International Cybercrime Laws and Agreements in United States

International Cybercrime Laws and Agreements

Overview of International Cybercrime Laws and Agreements in relation to cyber crime: [1] An additional regulatory challenge is the emergent cyberpsychopathology of those who design and release viruses or other destructive mechanisms against the global family of computer users. These cyberpsychopaths cause significant harm to unseen and unaware users by infecting computers and attempting to manipulate or destroy data stored in various global information systems. They may be motivated by political, economic, corporate, or personal attempts to gain a perceived advantage at the cost of others. What legal tools are currently available to adjudicate these matters? Would the defendant be tried in the country of origination or in the jurisdiction suffering the most harm? How is ”nature of harm” defined, given the potential for significant damage in multiple functional dimensions? If an individual cybercriminal has the capacity to impact households, institutions, businesses, corporations, and governments, what would be the impact of an organized and coordinated effort to undermine the cyber sphere? This is a potential catastrophe and will require practical legal remedies and effective vigilance in an informed and alert global cyber sphere.

Resources

Notes and References

1. By Samuel C. McQuade, III and Thomas Schiller

See Also

• Types of Cybercrime
• Cybercriminal

Further Reading

Convention on rights and duties of states (inter-American). (1933, December 26). Available through the Avalon Project, Yale University Law School (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/intdip/interam/intam03.htm); United Nations. (2006). Treaty handbook (revised edition). New York, USA: United Nations Organization. Office of Legal Affairs. Available at http://untreaty.un.org/English/TreatyHandbook/ hbframeset.htm; Murphy, S. (2006). Principles of international law. Concise Hornbook Series. St. Paul, MN: Thomson West; Eagan, M.N., & Richards, J.R. (1998). Transnational criminal organizations, cybercrime, and money laundering: A handbook for law enforcement officers, auditors, and financial investigators, Kindle ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; Goodman, S.E., & Soefaer, A.D. (2000). The transnational dimension of cyber crime and terrorism. Retrieved from http://www-hoover.stanford.edu ; Blanpain, R. (ed.). (2004). International encyclopaedia of laws: Cyber law. International Encyclopaedia of Laws, Lslf ed. Dordrecht: Kluwer Law International; Schwarenegger, C., & Summers, S. (2008). The emergence of EU criminal law: Cyber crime and the regulation of the information society. Studies in International & Comparative Criminal Law. Oxford, London, England: Hart Publishing.