Week 5 - Criminal Fraud and the Law

Week 5

Again drawing the experience from me studying law, crimes like cyber crime requires more guidance and strict or vicarious liability need to be enforced to minimise such crime. Prime example would be the case Kennison v Daire, where the court was able to explore offences committed by the use of computer technology, however, the prosecution found it difficult to prove such offence. Furthermore, it remains uncertain as to whether our current legislative systems contains all the computer offences or technical definitions that prevents cyber crime from happening. Computer crime must now confront obfuscation crime tools used to commit computer abuse such as dynamic domain name hosting, encryption, fast-flux and double fast-flux, malware, onion routing, peer-topeer (P2P) channels, Trojans and virtual private network services. (The Report of the Inquiry into Cyber Crime, 2010.)

For recommendations, I suggest Australia should first implements principles in relation to cyber crime and only to be of guidance for courts to apply if assistance is required. Having these principles as guidance, will result the court to come a decision allowing other matters to rely on the judgment. Thus, it allows this to law and allow the courts then further to develop strict and vicarious liabilities for these crimes.

Reference:

House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Hackers, Fraudsters and Botnets: Tackling the Problem of Cyber Crime — The Report of the Inquiry into Cyber Crime, 2010.

KENNISON v. DAIRE [1986] HCA 4

Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth)