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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LAWS

INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION
IN CYBER CRIME MITIGATION

SUBMITTED TO :
Miss Tamanna Kohli
SUBMITTED BY :
Vishal Kaushik
Hemantdeep
Navdeep

TABLE OF CONTENTS :
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S No. Topic Page No.

1 Acknowledgement 3

2 Introduction 4

3 Challenges 5

4 International Bodies 8

5 Indian Perspective 10

6 Strategies 11

7 Conclusion 14

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT :
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I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our Information Iechnology

Laws Professor Miss Tamanna Kohli for entrusting me with job of completion
of this assignment on the topic:

International co-operation in cyber crime mitigation .

Working on this topic has helped me to understand the topic deeply and to
extended my understanding of the topic.

INTRODUCTION :
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On the positive side, e-business through the Internet has opened a new world
of communication for consumers in all facets of life, but on the negative side, it
has also created an environment as an open playground for seamless criminal
activities on a global scale. Crimes can be committed thousands of miles away
from the real crime scene. In other words, a cyber criminal does not need to
leave his/her own home or cross a national boundary to commit an act in
several countries around the globe. The communications may be routed
through a variety of ways, ranging from local phone companies, long distance
carriers, Internet service providers, wireless and satellite networks, and may go
through computers located in several countries before attacking targeted
systems around the world.

Countries need to cooperate because cyber criminals are not confined by

national or geographic boundaries, and digital evidence relating to a single
crime can be dispersed across multiple regions. While it is important for
countries to have cyber crime laws in place, it is equally necessary that these
countries have the legal authority to assist foreign countries in an
investigation, even if that country has not suffered any damage itself and is
merely the location of the intruder or a pass-through site. The idea behind
creating international guidelines to fight cyber crime is to facilitate a
straightforward process to conduct digital investigations.

However, there are many challenges to international cooperation to fight

transnational cyber crime. Harmonization of countries' criminal laws, the
extent of this kind of crime, locating and identifying perpetrators across
borders, securing electronic evidence of their crimes so that they may be
brought to justice and other complex jurisdictional issues and procedures, arise
at each step.

MAIN CHALLENGES FACED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT :

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There are many challenges faced by law enforcement agencies. In this section,
we analyze the most important ones, such as the lack of harmonization of
national criminal laws regarding to cyber crimes and the difficulties to find a
clear and comprehensive definition of computer related crime. With the ever-
increasing number of cyber crime offences, it is essential to highlight the
problems concerning the minimal risk of detection and apprehension. These
are lack of training of investigating officials, unknown or anonymous victims,
disinclination of victims to report them upon discovering cyber crimes,
difficulties of locating and identifying perpetrators across
borders and other computer procedural problems of such crimes.

1.) International harmonization of criminal law :

Lack of harmonization of national laws creates too many difficulties. If there is
no common understanding of the problem, countries do not know how to
respond. For instance, it is difficult to find an agreement on common concepts
of cyber crime, computer crime or high-tech crimes.

There has been a great deal of debate among experts regarding what
constitutes a computer crime. The intent of different authors to be precise
about the scope and use of particular definitions means, however, that the use
of these definitions out of their intended context often creates inaccuracies,
with a result that a universally agreed definition of computer crime has not
been achieved to-date.

Computer crime can involve criminal activities that are traditional in nature, all
of which are generally subject to criminal sanction. Nevertheless, the computer
and the Internet have created a number of potentially new misuses or abuses
that may be criminal as well. With respect to traditional forms of crime
committed through the use of new technologies, this updating may be done by
clarifying or abolishing provisions that are no longer completely adequate,
such as statutes unable to create new provisions for new crimes, or as
unauthorized access to computers or data networks. Thus, any
criminal activity committed exclusively through the Internet should be
nominated more specifically a cyber crime.

2.) The extent of cyber crime :

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It has proved difficult to give an accurate overview of the extent of

losses and the actual number of cyber criminal acts. Crime statistics do not
represent the real number of offences. The amount of these hidden crimes
which are unreported or unknown can be attributed to the following reasons:

(1) High-level information and communications technology. One of the factors

why cyber crime is very difficult to detect is due to the massive compact
storage capacity of the computer, manipulation abilities and the speed with
which computers and networks operates.

(2) Lack of training of investigating officials. Officials often do not have

sufficient preparation to deal with problems in the multifaceted environment
of data processing.

(3) Unknown victims. Most of the time, victims are collective groups. In the
case of individual victims, many of them may even fail to realize that a security
problem exists and as such they do not have possibilities for responding to
incidents of cyber crime.

