Abstract
The transfer of a large part of common and fundamental activities to the cyberspace has made the society of today heavily depended on information and communication systems. It is crucial to adapt laws that will be able to meet the challenges of the new information and communication technologies.
The chapter includes an analysis of legislative solutions in particular regarding fraud and identity theft, including theft or concealment of identity (including an indication of new behaviours related to concealment of identity, such as producing fictitious identity in order to commit crime), fraud (including its ties with identity theft). Under the Polish criminal law, in addition to an analysis of de lege lata, (existing law) the paper attempts to provide solutions de lege ferenda (future law).
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Notes
- 1.
Cf Directive 98/34/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 June 1998 laying down a procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations, OJ L 204, 21/07/1998 p. 37; amended by Directive 98/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 July 1998 amending Directive 98/34/EC laying down a procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations, OJ L 217, 05/08/1998 p. 18.
- 2.
In the middle of 2014 more than 42 % of the world population were Internet users (http://www.internet-worldstats.com/stats.htm, accessed 31 March 2015).
- 3.
Public promotion of fascism or any other form of totalitarian systems or public incitement to discord on the national, ethnic, racial or religious background (Article 256 of the Penal Code), as well as defamation based on national identity, ethnicity, racism, religious affiliation or lack of denomination (Article 257 of the Penal Code).
- 4.
Insult religious feelings of other persons committed by public offence towards religious cult objects (Article 196 of the Penal Code).
- 5.
Libel natural and legal persons or organisations without legal personality with regard to such acts or features, which could bring discredit in the face of public opinion or result in loss of confidence, necessary for a given position, occupation or kind of activity.
- 6.
According to the Article 115 § 12 of the Penal Code announcement to cause criminal proceedings does not constitute a threat, if it is only to protect the law violated by offence.
- 7.
According to Article 115 § 11 of the Penal Code person close to someone means spouse, ascendant, descendant, sibling, relative in the same line or degree, the adopted person and his or her spouse, as well as a person staying in cohabitation.
- 8.
Spoofing is very general form and a whole series of its variations can be distinguished. For example IP spoofing consisting of sending messages (IP datagrams) with changed IP of the sender in order to make it difficult or impossible to disclose the real source of information; data spoofing modifies data between hosts in a communication session; e-mail spoofing is when unauthorised electronic mail is sent in the name of other persons.
- 9.
The Supreme Court, in the judgment of 30 August 2000 (V KKN 267/00, OSNKW 2000, no. 9-10, item 85), indicates that the constituent elements of the offence, described in Article 286 § 1 of the Penal Code, will be filled if the perpetrator, “acting in the manner described in this article, leads the other person to dispose of the property in a way that is detrimental to the interests of this person or other wronged person”, while stressing that “the injury to the property is not a necessary condition to accept that there has been so understood unfavourable disposition”.
- 10.
Computer fraud , from a technical point of view, takes most often the form of input, software or output manipulation. Input manipulation means unauthorised entering, concealing or modifying data in a computer system (adding, for example, fictitious overtime figures into the system). Software manipulation is the change of software operation to enable fraud (for example altering a software serving finance transactions in such a way that fractions emerging from normal rounding off sums are transferred to an account of the perpetrator). Output manipulation most often facilitates concealing other committed offences.
- 11.
Phishing is a form of e-mail spoofing and consists primarily of sending messages in the name of a trusted sender (e.g. auction sites, social web portals, financial institutions) while providing links to concocted Internet sites—in order to extort information (including information which can be used for identity theft) or to cause damage.
- 12.
Pharming consist of redirecting the user to a concocted www site (often difficult to distinguish from the authentic one), while making it possible to extract confidential information (including information which can be used for identity theft) or to cause damage.
- 13.
According to the Identity Theft Resource Center , a non-profit organisation dedicated to identity theft monitoring and providing assistance to identity theft victims (8 March 2014 at http://www.idtheftcenter.org).
- 14.
This category can also include the so-called. administrative identity theft (governmental identity theft), including i.a. theft of personal data in order to obtain documents (e.g. driving licence), unemployment benefits or other state benefits etc.
- 15.
Computer data , mentioned in Article 287 par. 1 of the Penal Code, is all data, manipulation of which may lead to obtain financial benefit or cause damage to another person.
- 16.
University, research or corporate networks are mostly intended for users whose identity is known to the network administrator and the authors of any information provided within the network are relatively easy trackable (although users with the guest access may be a problem). Also, the Internet Service Provider (ISP) in most cases it is able to provide information about the IP address (host address on the network; IP address prefix indicates a network, while the address suffix—particular computer on the network indicated by the prefix)—although it not always mean that is possible to determine the identity of a particular person.
- 17.
During registration a user should credibly prove his/her identity and links with the name, which is used in the network.
- 18.
Within the framework of the European Union, the liability of service providers (or more precise—when the service provider is not liable for the service content) is defined in Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (Directive on electronic commerce, OJ L 178, 17.7.2000, p. 1).
- 19.
For example Article 25 of the Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, and replacing Council Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA (OJ L 335, 17.12.2011, p 1), requiring fast removal of websites containing illegal materials (in this case related to child pornography)—provides for the possibility to block access to Internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography, if these sites can not be deleted.
- 20.
In Europe, such cooperation is carried out within the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), whose task is to ensure an effective level of security in networks and information systems in the EU. In 2008 NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence was established in Tallin. From 2013, within Europol, also operates the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3).
- 21.
Authorization to acquaint with the content of transmitted information is included in the rules of procedure and made subject to a number of conditions, of which the most important are: suppression of the possibility of data transmission interception in a situation in which there is a reasonable suspicion of committing the offence; the need to obtain the consent of the court to intercept the information content and the supervision of the competent authorities on the process of information interception (Article 218, 218a, 230a, 236-242 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 159, 160, 161, § 2, 179, 180 of the Telecommunications Law of 16 July 2004 (consolidated text: Journal of Laws of 2014 item 243, as amended) and the provisions concerning the surveillance other than trial one contained in specific laws).
- 22.
In accordance with the generally applicable legal principle that no one may be forced to disclose an evidence incriminating him or herself.
- 23.
Attacks are designed to impede or prevent the operation of the service. Frequently visited sites, like common auction sites and banks are the most frequent targets. The requirement to stop the attack is to pay the criminals a certain amount of money.
- 24.
Ransomware attacks are so far mostly infecting a computer with malware (worms, exploit kits, etc.), causing the computer to lock. A message is displayed on the computer screen informing that suspicious activity of the computer was detected by the police and that there is a need to pay a fine to have the lock removed.
- 25.
A group of computers infected with malware, hidden from the computer user. The bootmaster (the bootnet owner) remotely controls the computers included in the botnet with the use of managing servers, enabling for example remote distribute malware or to perform other attacks with the use of botnet.
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Skórzewska-Amberg, M. (2017). Global Threats But National Legislations—How to Adapt to the New Cyberspace Society. In: Viano, E. (eds) Cybercrime, Organized Crime, and Societal Responses. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44501-4_4
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