What Is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA),18 U.S.C. § 1030, is a federal “anti-hacking” statute. While it is primarily a criminal law, a 1994 amendment allows civil actions to be brought by private litigants.
Violations can be committed by either an outside intruder who is not authorized to access the protected computer, such as a hacker, or by someone who is authorized to use the computer, but exceeds their authorized access.
The CFAA lists seven types of offences:
• Obtaining national security information
• Obtaining information from a protected computer
• Trespassing in a government computer
• Accessing a protected computer in order to defraud and obtain value
• Damaging a protected computer and/or
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How the CFAA Has Grown in Scope
The CFAA began as a 1986 amendment to the Counterfeit Access Device and Abuse Act, passed by Congress two years earlier. It was written to supplement existing mail and wire fraud laws, which Congress concluded didn’t adequately cover the emerging class of computer crimes.
At the time the CFAA was passed, computer networks were mostly limited to universities, government and military institutions. The scope of the CFAA was similarly narrow. It mainly served to criminalize unauthorized access to national defense information, if that information was then used to harm the United States, as well as financial institution and consumer reporting records.
Since then, Congress has amended the CFAA five times, greatly expanding its scope and application.
Major Amendments to the CFAA
1994
The 1994 amendments removed the requirement that the offender access the computer “without authorization”. This introduced a whole new class of offenders: individuals who are authorized to use a third-party computer, and use that access to break the
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2001
The PATRIOT Act further expanded the CFAA, increasing both its penalties and its effectiveness as a prosecution tool. Some of the changes:
• Prosecutors need only prove a general intent to cause damage, rather than a specific intent to cause a predefined type of damage
• Suspected violations of the CFAA were added to the list of felonies for which the FBI can conduct wiretap surveillance
• CFAA protection was expanded to include computers in foreign countries, if those computers affect interstate commerce within the United States
• Maximum prison sentences were increased to ten years for first-time offenders, and 20 years for second-time offenders
2008
The CFAA was amended by the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act to address the rise in computer crimes. Among the notable changes, the amendment made it a felony to damage ten or more computers.
In civil cases, the amendment eliminated the need for the Plaintiff’s loss to be greater than $5,000. A Plaintiff still must show that they suffered damage or
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was drafted to encourage and protect whistleblowers from retaliation after the fraud scandal that cause the collapse of Enron in 2001. In a 2010 Senate Report found that “external auditors detected only 4.1 percent of uncovered fraud schemes, “whistleblower tips detected 54.1% of uncovered fraud schemes in public companies” and were thirteen times more effective than external audits” (Turpan, 2016). Whistleblowers serve an important service to the public and are more effective than external audits. The CFAA has been used to by employers to retaliate against employees who act as informants for agencies like Internal Revenue Service or Security Exchange Commission to expose fraud. There employees, not to their financial gain, gather information as evidence of fraud by the company. With a broad interpretation of CFAA, the employee would "exceed their authority" and was "unauthorized" to access the information, therefore allowing the company to hide their illegal
In conclusion, the idea behind the 2001 USA Patriot Act was a solid one made in a time of extreme duress and fearfulness. Now that we have had time to readjust and really look at the consequences of this act, it is time to reevaluate and pass into law a modified version to keep in line with what our forefathers believed for our country.
Cybercrimes and Cyber Protection in Canada Whenever a new technological advancements are made, laws and agencies must be implemented and amendments must be crafted to protect its users. As personal computers became available to Canada’s population, information became more accessible than ever before, and personal information such as a person’s address was easier to obtain. The computer and new technological advancements led to a new branch of criminality; cybercrimes. Cybercrimes are computer-related crimes defined by the Council of Europe (2001) as offences against the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of computer data and systems as well as computer-related and content-related offences.
Computer misuse Act It is an act of the parliament of the UK redacted in 1990 as a measure to cope to the new technological threats. Old traditional forms of crime such as harassment and fraud offences are being committed electronically via computers or internet nowadays. Lately are appearing new forms of e-crime using new technologies such as Denial of Service ( DOS ) attack and phishing by offenders with good technical knowledge in IT.Thus laws in our society needs to be updated to deal to the new forms of crime. Computer misuse Act has been enacted after some cyber attacks, for instance the hacking attack against British Telecom commited by Robert Schifreen and Stephen Gold, between 1984 and 1985, using conventional devices such as a
Computer crime has been an issue since the beginning of computers. Wherever there is something good, there is always someone who takes advantage of it. This can be seen in cyber crime, which has been on the rise in recent years. According to the Los Angeles Times, the median cost of computer crime to a company per year has risen from $3.8 million dollars in 2010 to $5.9 million. (Rodriguez, 2011) This suggests that computer crime is becoming an even bigger hazard to companies. A recent example of this was the data breach committed against Target in 2013.