3.) Difficulty in locating and identifying perpetrators across

borders :
Cyber crime is infinitely more difficult to prosecute than physical crime. The
nature of the Internet, with its far-reaching links and easy anonymity, offers
the opportunity for perpetrators to launch attacks and disappear quickly. In
addition to requiring cooperation between countries in identifying
perpetrators of serious offences of international scope, cooperation is also
required for all available resources including law enforcement, military, and
intelligence agencies.

4.) Computer procedural problems :

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The legal world has been based on paper for so long that adaptation to the
digital era has proceeded slowly in relation to the digitalization of the rest of
the business world. In the last few years, courts have begun to routinely accept
electronic evidence, though always very carefully, knowing that electronic
alteration is often simple and that proving it is often hard. Frequently,
discussions about electronic evidences become a confrontation among forensic
technologists. The replacement of visible and corporeal objects of proof with
invisible and intangible evidences in the field of information technology not
only creates practical problems but also opens up new legal issues: the
coercive powers of prosecuting authorities, specific problems with personal
data and the admissibility of computer-generated evidence.

5.) Conflicts of jurisdiction :

There are also a number of complex jurisdictional issues to confront, given the
multiplicity of countries potentially involved in a cyber crime. How can it be
determined in which country the crime was actually committed? Or who
should have jurisdiction to prescribe rules of conduct or of adjudication?
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INTERNATIONAL LEGAL INSTRUMENTS :

At first glance, the worldwide legislation regarding cyber crime seems to be
somewhat of a mess. There are numerous international approaches and
coalitions around the world all attempting to create a stable online
environment domestically and internationally.

The lead international bodies are the United Nations, the G-8 Subgroup on
High-Tech Crime , the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD) :
The first comprehensive international effort was initiated in 1983 by the OECD.
It dealt with the criminal law problems of computer related crimes. This
organization began the initiative to achieve the harmonization of European
computer crime legislation.
Between 1983 and 1985, the OECD carried out a study of the possibility of an
international harmonization of criminal laws to address computer related
crimes. In September 1985, the committees recommended that member
countries consider the extent to which knowingly committed acts in the field of
computer-related abuse should be criminalized and covered by national penal
legislation.

In 1986, the study resulted in a report which surveyed existing laws and
proposals to be reformed, and recommended a minimum list of abuses that
countries should consider penalizing by criminal law (OECD-ICCP, 1986).

In 1992, the Council of the OECD and two dozen of its member countries
approved a Recommendation of the Council Concerning Guidelines for the
Security of Information Systems intended to make available a foundational
information security structure for the public and private areas.

THE UNITED NATIONS :

In 1990, the eight United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the
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Treatment of Offenders approved a resolution in which it requested to

Member States to increase their efforts to fight computer related crimes by
considering, if necessary, the following measures: modernization of national
criminal laws and procedures; improvement of computer security and
prevention measures; adoption of adequate training measures; and
elaboration of rules of ethics in the use of computers.

In 1994, the U.N published the United Nations Manual on the Prevention and
Control of Computer Related Crime (United Nations, 1994). This Manual
studied the phenomenon of computer-related crimes, substantive criminal law
protecting privacy, procedural law, and the needs and avenues for
international cooperation.

Finally, a Resolution on combating the criminal misuse of information

technologies was adopted by the General Assembly on December 4, 2000 that
included:
(a) States should ensure that their laws and practice eliminate safe havens for
those who criminally misuse information technologies.
(d) Legal systems should protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability
of data and computer systems from unauthorized impairment and ensure that
criminal abuse is penalized.
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INDIAN PERSPECTIVE:

The Information Technology Act, 2000 :

The Information Technology Act, 2000 In May 2000, both the houses of the
Indian Parliament passed the Information Technology Bill. The Bill received the
assent of the President in August 2000 and came to be known as the
Information Technology Act, 2000. Cyber laws are contained in the IT Act, 2000
. This Act aims to provide the legal infrastructure for e-commerce in India. And
the cyber laws have a major impact for e-businesses and the new economy in
India. So, it is important to understand what are the various perspectives of
the IT Act, 2000 and what it offers. The Information Technology Act, 2000 also
aims to provide for the legal framework so that legal sanctity is accorded to all
electronic records and other activities carried out by electronic means. The Act
states that unless otherwise agreed, an acceptance of contract may be
expressed by electronic means of communication and the same shall have
legal validity and enforceability.

