Cyber Crime

Date: 25/06/13

Cybercrime and Cyber Laws

Internet privacy

The United States of America is not only the sole country to intrude into the private affairs of cyber users. In countries like India there were several attempts being made by the government to curb expressions on the web showing the slightest of criticism against government. One of the cases where the freedom of expression was being curbed when two girls were arrested for criticizing the declaration of strike owing to the death of Shivsena leader Bal Thackeray.

There have been many reports where it reveals that the Indian Government has requested repeatedly to block several web pages that published contents which were against their interests. The best example in that context was requesting Google to block around 73 websites that published a piece criticising the IIPM, an institution not recognised by the UGC.

Article 19 under IPC states there is a right to free speech and expression. However, there are some limitations also on this freedom of speech and expression. This limitations are being cited as the issues pertaining to national security, its relation with other countries, law and order, morality and a few others.

After India blowed with couple of terrorist attacks the government has ordered interception of about 1300 email ids and phones. The government is authorised to intercept the messages according to the section 5 (2) of the Indian Telegraph act of 1885 for the public safety.

The development of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol) had brought a see saw change in the development of internet. Also in the later stages with the coming of Hypertext Transfer Protocol web browsing in the PC became popular.

Cyber Law of India

From the below mentioned website, we are able to understand the basic Cyber laws of India.

http://www.cyberlawsindia.net/

Categorization of Cyber crimes in two ways:

The computer as a target: Here a computer is used as a source to attack another computer or network. For example, hacking, virus attacks fall into this category.

The computer as a weapon: Here computer is used for crimes which are much broader in perspective.

For example, all sorts of frauds like credit card frauds, cyber terrorism fall into this category.

Cyber crimes can involve criminal activities that are traditional in nature, such as theft, fraud, forgery, defamation and mischief, all of which are subject to the Indian Penal Code. The abuse of computers has also given birth to a gamut of new age crimes that are addressed by the Information Technology Act, 2000.