Law and Technology: Framing the Roadmap of Tomorrow Cybercrime as a Global Phenomenon Audi Naura ALSA Local Chapter Universitas Airlangga
Introduction i.
Background
Technology nowadays is the main aspect within our life. It increasing growth and influence has affect many sector in a global scale. To keep up with this phenomenon, we have to be able to adapt and also evolve with all the rapid changes that happens. This advance change of technology leads to a certain condition where it needs to combine technologies in our daily lives to make everything easier and reliable. With all the possible changes that could happen by now or in the future, this technological improvement has brought faster means of conducting new laws and policies to make sure that everything works within its corridor. The merge between these two distinct areas will enhance our chance to make a big difference in the near future. In this era, we cannot override the fact that by having a massive growth in technologies, there will be plenty of adjustment with many legal issues and most of them are related with cybercrime. Issues such as computer software piracy, digital media copyright, hacking, email counterfeiting, computer misuse, and privacy issues are one of many activities related to cybercrime.1 Following these issues, countries around the world are starting to build their own laws and regulations to regulate the vast area of cybercrime. Today, the internet is the main source for any kind of information regardless for the fact that it is also a borderless place for criminal offenders where it contains various threats of cybercrime coming in different format and patterns. The urge to start fighting for cybercrime are starting to grow among governments and organizations. Having a borderless place like the internet, each
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All Answers ltd, 'What is cyber crime?' (Lawteacher.net, May 2019) <https://www.lawteacher.net/freelaw-essays/technology-law/cyber-crime-law-essay.php?vref=1> accessed 6 May 2019
nation has to respect the sovereignty of other nation. Unfortunately, different regulations and legal system often cause major obstacles.2
ii.
Basic regulation
With the growing rate of cybercrime increasing throughout the year, in international scale, different nations have different policies and ways to overcome the threat of cybercrime. These policies may come from their national law or from international law. In example, police departments in the United States are establishing National Cybercrime Training Partnership (NCTP) specializing in computer crimes units. In this units, most proportions of the offences are related to cybercrime.3 In The EU, a number of European states have agreed to created a body called the forum on Cybercrime based on the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime treaty as a foundation for standardize European law regarding cybercrime regulation. The United Nations also play an important role by providing help for developing countries to deal with cybercrime issues. In 1994, The UN published a “manual on the prevention and control of computer-related crime” which covers the need for substantive and procedural reforms, crime prevention through data security. The UN also adopted two resolutions on computer crime in 1990 and in 2001. In Indonesia, the cybercrime issues are regulated under the Law No. 11 of 2008 regarding Information and Electronic Transactions, at lastly amended by Law No. 19 of 2016 (EIT Law). It includes hacking, accessing another person’s electric system, obtaining electronic information and/or electronic records, etc. Other than the EIT Law, there are several policies and legislation regarding cybercrime activities that is regulated under Indonesian national law, if it involves personal data, it is regulated under Ministry of Communication and Information Regulation No. 12 of 2016 regarding Personal Data Protection in Electronic System. If it may contain certain information security, it is regulated under Ministry of Communication and Information Regulation No. 4 of 2016 regarding Information Security Management System.
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All Answers ltd, 'Computer and cybercrime' (Lawteacher.net, May 2019) <https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/technology-law/computer-and-cybercrime.php?vref=1> accessed 6 May 2019 3 <http://www.nctp.org>.
iii.
Legal issue
Today, with the increasing amount of cybercrime activities in plenty different area, the urge to combat this crime seems to decrease among law enforcement and police agencies because of the lack to respond effectively to the threats posed by those who use computers to commit crimes 4 , it has been said that there is â&#x20AC;&#x153;an apparent lack of effective legislation against cybercrimeâ&#x20AC;?. 5 The cause may come from jurisdictional issues in order to investigate cybercrime activities or the complicated bureaucracy may also affect the effort to fight cybercrime. Other than the complicated bureaucracy of lawmakers, cultural standards however play an important role in the law making process. The different cultural standards among nations may affect the progress to develop an effective way to fight cybercrime and to make law that is possible to address different areas of cybercrime activities.6 At some point, these differences may conflict between the moral, political or constitutional differences across nations and also can create new obstacles while trying to control the content within the cyber area. Some act among various nations may have different consequences, in other words, some act may be possible and can be considered as legal in one nation whereas in other nations it may considered illegal and have legal consequences. For example, in Indonesia, pornography is strictly restricted and it is regulated under the Law No. 44 of 2008 regarding pornography. While in the US, many forms of pornography are legal and are protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.7 Updating a national law in order to prevent new forms of cybercrime may take a longer time. Cybercrimes comes in various format and patterns, so it needs more time to be reviewed and identified in order to create a regulation that can covers the crimes. Most
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Kellermann, T. (2010). Building a Foundation for Global Cybercrime law Enforcement. Computer Fraud and Security, May, 5. 5 Schell, B. H., & Martin, C. (2004). Cybercrime: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, California: ABCCLIO. 6 Shapiro, A.L. (1999). The Control Revolution. Public Affairs. 7
Swire, P.P. (2005). Developments in the Law: The law of cyberspace. Harvard Law Review.
