elissa virus alone did 80 billion dollars in damages (Casare, 2001). They are often spread by e-mail attachments and users that think these e-mails come from secure safe sources. Once the virus is opened and executed, depending on the virus it can do anything from send out your password, to completely destroying your whole system. To a business, a virus can be even more harmful, destroying all the records of a company or even making it so they entire network of the company no longer works. Billions of dollars can be lost within a matter of hours to a well-planned well-placed virus. The frightening part is that there is little or no legislation to prevent or convict virus authors for their crimes. Even when the authors are caught it’s hard to even extradite the virus authors because most countries have little or no legislation against the creation of viruses. One example is the author of the ILOVEYOU bug from the Philippines. The U.S. didn’t have jurisdiction to extradite him because there are no laws to support his conviction.Netcrimes have risen dramatically in the past few years and as usual, the laws can’t keep up with the crimes. According to Graham Smith (2001) “The Internet is the newest context for crime and continues to challenge judges, legislators and law enforcement agencies that attempt to apply traditional legal standards to a digital dimension.” Criminals are pleading the fourth amendment and are getting off clean. The FBI has been using a new surveillance tool called Carnivore that they claim protects the right given to internet users by the Fourth Amendment, but many privacy advocates argue this new “tool” is still depriving them of their right to privacy. Intimacy on the net is not worth the great amount of losses governed by criminals. The FBI and Carnivore aren’t worried about someone self-disclosing information about themselves, they are concerned with catc...
