White collar crime is a crime committed on the corporate level. It includes credit card fraud and cybercrime. Corporate level crimes are committed by companies to fulfill their own interests. On the other hand, street crimes are criminal offenses that take place in the general public for example drug trafficking, pickpocketing, etc. White collar crimes present biggest threat to our computer security.
An insider espionage case took place in 2001 in FBI where a FBI agent who had considerable experience and privilege rights to FBI systems was charged to spy for Russia since 1985 and this was considered to be the worse case in the history of FBI bureau. Hanssen broke the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 law. The agent Robert Phillips Hanssen was accused of providing the Russian intelligence system highly sensitive and critical documents of FBI and in return he received more than US$ 1 million and diamonds. Hanssen was charged in criminal court in Virginia with committing insider espionage, and conspiracy, the violation of this law can result in life punishment or if the case is too severe then death penalty. (Dan, 2001)
An interesting outsider espionage case took place when in 2001, Procter and Gamble agreed on implementing a spying operation for over 6 months for its hair care products in Unilever as Unilever was its major competitors in hair products. The law that was broken here was right to information law and invasion of company’s private documentation by forgery. This was committed as an unfortunate incident by P&G where it used to search trash documents of Unilever and accessed super secret product information of the Unilever.
P&G totally denied the fact that their own marketing operatives became auditors but both the companies reached an agreement and in return P&G paid US$ 10 million to Unilever and fired 3 employees that were directly involved in the case. (Julian, 2001)
References
Dan Verton (Feb 21, 2001) “FBI spy case highlights insider threat to corporate data” Computer World http://www.computerworld.com/article/2591721/security0/fbi-spy-case-highlights-insider-threat-to-corporate-data.html
Julian Barnes (September 7, 2001) “P.& G. Said to Agree to Pay Unilever $10 Million in Spying Case” NewYork Times http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/07/business/p-g-said-to-agree-to-pay-unilever-10-million-in-spying-case.html
