Cybercriminals

Cybercriminals

Overview of Cybercriminals in relation to cyber crime: [1]Society continues to redefine what is illegal through creation of new statutory laws and through case law decision making, which occurs when judges take into consideration how activities in a case being tried relate to existing laws and legal precedents governing how laws have previously been interpreted. It is not uncommon for attorneys to make arguments about why certain behaviors should or should not be considered illegal under existing laws. Recent examples include cases like: (1) United States v. RobertMorris Jr., which first applied the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 to the creation and release of a worm software program onto the Internet; (2) United States v. Michael Williams, in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 struck down the so-called ''pandering'' aspects of the PROTECT Act of 2003, making it still legal in the United States to distribute fake images of child pornography as a form of freedom of expression under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (see encyclopedia entry on Laws, Children Online); and (3) United States v. Lori Drew, who allegedly helped create a MySpace account in the name of Josh Evans, a 16-year-old boy who did not exist, in order to chat with teenager Megan Meier who subsequently committed suicide. The case is the first time the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 was used to prosecute a case involving social networking.

Resources

Notes and References

1. By Samuel C. McQuade, III

See Also

• Types of Cybercrime
• Cybercriminal

Further Reading

McQuade, S.C. (2006). Computer abusers and cybercriminals. In Understanding and managing cybercrime (Chap. 4). Boston: Allyn and Bacon; National White Collar Crime Center &West Virginia University. (1996). Proceedings of the Academic Workshop, Bureau of Justice Assistance Grant No. 96-WC-CX-001; Wall, D. (2001). Crime and the Internet. London: Routledge.