Hacking is news these trying 'www' days. Here is an article what Australia is proposing to do;

STORY LINK

New code to put hackers behind bars
12feb00

1.20pm (AEDT): Computer hackers could face years in prison for sabotaging web sites under tough new federal government proposals.

The international hackers responsible for last week's AOL and Yahoo web sites attack could face up to 10 years behind bars if the Model Criminal Code discussion paper released today is adopted. The code also targets stalkers and people using computers for fraud, with punishments equal to those handed down for offences committed without the use of computers.

"These new offences address a number of shortcomings in existing offences," Justice Minister Amanda Vanstone said in a statement.

"They recognise the fact that the criminal law cannot remain the same for even a reasonably short period if it is to adequately reflect a changing society.

"The recent hacker attacks on AOL and Yahoo web sites, both major Internet portals, have highlighted the need for the criminal law to address the actions of those who intentionally impair electronic communications to or from a computer without authorisation."

The code committee added an element to the code to make it an offence to use a computer with intention to commit a serious offence, punishable by a five-year stint in jail.

"The punishment for committing such an offence using a computer would be the same as if the person had committed the serious offence concerned.

"For example, if one used a computer to commit sabotage, then that could be punishable by up to 25 years in prison."

Australia's increasing dependence on the electronic world in the economy prompted the move to tighten rules.

"With the rapid move to widespread use of electronic communications in the Australian economy and the rise of the Internet to handle such things as shopping and banking, the security and reliability of these networks becomes extremely important to our economic well-being," Senator Vanstone said.

The new code also contains a bushfire offence which imposes a 15-year prison term on anyone intending to or being reckless in causing a fire which spreads to property.

"A new arson offence is exceptional insofar as it, for the first time, makes it an offence to set fire to one's own building or conveyance."

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Comment:
This article is posted for general interest. Senator Vanstone is South Australian and I watched her perform when I was a convention delegate. She is the closest to a bantam chook in politics Down Under.

Regards from OZ

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), February 12, 2000

Answers

The only problem here is that one needs to determine jurisdiction. If someone does this in Au, and the target is in Germany, who has jurisdiction?? Or vice versa, the crime is commited in one country (where they are loading the code) and the target is in another one.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), February 12, 2000.

---chuck, it would seem to be the jurisdiction at the ultimate point, in this instance of last weeks attacks would be the US, were the servers that were shut down with DOS are actually located. A secondary place would be at the zombie computers, that would be another count. Seems like several jurisidictions would have the ability to bring action. Unfortunately, it also appears to be pretty easy to set up patsys for this sort of operation, too, up to hiding files on someones hard drive without their knowledge. I think it's going to get scarier and murkier. The various big governments hate the internet for private citizens, because they have almost no control over the free flow of information, primarily information that makes them look bad. I think it's no coincidence whatsoever that the king and barbecue J announced all these millions for cyber cops, then we have this very visible to the public "attack" almost immediately. The public is being offered a "solution" almost instantly, in fact, it was slightly in advance, then whammo, the attack. This is when the bravo sierra detector went off.

I do not believe in "coincidences" of this nature. I do believe in agents provacateurs, because of the indisputable historical record of their being used widely. "Create" a crime that the public needs to be "saved" from. I'm finding it a little hard to digest that all these top net companies, with some of the smartest and most sophisticated IT specialists, were all caught with their pants down on this, and that the origins can't be traced and tracked more effectively. Seems like tracking is one of the more used tools of these companies, they are in the business of assessing web surfing and visiting habits by surfers, they are set up to know where this or that visit came from, that's this whole advertiser driven deal on the large portals. And all of a sudden we're supposed to believe it's a needle in a haystack, or some dood overseas did all this? I've read a lot here and there about this, what the tools alledgedly used were, how it was done, etc, and something just doesn't smell quite right about it. It's too convenient, it's too simplistic, and it has no meaning I can see beyond making a big public splash to get the public more acceptable of net-copdom.

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), February 12, 2000.

...just another "after the fact" attempt to legally justify the unconstitutional Echa-lon. This law sounds redundant. For instance, if some tweeb used a computerised timer to activate verses rubbing wires together manually to develop a static charge, the time served for the devastating result would be the same. I would guess there is some sneaky new stuff burried in the legislation that has not made it to the press yet.

For instance, in the US, our feds get reports on eavesdrOped conversations/e-mails/... from other echa-lon countries on our citizens so technically our feds are not "listening in on us" and violating OUR privacy...

Think of the POWER you would have if you could get insider info on your competitors....With echa-lon, globalists get this secret info and benefit long before you know what's going down...

Long stretch here, but perhaps the Au are pissed at England over the power plant purchases, et al, so they want to set things up so that they are able to eavesdrOp on their own people and won't need outsiders. They could then perhaps block outsiders from getting hearing all the secret phone calls/e-mails about which businesses are prime for take-over.

It's all about gold, baby.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), February 12, 2000.

zog & Hokie,
You have the most incisive minds. Are you anomalies?

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), February 12, 2000.