsters take advantage of the internet to commit certain types of cybercrimes. These crimes are such as credit card fraud, where one passes his credit card information unknowingly to the wrong sources, virus hoax emails, lottery frauds, and spoof email and websites security alerts. The fourth category is cyber theft. It involves making illegal use of other people’s financial information through the computer.
How cybercrime is handled legally
In the United Kingdom, some acts were passed by the government regarding the use of computers. The two laws are the Data Protection Act, which was passed in the 1984 and Computer Misuse Act, which was passed in 1990 (Kim, 1997). The Data Protection Act handles how personal data should be used and its procurement while the Computer Misuse Act defines the penalties, laws, and procedures that surround entry into the computer that is not authorized. In 1993, some citizens violated the criminal conspiracy provision of the British Computer Misuse Act and were convicted and later sentenced.
In Canada, there are two sections in the Canadian criminal code. The chapters are 342.1 and 430. They are very strict in dealing with cybercrimes. Section 342.1 is divided into two parts, where the first part handles the traditional methods of cybercrime, whereas the second part deals with the programs and data on a computer. It dictates that if one violates the laws concerning cybercrime, he or she is mandated to serve ten years in prison. These unlawful acts include entry into the systems by hacking or frauds and interception of transmission.
In Italy, several code sections deal with cybercrimes. Examples are the code European Economic Community (EEC) code 250/91, which enables the integrity of software that is copyrighted. The Italian code section 518/92 which allows different penalties awarded against evading taxes and selling of pirated software. Code section 547 deals with possession, deterring, and alteration of the systems of the computer or the data. Any pirated material in Italy is raided down, and the people behind the piracy are convicted and sentenced to fined a considerable amount.
Compare and contrast each country’s laws.
Each country has different laws concerning cybercrime. The United Kingdom has laws that mainly handle how personal data should be used. Canada feels how data, in general, is managed, and Italy deals mostly with piracy of content or data. There are similarities among these countries. These similarities are that hackers have found a way to promote the legislation of better laws of cybercrime. The legal issues concerning cybercrimes in these countries have been established within their culture and boundaries over the internet. Programs such as the United Nations Crime Prevention have been developed, which include the effort of these united countries.
Differences among cultures
In these three interdependent countries, there are different cultures involved. It is good to understand and appreciate different cultures to enable a pleasant working environment and useful connections. Good connections and relationships influence decision making. Products designed in one culture, manufactured in a different one, then sold in yet in another different culture are common (Müller, Spang & Özcan, 2008). It is an excellent platform for legislation of these cybercrime laws and making decisions within the company.
Ethical Issues
It is difficult to identify a criminal or instead collect evidence that might lead to a conviction. Most of the criminals are not within the jurisdiction of the country that the person seeking sentence comes from. According to the legal abilities, one cannot arrest an offender who is from a different location; however, easy it can be to identify them. Unless if there is a common understanding or a cross-boundary warrant, arresting such a criminal would be undermining the ethical issue of the environment, outsourcing, and trust, and integrity.
References
(PDF) Cyber Crime & its Categories. (2011, October 1). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274652160_Cyber_Crime_its_Categories
Kim, M. W. (1997). How Countries Handle Computer Crime. Ethics and Law on Electronic Frontier.
Müller, R., Spang, K., & Özcan, S. (2008). Cultural differences in decision-making among project teams: examples from Swedish and German project teams. Project Management Institute, Warsaw.
