No Internet-only crimes

Tue Mar 2 23:36:28 2004

Hi-tech criminals commit old crimes

It appears that the police have noticed what everyone has been telling them for years. There are no new crimes for the Internet. They are just updated versions of old crimes like fraud and theft.

I'm not convinced about the comparison between DoS attacks and protection rackets. Though they can be used like that, at least some DoS attacks are more like spraying "Wanker" or "Bob waz Here" across the windows of a shop.

Now, considering that the head of the national Hi-tech crimes unit has said that there are no new Crimes for the Internet you start to wonder why they need to pass so many laws aimed directly at the Internet (though some of them have effects that leak into other means of communication).

This question has at least been addressed by the bottom of the article where it wonders whether or not DoS attacks are actually illegal, and mentions that they sometimes have to bend the law to squeeze a percieved offence on the behalf of an officer into something that will be prosecutable by the law. One wonders why they don't catch the perpetrator under the old law, if they are just comitting an old crime with new technology. The answer to this seems to be that the new laws relating to the Internet appear to have significantly more stiff sentances than you can get for the old crimes that they replace. Some even move the offence from the civil into the criminal, like the new regulations on copyright that will move copying a tape for your mate into the same box as kidnapping people to work in a sweatshop producing copied CDs.