Internet Security: Interests Should Be Balanced
By Timofey Saytarly
Date: June 17, 2003
The Internet originality consists in that any person, private company, state department or particular country can use it. Therefore, all its segments have no centralized regulation, censorship and other ways of controlling information. It allows obtaining an access to any information thereby increasing copyright infringements.
Most of Internet security experts adhere to the opinion that the cyberspace is practically unprotected. It can be concluded from the five-year observation that Internet is not capable of protecting its users and information to be transmitted and received. Every site you visit, every payment you make, every e-mail you send is open to surveillance. And any organization having corresponding powers and resources (both technical, and financial), has access to information. You can make the little to prevent such undesirable intervention of third persons.
Nowadays there is no person who begins to deny the fact of illegal cyberspace. The Internet contains a lot of the pornographic information, slander and insult. There is an information promoting kindling of national conflict. Also, there are the facts of use the Internet for reception of the non-authorized access to the information making various kinds of secret: personal, commercial, state. Besides the information placed at web-sites, in some cases creates potential or real threat national security.
Cybercrime is an international phenomenon that depends on up-to-date computer technologies, networks, their wide use and access.
According to the Cyber Terror Response Center, the number of actions brought against persons committing computer crimes in the Internet increased up to 60 000 last year. It is approximately 500 times as many as in 1997 (only 100 criminal cases).
According to experts, the damage inflicted by hackers throughout the world makes up at least $50 billion a year.
Successful existence and increase of a child porno is obliged a lot to paying for such services by means of credit cards (detailed information on a card and its owner being indicated) and using e-mail addresses to distribute images. Since the Internet is widely used, "porno-clubs" become more “popular”. Therefore, the law enforcement agencies should trace and control information in this field of criminal activity. It is necessary to establish an open (under various agreements on providing information) and operative (secret) supervision over credit and financial establishments because they are supposed to participate in committing such crimes. Thus, when using a credit card to pay for a child porno in the Internet, the criminal will run the essential risk of being disclosed and made answerable.
The number of arrested Internet-criminals in 2002 clearly shows the process of such intervention. Most of persons suspected in the pedophilia and arrested by law enforcement officers believed that they were not under the supervision of special services.
The variety of information public relations is a natural source of an increasing mass of social and legal contradictions. So, the goal of law enforcement bodies is to keep balance between the society demands and human rights. Full story
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