It is normal that during the course of human history criminals try to use most of the new inventions for their cause. While the Internet itself is very young it is already filled with various criminals that are committing frauds, stealing information, stalking or harassing people. And it is also natural that after some time the countries with most internet users created laws that allowed prosecuting the online criminals.
In Canada the definition of computer crime is taken from the international Convention on Cybercrime that occurred on November 23, 2001. Canada contributed, and is a signatory, to this international of criminal offences involving the use of computers: offences against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems; computer-related offences; content-related offences; offences related to infringements of copyright and related rights; and ancillary liability. Today Canada is in the stage of ratifying the Convention of Cybercrime, so in practice Canadian Criminal Code contains a set of laws for regulating the computer crimes, but it may view some of the offences in a different way. Still most of them are classified as following. The Offences against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems include: illegal access, illegal interception, data interference, system interference, misuse of devices. The computer-related offences include: computer-related forgery and computer-related fraud. The content-related offences include: offences related to child pornography. The offences related to infringements of copyright and related rights naturally include everything related to the violation of copyrights and digital rights. The ancillary liability offences include things like attempt and aiding or abetting and corporate liability. Computer crimes touch a lot of parts of the law so in Canada various sections of the Canadian Criminal Code deal with various computer crimes. The theft, forgery of credit cards and unauthorized use of computer is regulated by the Section 342. Privacy is regulated by section 184 and personation with section 403. Also some of the crimes are regulated with Bill C-46. As Canada has not yet ratified this Additional Protocol to the Convention on cybercrime its Criminal Code may not fully address the following criminal offences:
The computer crimes that are still partly excluded from the Canadian Criminal Code mostly deal with discrimination and include: dissemination of racist and xenophobic material through computer systems; racist and xenophobic motivated threat; racist and xenophobic motivated insult; denial, gross minimization, approval or justification of genocide or crimes against humanity; aiding and abetting.
Mostly the targets of the serious computer criminals are the companies and individuals from North America and Europe, so these governments that are mostly affected by cybercrime are giving a great effort on providing an appropriate legislation. The main problem of the Computer Crimes legislation is that the criminal itself can be from any part of the world, and at some points he will be protected by the local laws, or lack of local cybercrime laws. That’s why it is crucial for all the countries in the world to work together for a one good cause – an Internet Free of Crime.
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