1. Communications
New times bring new crimes. It’s a story as old as humanity and as new as the Internet. First comes cars,
and then car thieves follow. Telephones are followed by telephone fraud. Now we’ve got computers…. To
make home, school, and office life easier, we rely on computers. As a result of this dependency, computer
use grows everyday. Along with this growing use of computers comes widespread computer crime.
With the Internet becoming increasingly popular, more and more people are becoming computer literate,
and networks are becoming more readily accessible.
People think that computer crime is a fact that started around of 1980s that is not true. We know that the first
recorded computer crime took place in 1958 and the first prosecution for computer crime came about in
1966. “A few years after the IBM begun marketing its first line of business computers. By the mid-1970s
scores of such crimes were being reported every year and yearly losses were estimated to be as high as
$300 million” [Mandell, 1992]. Computer criminals are active for more than 30 years. At this point it is useful
to collocate some past important cases:
“1964: Robert F. Hancock attempted to sell $5 mi
...
“The FBI said that the dangers of cyber crime were rising because of the increased availability of hacking
tools on the Internet as well as electronic hardware such as radio frequency jamming equipment. “Hackers
are school dropouts and job changers who turned to computing as a way of outsmarting everyone except
the other members of their social group” . Subject: Why the Rise??
The rise in computer crime can easily be blamed upon the increasing number of users. We have already
seen that some hackers strive to access closed computer systems not for pecuniary gain but as intellectual
exercise.
Hacking really came into existence after 1980s as a result of telecommunication growth as well as high
computer literacy. The remainder were dismissed for lack of evidence. Up to 40% were turned down 'for lack
of evidence of criminal intent, weak or insufficient evidence or no apparent violation of law'. 5 billion worth of
software is illegally copied and distributed worldwide. It provides the same opportunities for crime that the
real world offers. Hacking include a broad-range of computer-helped activities. Finally we can say that all
hackers cannot be characterised as benevolent nor nasty or nuisance. Hackers seem to break into computer
systems for the intellectual challenge. My investigation also continued by a wider question: is it legal to have
access and knowledge on information? As I have mentioned previously the majority of hackers does not
have malicious purpose. A poll conducted this year by the Information Technology Association found 61% of
those surveyed said rising cyber-crime made them less likely to do business over the Internet; 62% said
they did not believe enough was being done to protect consumers against cyber-crime. These are based on
authorisation and "need to know" basis.