Cyber Law News May 2012
Govt. to set up National Threat Intelligence Centre to fight cyber crime
The Indian government is planning to set up a National Threat Intelligence Centre in view of rising cyber crimes such as identity theft, hacking, financial fraud, child pornography and corporate espionage. While launching a report on cyber security prepared by software industry body Nasscom, Home Minister P Chidambaram said that the government needs to fortify its capacity to deal with online security threats/crimes.
“We have taken numerous steps to protect the physical infrastructure…I think all that we have done to protect the infrastructure in the physical space seems to be a lighter task than when we face threats that have been outlined in the cyber space,” Chidambaram said, acknowledging the online crimes were on the rise in the country.
more @ http://www.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Govt-to-set-up-National-Threat-Intelligence_9410.html
‘Unknown’ Hackers Hit NASA, Harvard, U.S. Air Force, Others
A group of hackers calling themselves The Unknowns recently claimed to have hacked an eclectic group of targets, including NASA, the U.S. Military, the U.S. Air Force, the European Space Agency, the Thai Royal Navy, Harvard University, Renault, the French Ministry of Defense, the Bahrain Ministry of Defense, and the Jordanian Yellow Pages.
Posting samples of data from each organization, the group wrote, “Victims, we have released some of your documents and data, we probably harmed you a bit but that’s not really our goal because if it was then all of your Web sites would be completely defaced but we know that within a week or two, the vulnerabilities we found will be patched and that’s what we’re actually looking for.”
more @ http://www.esecurityplanet.com/hackers/unknown-hackers-hit-nasa-harvard-u.s.-air-force-others.html
Indian diplomat’s daughter files lawsuit; seeks USD 1.5 million
An Indian diplomat’s daughter, who was jailed for a day on suspicion of sending obscene emails to her teacher, has filed a lawsuit against the city of New York and her school authorities seeking USD 1.5 million in damages for her wrongful imprisonment and suspension from school.
Krittika Biswas, 18, the daughter of Vice-Consul in the Consulate General of India in New York Debashish Biswas, was detained and arrested in February last year on the grounds that she had sent “offensive and sexually threatening” emails to her teachers in Queens’s John Browne High School.
more @ http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/indian-diplomats-daughter-files-lawsuit-seeks-usd-1-5-million-207732?pfrom=Facebook
One of my friend has asked me to search on a topic and i couldn’t find any other website better than this one to answer her query.
The question is
She has participated in an online contest which reuqire online votes.so is it a crime to make number of profiles with just random names just to vote himself.He is not using any pictures,not writing any kind of information in those profiles and not harming anyone.they are just blank profiles with random names just used to vote.
so is it any kind of offense or crime?
kindly reply soon.
In general this is not a crime as her act is not harming someone but this may become wrong when she is gaining illegal gain over other. Also its the responsibility of the contest authority to fix that no one can vote without the detailed information in profile. She may become liable if their is guideline in the contest that don’t vote more than one time.
Internet users have full right to be anonymous up to when it is not required to disclose the identity( any order through appropriate authority).
Atul Patel,
National Law Institute University,
Bhopal M.P.
thank you for the response..i also wanted to add an information,the profile which she made ,were of random names..even the random names and email r without meaning..like uio or fgh etc..with no pictures,no info,nothing is mentioned except the fake name,email,gender and birthday..except these info..nothing is written or displayed….. and the email used is also temporary….
will it still be considered a crime..?
For your further query i would like to add that Circumstances matter in deciding a act as a cyber crime. This is just because of dynamic nature of cyber crimes. In one situation a Act may not be a crime but in other it may.
So for your query the following things matter in deciding the nature of crime:
-Type of online contest
- Popularity of online test( this will decide the value of a single vote)
-Guidelines of the Contest on voting
-Use of e-mail ID’s(like in India there is no SPAM Act but in other countries there is a clause in Act that suggest the number of permissible ID’s a user can create
-In some contest they allowed multiple votes from users.
so every things depend on the conditions. So i am very happy if you please frame this question completely.
Thanks,
Atul Patel
MS-CLIS
National Law Institute University, Bhopal