World8217;s computer laws lag behind Internet changes

Experts who spend hours each day probing vulnerabilities in computer networks around the world say that Internet security issues will continue to exist until greater efforts are made to fix the weakest links in network defences. Cyber vandals say the easiest targets are often educational institutions, both in the United States and overseas. One 17-year-old sometime hacker says favourite targets are computers in South Korea, China, the Philippines, and Russia and eastern Europe.

More stoutly defended commercial and government computers are often targeted by people seeking to make a name for themselves, the hacker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, noted. The United States8217; top computer cop, Michael Vatis, head of the FBI-led National Infrastructure Protection Centre in Washington, said the Internet8217;s decentralized, global nature covered up crimes. quot;It is difficult to investigate many of these cases because security is so poor. The Internet8217;s design allows for criminals to conceal their trail and render themselves anonymous in many respects,quot; Vatis said in an ABC News television interview over the weekend.

Authorities in the Philippines say their probe has been hampered by a lack of laws covering the new global computer network, a lack that delayed arrests and perhaps gave suspects time to dispose of key evidence linking them to the virus. quot;We have trying to build awareness in other countries and make sure that countries around the world have adequate laws in place to prosecute these sorts of crimes,quot; Vatis said on Sunday.

While reluctant to name nations perceived as laggards incomputer security laws, US officials have touted the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as a model. This US law sets out the crime of knowingly transmittinga quot;program, information, code or command 8230; that intentionally causes damage without authorisation to a protected computer.quot;

US policy makers8217; comments echoed the arguments of Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor and the author of a seminal book on the subject titled quot;Code and Other Lessons of Cyberspace.quot; Lessig contends that National legal codes have not kept upwith the limitless innovations made possible by software codes.

He says that many apparent dilemmas posed by the Internet Age will not be solved until interested parties 8211; software programmers, industry leaders, regulators and computer users generally 8211; understand the choices shaping the design and operation of software. quot;Living in a networked society has the effect of changinglegal presuptions entirely,quot; said Andrew Shapiro, a New York lawyer and author of the 1999 book quot;The Control Revolution: How the Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge.quot;

quot;It means we will have to harmonise our actions as legal societies, our standards and our expectations of citizens,quot; he added. The immediacy of electronic communications networks allowed the Love Bug to spread around the globe in just hours on Thursday, knocking out tens of millions of computers in homes, businesses, military installations and government agencies.

Estimates of damage from the virus and its variants have already reached about 5 billion and could total 10 billion, market research firm Computer Economics said. Shapiro said instant electronic communications had called into question what an occurrence was and where it took place. quot;Did the crime take place when the guilty party hit the computer key or where it had an impact?quot; he asked. National laws differ.

But James Dempsey, senior staff counsel at the Washington-based Centre for Democracy and Technology, an Internet civil liberties advocacy group, said that in most cases, existing laws were adequate to cope with the new attacks. Dempsey noted that computer users often left the equivalent offinger prints in their travels over the Web and that the digital revolution had in many ways been a boon to law enforcement, making these crimes easier to track than traditional ones.