COMPUTER AND DIGITAL LEGISLATION

The Computer and Digital Legislation a Forensics Investigator Should Know About In Ireland

The Computer and Digital Legislation a Forensics Investigator Should Know About In Ireland

Introduction

In the Ireland is an increasing acknowledgement of the assistance forensic  science can make to the early stages of a lawless individual investigation, especially as a result of the success of the National DNA Database. There is also acknowledgement that in the not too distant future, advances in expertise, such as DNA-on-a-chip, may signify that significant elements of  forensic science could be established at the misdeed scene and custody agency, other than being restricted to the laboratory.(Gilbert,2000) These advances can be anticipated to adjust significantly the shape of forensic and misdeed scene science, distorting the distinction between the two disciplines, how they are practised and used, and the roles inside them.

Legislation in Ireland

The Internet is a global communications system that allows easy access to resources and people. It has been adopted by business as a means of increasing their customer base and improving their ability to provide their service. Criminals have also adopted it as another means of committing crime. The mechanism of the Internet is based in technology protocols, many of which are open standard and easily available, so with a little effort in educating one self on the inner working of the Internet, the criminal mind can conceive many imaginative ways of misrepresenting themselves and tricking the remote user into divulging their personal details, financial details, user access codes and passwords. Who hasn't received a spam email asking for bank details, offering to get large amounts of money for a small deposit, and similar type of get-rich-quick schemes? Other tricks are not illegal but border on being so and are defiantly unethical, are the selling of so-called special drugs reporting that they can satisfy some social desire on the part of the customer.

In Irish Law, there is no individual legislation Act that is specially targeted at computer crime, instead computer crime has been treated as an afterthought and incorporated in Acts whose primary focus is elsewhere. As such, most of the computer crime related offences can be found in section 5 of the Criminal Damage Act, 1991[4] and Section 9 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud) Offences Act 2001.

 

Computer Crime

The Internet is boundless and cybercrime scenes stretch from personal desktops across the fiber networks that around the globe. Digital forensic investigators like Harold Phipps, vice president of industry relations at Norcross Group in Norcross, Ga., regularly slip across accepted geographic jurisdictions in pursuit of digital clues and wrongdoers.(Weston, 2000)

Tools and teaching for digital forensics have existed for years, but the process of forensics remains a relation unidentified art amidst the data security profession. It's an increasing area, though, granted the ever-increasing allowance of cybercrime, persona robbery, facts and numbers leakage and regulatory landscape round facts and numbers protection.(Gilbert,2000) Digital forensic specialists present critical tasks extending from recognising sources of facts and numbers compromises and holes ...