Essay On Computer Crime

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Keeping Up with Computers
Computer crimes have been occurring since the late 1960’s. Computers and technology has evolved very much so since the 1960’s and it is now nearly impossible to do business without them. With the invention of small thumb drives and cards that can store large amounts of data it can be very easy to steal valuable information from a computer without anyone knowing. Since much of this valuable information is made up of people’s financial and health information as well as trade secrets and company information this is an important issue to be addressed. Laws need to be continually updated or created in order to adapt to computer crimes and to punish those committing them.
The first federally prosecuted case of a computer crime occurred in October of 1966 when a consultant, Milo Arthur Bennett, hired by Minneapolis bank to program and maintain its computer systems was caught changing the bank’s checking account program. He changed the program so that it did not alert the bank of overdraft charges in his account. Mr. Bennett was found guilty of embezzlement and this began the problem of computer crimes and thus the need to define them and create laws to punish them.
Computer crime is defined by Mariam Jennings as “theft, espionage and other illegal activities accomplished through the use of a computer” (Jennings G-5). Some crimes using a computer can include using computers to commit economic espionage, to commit electronic fund transfer crimes, to circumvent copyright protection devices, for unauthorized access, spamming, commit fraud, and cyberbullying. Since there are so many ways to commit crimes with computers there are many laws to protect people from criminals.
The Economic Espionage Act (EEA) ...

... middle of paper ...

... case states have passed laws to protect people from cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking and cyber-harassment.
It has been almost fifty years since the first case of computer crime was prosecuted. Since then computers have made themselves at home in the everyday lives of Americans. There have been numerous new laws created to fight against the criminals using computers to cause damage to individuals, businesses and the United States. These laws are in constant need of updates and changes because of how fast computers are evolving. In this era almost everyone carries a computer around with them, either a laptop, tablet or smartphone. Although existing laws are sufficient there will always be the need for new laws to keep up with the technological changes that occur every day. Every time a criminal commits a new crime this opens the door for a new law to be needed.

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