of the time, developing countries lack of appropriate law to tackle cybercrime offenders. This create another obstacles for lawmakers, law enforcement and public institutions. 8
Main Issue
i.
How to overcome cybercrime issue Cybercrime prevention could be done by focusing on the increasing growth of the
crimes, reducing the opportunity by making commitment to fight cybercrime and also increasing the risks and consequences to the offenders. This preventive strategy still plays a relatively effective role in our overall approach to dealing with real-world crime. To be able to identify the potential and the vulnerabilities of each cybercrime issues will eventually help to modify new law to control the design process of the technology and its support systems.9 Another way to to prevent cybercrime activities must be done by lawmakers. Lawmakers should keep up by having a proper legislation for the investigation and prosecution of cybercrime. This could easily be done if lawmakers or the public sector will merge with the private sector to overcome upcoming threats of cybercrime activities. Having a private sector on board followed by academic institutions, regional and international organization will create an equal position for both parties to work by informal agreement and by legal basis.10 This partnership will be beneficial because it is mostly use to exchange information on the upcoming threats and the growth of the cybercrimes. In context of private sector in academic institutions, it contribution will be valuable to the public sector by giving training and education for agencies and professionals to prevent cybercrime. Given the help from academic institution experts such as computer crime experts, researchers and forensics examiners specializing in
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McConnell, T. (2000). Inalienable Rights: The Limits of Consent in Medicine and the Law. Oxford University Press. 9 Wall, D.S. (2007). Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in The Information Age. Polity. 10 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Understanding Cybercrime: Phenomena, Challenges and Legal Responseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (itu.int., May 2019)
computer crime, law enforcements will have the ability to control and operate computers where in case it is infected with malware. It will also help the police agencies to work on technical standards and solution development for more threats to come. While this partnership between these two sector may generate a substantial progress, having a proper legislation under the national law also play a significant role to overcome cybercrime issues. Lawmakers and police agencies need to create and implies a regulation that could address and eventually reduce the upcoming threats. To optimizes this effort, the possible way to create such as law may be related to simplify its complicated lawmaking bureaucracy. Having an effective and efficient approaches of lawmaking process, it will be beneficial for lawmakers to create a new regulation that can covers the variety of cybercrimes. This step can reduce the upcoming threats in the massive scale.
Conclusion Cybercrime phenomenon are starting to grow and keep threatening internet users around the world. To overcome this issues, lawmakers, law enforcement and the private sector need to work together in order to create regulations to maintain and prevent such crimes to spread even widely. The relationship between these sector is essential and can create an enormous impact in the long run. This also requires criminologist and the law enforcement to start working on research to invent new strategies to control cybercrime activities. This implies that because of the rapid improvement of technologies, it is crucial to be aware of every changes of technologies. It is also necessary to not take technology for granted when it can trigger bigger issues in legal or regulatory questions. In the long run, we are challenged to rethink the boundaries of criminal investigation itself and to reinvent legal checks and balances in a practice of legal crimes prevention.
Bibliography 1. All Answers ltd, 'What is cybercrime?' (Lawteacher.net, May 2019) <https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/technology-law/cyber-crime-lawessay.php?vref=1> accessed May 6, 2019 2. <http://www.nctp.org>. 3. Kellermann, T. (2010). Building a Foundation for Global Cybercrime law Enforcement. Computer Fraud and Security. 4. Schell, B. H., & Martin, C. (2004). Cybercrime: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. 5. Shapiro, A.L. (1999). The Control Revolution. Public Affairs. 6. Swire, P.P. (2005). Developments in the Law: The law of cyberspace. Harvard Law Review. 7. McConnell, T. (2000). Inalienable Rights: The Limits of Consent in Medicine and the Law. Oxford University Press. 8. Wall, D.S. (2007). Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in The Information Age. Polity. 9. ‘Understanding Cybercrime: Phenomena, Challenges and Legal Response’ (itu.int., May 2019) http://www.itu.int/ITUD/cyb/cybersecurity/docs/Cybercrime%20legislation%20 EV6.pdf > accessed May 6, 2019