defenses to cybercrime allegations

 defenses to cybercrime allegations

Cybercrime is the unauthorized access to confidential data stored online, on a computer, or the internet databases. It is usually achieved through various ways, which include but are not limited to theft of passwords, hacking, and fraud. Cybercrime typically leads to severe legal penalties imposed on the suspects should they be found guilty for having committed the crime. Nonetheless, there are defenses to cybercrime that can prevent suspected cybercrime criminals from incurring legal penalties. This essay offers a discussion on the defenses to cybercrime allegations by providing insight on factual and legal protection to cybercrime.

Factual defenses to cybercrime allegations are the defense, which ascertains that there is no way in which the court of law can prove the occurrence of cybercrime. The trojan horse defense is an excellent example of the factual arguments to cybercrime allegations. The defense is based on the fact that the court can’t determine the exact suspect who conducted a cybercrime. A Trojan horse program is a routine that appears to have a useful purpose. However, it masks some of the hidden malicious functionality, which may range from downloading contraband files to hacking other computers. The Trojan horse defense would help in acquittance of the criminals from the cybercrime allegations since it hides malicious functionalities that will make the court to link the suspects to the crime. Trojan are armed with wiping tool which is capable of making the computer to launch DoS attack, edit the computer log files and then deletes all the traces of trojan.

Thus, it will make the court to experience difficulty in locating the real suspect in cybercrime allegations.

The legal defenses to cybercrime allegations involve the lack of capacity of the government to overcome a defense based on the vagueness of statutes on cybercrime. The first federal law enacted to deal with cybercrime is the CFAA, which was enacted in 1986. Nonetheless, the inability of the government to overcome the defense based on the vagueness of CFAA usually offers legal protection to the suspects engaged in cyber crime allegations. The primary focus of the law was to prevent unlicensed use of computers along with the rudimentary computer systems to acquire confidential information of the government. Nonetheless, CFAA has failed to the extent to which it has extended its prohibitions into the mobile data space. The vagueness on the CFAA habitually makes court to courts to turn to contract law, agency law along with computer science for guidance on the action to take regarding cyber crime allegations. The vagueness principle allows the court to adopt a narrow interpretation of CFAA, and it should limit the application of the law to prohibit only the traditional notions of hacking together with serious misuse of information. The limitation on the implementation of the vague CFAA usually gives the crime criminals an escape route from the cybercrime allegations. It will undermine the ability of the court to use some definite clauses of the law to prosecute the criminals.

The factual defense is most likely to prevail in the highest number of cybercrime cases. It is impossible for the court to locate the suspect involved in cybercrime, given the fact that the Trojan horse can hide malicious functionality. Similarly, it can edit the computer log files and then deletes all the traces of trojan. By clearing all the marks of trojan, it won’t be very easy to locate the activities that contributed to the cybercrime. Hence, based on the operation of the trojan horse, it is evident that factual defense is most likely to prevail in the highest number of cybercrime lawsuits compared to the legal defense, which relies on statues which can quickly be repealed.

The future laws can limit defenses to cybercrime allegations by enhancing the scope of their jurisdiction and also implement various ways of evaluating trojan horse to help trace the activities of the suspects. Strengthening the jurisdiction of the law will help in reducing the limitations on the application of the cybercrime laws to assist the court have firm ground for overcoming the defense. Reduction in the restriction on the use of the cybercrime laws will considerably help in limiting the defenses to cybercrime allegations.

In conclusion, cybercrime habitually involves unlicensed entry to the confidential information stored on the computer. The suspects of cybercrime usually use either the factual defense of legal defense to defend themselves against the cybercrime allegations in the court of law. The factual argument has a high chance of prevailing in many cases involving cybercrime compared to legal defense since it is not possible for the court to determine the exact suspect who committed the crime. Likewise, laws should expound on their jurisdiction to limit protection to cybercrime allegations in the future.