What Constitues a Computer Crime?

What constitutes a computer crime?

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has defined computer crime as "any violation of criminal law that involved the knowledge of computer technology for its perpetration, investigation, or prosecution." Others define computer crime as the deliberate action to steal, damage, or destroy computer data without any authorization, and which also includes accessing a computer system and/or account without authorization.

Based on my opion, a computer crime constitutes any of the following acts:

-The action is done to do harm to others
-The action results to personal/group/corporate damage
-The action is done without the victim's knowledge or consent
-The action is done for personal reasons
-The actor of the crime knows that he is not authorized to do so, but still knowingly accesses or causes any computer system to be accessed without authorization

Check out some example of real world computer crimes:

A former employee of Viewsonic was sentenced to one year for hacking into his company's computer, destroying data
A man previously employed at the Walnut office of the Viewsonic Corporation was sentenced last February 23, 2004 to one year in prison for hacking into the company's computer system and wiping out critical data. the lost files rendered the server inoperative, and Viewsonic's Taiwan office was unable to access important data for several days.

A Louisiana man got arrested for releasing the 911 worm to WebTV users
FBI agents arrested a Louisiana man last February 18, 2004 for sending an e-mail to certain users of a WebTV service that, once opened, reprogrammed their computers to dial "9-1-1" instead of a local Internet access telephone number. The 9-1-1 calls caused by the e-mail resulted in the dispatch of police in locations from New York to California.

Mr. Heckenkamp's pleads guilty to gaining unauthorized access and recklessly damaging computers of several high-technology companies including eBay and Qualcomm from his graduate school dorm room
The United States Attorney's Offices for the Northern and Southern Districts of California announced that Jerome T. Heckenkamp of Los Angeles, pled guilty last January 29, 2004 in federal court in San Jose to gaining unauthorized access and recklessly damaging computer systems of several high-technology companies, including eBay in San Jose and Qualcomm in San Diego.
Mr. Heckenkamp admitted that he gained unauthorized access to eBay computers during February and March 1999. Through this unauthorized access, he admitted that he defaced an eBay Web page using the name "MagicFX," and installed "trojan" computer programs on the eBay computers so that it secretly captures usernames and passwords that he later used to gain unauthorized access into other eBay computers.

Definition of Privacy in the field on Information Technology

Here are my own definitions of some of the many privacy issues that we have in the field of Information Technology:


Database privacy
This involves keeping the computer user's database resources secured or hidden from unauthorized persons.

This means that if you happen to have an access to secured or confidential databases such as database that holds the pins of phone cards or active credit card numbers then, your action of securing or hidding these resources you have access to from other individuals or institution is good or moral, and therefore makes the act ethical. But if you decide to share, or worst sell, this data to unauthorized individuals, then that will make the act unethical.

Email privacy
I would define this as the right of any individual to keep his/her own mails from being opened and/or read by others.

Sneaking on someone else's email is definitely intrusive of their rights to privacy. I guess we can say that the right of anyone to privacy can be considered as a universal law. And since everyone is given a right to privacy, snooping on other's email is still a violation of that universal law. Because doing such is just like opening his/her files hidden on his personal cabinet or reading his/her snail mails or even a diary. If we try to analyze and relate this scenario to ordinary situations, this act looks similar to listening on other individual's conversation without their consent. This act therefore becomes unethical because doing so deprives the owner of the email of his/her right to privacy.

Privacy on the web
I consider this as the right of any individual to restrict any kind of access to keep track of his/her moves or actions on the web without his/her consent.

Privacy on the web is one of the major problems that we have today. As of this writing, there are still no rules or laws that prohibits computer users from checking or keeping track of other computer user's information. But this should be also concern because there doing such act is an intrusion of their right to privacy. No body should be given the right to check on all your activities. I remember the movie "The Truman's Show" which stars Jim Carey, where in his whole life from birth was being controlled and watched on tv. He only found out that his whole life was just a big drama when he already got old. That story where Mr. Truman's right to privacy was taken away from him is also similar to privacy on the web.

My definition of Ethics

1. Ethics is intertwined with customs and traditions believed in or adopted by a particular community.

In this concept, the definition of ethics would depend on the custom or tradition of a particular country or state. For example, in an Islam country such as Saudi Arabia, Saudi women are obliged to wear a black cloak and veil ( abaya ) when they leave the house, to protect their modesty. Therefore, taking-off their abaya would be unethical in their culture. I was shocked when i discovered how strict they were with regards to this policy. There was actualy one incident when Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress. One witness said he saw three policemen "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya".

2. Ethics is the study of the morality of human actions.

In this context,it is said that ethics concerns human actions which are judged as ethical or unethical based on certain starndards accepted by a particular community. This means that what is ethical to a Class A family might not be ethical to "some" Class C family. Allow me to site some examples here. Eating at the dinning table while talking or singing is unethical for a Class A family but not to "some" Class C family. Shouting and uttering foul words is considered unethical to a Class A family, but for "some" Class C family it might not be unethical because it's already part of their culture and it is also accepted by their community.

3. Ethics is the study and philosophy of human conduct with emphasis on the determination of right and wrong.

It is said that ethics involves the study of the standards and judgments that people create. In this context, ethics can involve questions such as:
What does it mean to be good?
How can I differentiate good from evil?
Are morals objective or subjective?

I will site a scenario to better explain this definition. Juan is a business man selling RTWs in one of the stalls in Robinson's Galleria. The materials of his clothes is made in the Philippines and it is where his products are manufactured as well. But he decides to mark the labels of his RTWs as made in Europe because he knows that Filipinos enjoy buying foreign products.And since his products are labeled as made in Europe, he decides to double the prices of his products. Based from the third definition of ethics, i can say that there are a lot of reasons why Juan is unethical in the scenario stated above. For one, Juan should've marked the labels of his product as made in the Philippines. And even if he, actually we, all know that Filipinos enjoy buying foreign products, the best approach for his RTWs to sell like hotcakes is for him to insure that his clothes are competent in the foreign market. He can do this my always keeping abreast with the latest trends in fashion, so that Filipinos can also enjoy and be proud of their own products.