- What are the implications of the absence of national cybercrime laws?
Implications of the absence of cyber laws are numerous. Lack of cyber laws increases the number of corporate internet attacks from industrial espionage and sabotages, which result in the unavailability of access to services by both customers and employees. This attack attempts to divert traffic to competitor sites leading to financial losses. Similarly, failure of the protection of intellectual property discourages innovation and novelty as inventors remain exposed to copyright, patent, and trademarks because of being exploited by others. Institutional collaboration to manage risk and minimize threats becomes impossible when legislation frameworks concerning cyber-attacks are lacking. This coordination is necessary between the government, agencies, and the private sector to share intelligence and manage threats. Citizens within jurisdictions with cyber laws shy away from opening up and getting into exchanges with those who do not between parties become difficult in cases of occurrences. Lack of cyber laws makes it even more challenging to standardize internet use and cyber laws universally. Laws revolving around technology have been known to be very heterogeneous and inconsistent worldwide. A significant effect of lack of cyber laws is the violation of human rights by bringing harm to data, people, infrastructure, and information.
- Are there any other countries where this might occur today?
Countries that lack laws criminalizing acts designing malware attacks include Afghanistan, Libya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mongolia. Similarly, when it comes to computer malware rates, Algeria is the least secure with Vietnam and Indonesia closely following in terms of having no legislation laws to prepare for current attacks. Similarly, Bangladesh has the highest percentage of mobile malware attacks. With the increasing global connectivity and constant innovations in technology, points of vulnerabilities are increasing at an alarming rate, together with the advancement in malware attacks for various reasons, e.g., financial gain, information gain, crippling of operations, and so on.
- If you were responsible for drafting a cybercrime law, what elements would it include to cover the act described in the case?
To make the law stricter with high impact, I would use the concept amending existing legislation and codes to include cyber laws instead of developing separate new ones. The implication of this is that the perpetrator ends up violating two laws and not one. The level of criminal culpability must also be clearly outlined, i.e., the degree to which a person intended the illegal act. This includes the purpose or intent of the violator to cause harm as well as the willingness to commit the crime by being aware of the wrongdoing but going ahead to commit the act. This will cover the intention to develop the malware and even sending it to a receiver, which, when clicks, it triggers the sending of the virus to all the addresses in the receiver’s contact. The level of criminal culpability will give harm as caused to data, people, infrastructure, and information by malware. It is also vital to include procedural law, which defines the procedure of handling suspects during the investigation. These include elements on data collection, search and seizure, privacy, digital forensics, and data protection. The malware attack has to be categorized on the extent to which such offenses under unauthorized access to computer material, unauthorized access with the intent for further crimes, and unauthorized modification of computer resources.