The IT Act, 2000 attempts to change outdated laws and provides ways to deal
with cyber crimes. We need such laws so that people can perform purchase
transactions over the Net through credit cards without fear of misuse. The Act
offers the much-needed legal framework so that information is not denied
legal effect, validity or enforceability, solely on the ground that it is in the form
of electronic records.
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STRATEGIES TO FIGHT CYBERCRIME :

Technology:
Technology is the best way to fight against cyber crimes. The IT industry is hard
at work, developing hardware and software to aid in preventing and detecting
cyber criminals. Many security technology systems use cryptographic
techniques for achieving this (Mao, 2003) (Oppliger, 2005). An investigator
might encounter encrypted data or even suspect that the existence of
additional data is being concealed using steganography methods (Wainer,
2002). An understating of how cryptography developed and how it works in
the computerized environment can be invaluable in investigating and
uncovering many types of cyber crime. The technology also needs very skilled
personnel to use it accurately and present it in layman terminology in courts of
law.

Information technology professionals:

The IT community needs to be educated in many other issues like how laws are
made, how crimes are prosecuted and how computer related crime
understanding is approached. The first issue includes how IT professionals can
get involved at the legislative level by testifying before committees, sharing
their expertise, and making opinions known to members of their governing
bodies. The second one includes how IT professionals can become involved at
the prosecution level as expert witnesses. Finally, the third focus is on the need
to understand what is and is not against the law, as well as the differences
between criminal and civil law, the international nature of the problem, the
rights and privileges of the accused and the victim, penalty and law
enforcement.

Victim cooperation :
Without the cooperation of cyber crime victims, efforts to suppress these acts
can be only partially effective. Reporting incidents to authorities is necessary to
discover criminal behaviour. The accurate reporting of cyber crimes provides
an additional benefit. The more information the law enforcement community
has on new trends of cyber crimes, the better it can adapt existing methods of
detection to fight against them. Reporting of crimes would definitely promote
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public confidence in the ability of the law enforcement and judicial

communities to detect investigate and prevent cyber crimes.

Community:
Familiarity with electronic complexity is slowly spreading among the general
population. It is necessary to educate the users of computers and network
systems. Law enforcement and IT professionals need to work more closely with
the community to build a cyber-fighting team that has the skills, the means and
the authority necessary to reduce the instances of crime on the Internet.
Training in this area and familiarity with the concepts behind complex
computer techniques are required before law enforces can operate
adequately.

Social Control:
It is necessary to convince the community about the need to track down cyber
criminals and expose the problems that these individuals pose to different
sectors of the society under varying circumstances. If cyber criminals are
shamed rather than admired, some will be less likely to engage in the criminal
conduct. A number of potential cyber criminals are attracted by the idea of
impressing not only people in their environments but also colleagues in the
cyber community. Emphasizing on the fact that a crime in the cyberworld can
be of the same high significance and have similar consequences as a crime in
the physical world is still a major challenge. There is no doubt that some
people will commit crimes regardless of peer pressure. However, this pressure
is a valuable tool to reduce the level of cyber crime based on the “everyone
does it” argument.
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CONCLUSION:
Cyber crime is a persisting international threat that transcends national
boundaries in a manner that renders this form of organized crime a global
concern. Cyber crime may take several forms including online fraud, theft and
cyber terrorism. It has been seen that amongst the most important reasons
that facilitate the perpetration of this crime is the globalization of technology
and the revolutionary advancement of information technologies that have
impacted on criminal activity. The increasing proliferation in usage of
technology assisted criminal activity and cyber crime merits further attention
from the global community by enacting the necessary legislative provisions and
implementing effective technological and enforcement tools that reduce IT-
facilitated criminal activities.

The prevention and prosecution of computer related crime addresses the

needs of all societies, with their emerging and still vulnerable information
technology structures. Improving international cooperation requires:
harmonization of substantive laws (agreement to common concepts of
computer related crime), common set of investigative powers, adequate and
flexible mutual legal assistance and extradition arrangements. It is admitted
that cyber crime should be subject to a global principle of public policy that
aims at combating and preventing this crime through raising global
awareness and increasing literacy rates, coordinating legislative efforts on
national, regional and global levels, and establishing a high level global
network of cooperation between national, regional and international
enforcement agencies and police forces.
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Bibliography :
• Moore, R. (2005) “Cyber crime: Investigating High-Technology Computer
Crime,” Cleveland, Mississippi: Anderson Publishing.

• Warren G. Kruse, Jay G. Heiser (2002). Computer forensics: incident

response essen1als

• Information Technology Act,2000

• Information Technology (Amendment) Act,2008.