The Matlock Law Firm, P.C.
Computer Crimes
The proliferation of computers in the world has lent itself to the proliferation of criminal activity. Everyday, computers are used to commit crimes in this country and around the world. With the increase in technology however, there is a corresponding increase in potential problems presented to the justice system in handling their prosecutions.
Computer crimes present a unique problem for law enforcement officers and prosecution. Not only are there potential jurisdictional issues presented, but the technology associated cause problems for prosecutions as well.
A computer crime investigation and prosecution generally begins with the seizure of computer equipment and storage media. Although law enforcement attempts to investigate the contents on such equipment, all too often they are only able to parse limited information. It takes aggressive representation to ensure a person charged with one of the various computer crimes in either Texas courts or Federal courts around the country.
The Matlock Law Firm and Computer Crime Defense Attorney Shawn Matlock are uniquely situated to provide the type of comprehensive, aggressive representation of computer crimes. As a national federal defense firm, we are able to provide clients around the country with the defense they need.
Federal Computer Crimes
Although there has never been accurate nationwide reporting of computer crime, it is clear from the reports which do exist and from anecdotal information that computer crime is on the rise. For example, the Computer Emergency and Response Team at Carnegie-Mellon University reports that from 1991 through 1994, there was a 498% increase in the number of computer intrusions, and a 702% rise in the number of sites affected. See CERT Annual Report to ARPA. During 1994, for example, approximately 40,000 Internet computers were attacked in 2,460 incidents. Id. Similarly, the FBI's National Computer Crime Squad has opened over 200 hacker cases since the Squad was created in 1991.
That computer crime is on the rise is perhaps a natural result of introducing computers into American society. In an earlier era, the advent of the automobile opened the way for criminals to target the automobile itself (e.g., auto theft) or use it to facilitate traditional crimes (e.g., the bank robbery getaway vehicle). In addition, law enforcement had to learn to seize vehicles to search them for evidence of some offense unrelated to the vehicle itself (e.g., the box of documents in the trunk). In many of the same ways, computers, too, have proven important to criminal investigations.
First, a computer may be the target of the offense. In these cases, the criminal's goal is to steal information from, or cause damage to, a computer, computer system, or computer network. Second, the computer may be a tool of the offense. This occurs when an individual uses a computer to facilitate some traditional offense such as fraud (e.g., a bank teller who once stole money from a cash drawer may now use a computer program to skim money directly from depositors' accounts). Last, computers are sometimes incidental to the offense, but significant to law enforcement because they contain evidence of a crime. Narcotics dealers, for example, may use a personal computer to store records pertaining to drug trafficking instead of relying on old-fashioned ledgers.
The different ways in which criminals can use computers have created a philosophical debate among law enforcement experts. Some argue that computer crime is nothing more than traditional crime committed with new, high-tech devices. Others contend that computer crime cannot be analogized to traditional crime and that combatting it requires both innovative law enforcement techniques and new laws designed to address abuses of emerging technologies. In 1984, Congress adopted the latter view and enacted discrete legislation to address crime in electronic environments. Although certain computer crimes appear simply to be old crimes committed in new ways (e.g., the bank teller who uses a computer program to steal money is still committing bank fraud), some computer offenses find their genesis in our new technologies and must be specifically addressed by statute. For example, the widespread damage caused by inserting a virus into a global computer network cannot be prosecuted adequately by relying upon common law criminal mischief statutes. Indeed, it is questionable whether Robert Morris, the individual responsible for launching the Morris worm and crippling 6,000 computers around the world, could have been prosecuted had Congress not had the foresight to enact the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Whether classified as "old" or "new," computer crime creates unique problems for law enforcement and a concomitant threat to the public welfare. The most significant legislative problems stem from technology's shift from a corporeal to an intangible environment. This departure from a physical world (where items are stored in a tangible form that can be carried, such as information written on paper) to an intangible, electronic environment means that computer crimes (and the methods used to investigate them) are no longer subject to traditional rules and constraints. Consider, for example, the way the crimes of theft and criminal mischief have evolved. Before the advent of computer networks, the ability to steal information or damage property was to some extent determined by physical limitations. A burglar could break only so many windows and burglarize only so many homes in a week. During each intrusion, the burglar could carry away only so many items. This does not, of course, make this conduct trivial, but it points out that the amount of property a burglar could steal, or the amount of damage he could cause, had physical limits.
In the information age, of course, these limitations no longer apply. A criminal seeking information stored in a networked computer with dial-in access can acquire that information from virtually anywhere in the world. The quantity of information stolen or the amount of damage caused by malicious programming code may be limited only by the speed of the network and the criminal's computer equipment. Moreover, such conduct can easily occur across state and national borders.
This clear shift to a borderless, incorporeal environment and the increased risk that information will be stolen and transported in electronic form is difficult to address by relying upon older laws written to protect physical property. For example, the statute pertaining to interstate transportation of stolen property, 18 U.S.C. § 2314, speaks of "goods, wares and merchandise," and consequently has been held by at least one court not to apply to intangible property. See United States v. Brown, 925 F.2d 1301, 1308 (10th Cir. 1991). Similarly, the long-familiar extortion statute makes it illegal, in some cases, to threaten physical violence to property. 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a). Although a threat to fire bomb a building would clearly satisfy this test, a threat to delete files may not.
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