Computer crimes are unavoidable in our organizations because all service and product deliveries have been digitized. It means that criminals are exploiting each and every weakness in the IT systems used in delivering their services and products. Therefore, computer professional and associations should ensure that there are frameworks put in place to protect and face these challenges through laws. There are several laws in place that can be used to successfully prosecute and convict computer criminals. Unlike other types of crimes, computer crimes are very dynamic and complex in nature. Among the many challenges that computer forensic investigation department face is lack of expertise on the part of police, prosecutors and the courts in the field of computer technology.
Lack of computer experts in computer criminal trial process has also raised jurisdiction challenges because of how evidence is handled. Lack of experts has seen prosecutors seek forensic consultations of private firms who are not familiar with evidence presentation in court of law. Poor presentation of evidence before the court is a trial process problem on the side of the prosecutor and the government which has resulted into losing many lawsuits.
Many computer criminal cases have been rejected in the law courts because of procedural issues and poor investigation gathered. Police department or the prosecutors in many cases do not have essential computer skills such as programming so that they can identify malicious programs in the computer. Computer criminal suspects are usually computer experts and can mislead the prosecutor and conceal actual evidence in an encrypt form. If the investigators are experts they will be able to point out encrypted data and carry more investigation on it.
Computer criminal cases have also been adjourned several times during the trial process and even termination because of time needed by prosecutors to gather computer evidence. This could be speeded up by having computer experts attached to computer.
An example of trial process problem is the case of United states v. Councilman was. This case was dismissed by the judge because the prosecutor did not point out if an authorized access to emails on the server is a violation of Electronic Communications Privacy Act or the Wiretap Act. The court cited ambiguities in the law. This can be attributed to poor investigation and weak case put forward by the prosecutor.
Reference
Bliss, A. & Harfield, C. (1998) The threat of computer crime: identifying the problem and formulating a response at force level, The Police Journal, January, Butterworths, Surrey, UK, pp.25-34
Council of Europe (COE) (2000), European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC) Committee of Experts on Crime in Cyberspace (PC-CY) Draft Convention on Cybercrime (Draft No. 24 Rev.2), retrieve from, http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/EN/cadreprojets.htm, visited 16 February 2001.
Police Commissioners’ Conference Electronic Crime Working Party, (2000). The Virtual Horizon: Meeting the Law Enforcement Challenges. Developing an Australasian law enforcement strategy for dealing with electronic crime. Scoping Paper, Australasian Centre for Policing Research, Report Series No: 134.1, Adelaide.