As mentioned above briefly that FAA was initially developed in 1925, but until 1959 it has only been use in five cases, which was a big surprise to most of the lawmen. All the people who were familiar with the act projected that it would be a big success and FAA would be used on regular basis. However, in the later part of twentieth century there were various Supreme Court verdicts which were later changed from “quaint . . . procedural statute” into a “national regulatory statute”. In simpler te...
The Patriot Act was signed into law as a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The USA PATRIOT Act has helped America make progress toward becoming the most secure nation in the world. What is the Patriot Act? The USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law quickly without much debate back in 2001 right after the September 11th attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. The Patriot Act touches almost everything from more funding for businesses that are affected by terrorist attacks all the way to funding affected families of terrorist attacks.
There are different types of computer crimes that many people become victims of every day. Computer crime is any crime that involves a computer and a network. The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target ("Computer Crime: Chapter 2: What Are the Crimes? ", n.d.) - " Crimes such as data diddling, pump and dump, social engineering and spoofing are computer crimes. Even though these crimes are difficult due to privacy issues, the new technology has made investigations and prosecutions well organized and effective.
The primary purpose of the “Statute of Frauds” (SOF) is to protect the interests of parties once they are involved in litigating a contract dispute (Spagnola, 2008). The relevant statutes are reliant upon state jurisdictions to determine whether the contract falls under the SOF, and whether the writing of the contract satisfies the requirements of the statute of frauds (Spagnola, 2008). However, all contracts are not covered under the SOF. In essence, for a contract to be deemed as legal by definition of the SOF, there must be verification of the following requirements for formation of the contract, which are as follows: (1) There must be least two parties to the contract, (2) There must be a mutual agreement and acceptance on the price to pay for goods and services offered, (3) The subject matter or reason for entering the contract, must be clearly understood by all parties to the contract, (4) and there must be a stipulated time for performance of duties under the contractual obligations (Spagnola, 2008). Lastly, there are five categories of contracts that are covered under the SOF, which are as follows: (1) The transfer of real property interests, (2) Contracts that are not performable within one year, (3) Contracts in consideration of marriage, (4) Surtees and guarantees (answering to the debt of another), and (5) Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.) provisions regarding the sale of goods or services, legally valued over five hundred dollars ($500.00) (Spagnola, 2008).
The Privacy Act was established in 1988. The Privacy Act includes the Information Privacy Principles that apply to the handling of personal information by most Australian, ACT and Norfolk Island public sector agencies.
The CFAA was made to cover the majority of computer crimes. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was created because the United States Secret Service, and other government agencies needed a law to allow them to investigate cyber-crimes. The United States government also needed a way to discourage and stop people from hacking, accessing data, and many other internet crimes from a government computer. With computers on the rise, and the government converting to computers, the government needed a way to discourage and prosecute someone that damaged or gained access to the government’s information, and any other kind of computer. This law was also made to protect any kind of businesses computers or servers. The CFAA also is considered a net that Congress throws all the bad fish in. Including “fraud, hacking, piracy, DOS (Denial of Service) attacks, trafficking passwords, (selling, stealing, and buying passwords), and distributing malicious code.” To summarize the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act it protects “anything that connects to the internet”.
Legislation Computer Misuse Act 1990 What it is? Comptuer misuse act is an act which was released in 1990 , this was designed to protect users against accts and thefts of information, this information can include addresses, names, credit card details etc… Theres many offences that come under this act which include hacking, unauthroised access to computer with the intent of spreaching malicion software such as viruses. This act also includes the modification of computer software and data which include passwords , settings and other changes which affect the normal operation of the system.
The use of computers in homes, schools, offices, and other places has increased in the past few years due to technological developments. As computers have become important components of modern communication, their increased use has also led to the emergence of computer crimes. Computer crimes basically involve the use of a computer system to carry out an illegal activity. In attempts to lessen the frequency and impact of computer crimes, law enforcement agencies use computer forensic to investigate these offenses. Actually, computer crimes are governed by specific laws and dealt with through conducting a computer forensic investigation (Easttom & Taylor, 2011, p.337). Notably, a computer forensic investigation is usually carried out through the use of computer forensic tools, which help in collection of evidence based on the specific offense.
Computer crime is defined as, “Criminal activity directly related to the use of computers, specifically illegal trespass into the computer system or database of another, manipulation or theft of stored or on-line data, or sabotage of equipment and data.”(1). This includes both crimes using computers and crimes against computers.
These types of crimes have become a matter of importance for the consumers as well the business firms because it involves large eviction of the amount in terms of money. In these types of crimes, computer and Internet are the primary factor (Spinello, 2000). A high percentage of population is using computers in the Australia, United States as well as other developed nations. These people are much more connected with the world by the use of internet. They are using the computer for fun, business, e-commerce, e-marketing, etc.; thus, it has become an essential part of life and daily routine (Wall, 2008).