Crime on the Internet

By Claudia Lynch, Benchmarks Editor (lynch@unt.edu)

Since cyberspace is a community of sorts - composed of networked computer users around the world - it is not surprising that many of the elements in the real world are present in the virtual one. Unfortunately, crime is one of those elements.

According to an article distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News May 6, 1996, "More than 40 percent of the 428 corporate, university and government sites that responded to [a recent] FBI survey reported at least one unauthorized use of their computers within the last 12 months, with some institutions reporting as many as 1,000 attacks in the period."

The article goes on to state that in the past the most serious computer crimes have been committed by disgruntled employees against their employers. These days, however, there seem to be increasing incidences of electronic esiponage1.

Of course, where there is crime there are crime fighters. The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/) had an article in it's March 4, 1996 edition entitled "Pentagon Trolls the Net" by David Corn that talked about "the intelligence value of the Internet for the Defense Department." From "fringe group" monitoring to "information warfare," this article will give one pause as to where "crime" ends and "law enforcement" begins. As the say on the net, caveat computor.

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1Jones Telecommunications and Multi-media Encyclopedia ( http://www.digitalcentury.com/encyclo/update/crime.html) has all kinds of information about computer crime and links to other sources of information.

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