Panel Contemplates Cybercrime Law
The U.S. Sentencing Commission Tuesday heard perspectives from the Justice Department, high-tech experts and others on how to implement cybercrime legislation that passed Congress last year. The ID theft bill, authored by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and signed by former President George W. Bush in September, allows the prosecution of those who steal personal data from a computer even when the victim's computer is located in the same state as the thief's. Under prior law, federal courts only had jurisdiction if the crime was committed across state lines. The measure made it a felony to employ malicious software to damage 10 or more computers and criminalized threats to steal or release information from a computer.
In his testimony, the head of DOJ's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section, urged the Commission to ensure that its execution reflects key differences between economic crimes such as fraud and those involving information theft. Some of the information theft incidents include high-tech hacking cases that involve large-scale data breaches like a 2003 incident involving information broker Acxiom, where more than 1.6 billion customer records were stolen, Michael DuBose said. He testified that guidelines being contemplated restrict consideration of fair market value for calculating loss in situations where "property [is] taken or destroyed."
Read CongressDaily's story here (subscription only) and the testimony here.
Michael DuBose
Chief, Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section
Criminal Division, United States Department of Justice
Eric Handy
Mid Atlantic Coast Representative
Identity Theft Resource Center
Jennifer Coffin
National Sentencing Resource Counsel
Federal Public and Community Defenders
Vincent Weafer
Vice President, Security Response
Symantec
Seth Schoen
Staff Technologist
Electronic Frontier Foundation
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