International Forum on Cyber-Crime to Begin

In an age when cyber-criminals can reach across borders with the click of a mouse, the world’s leaders are realizing they will have to work together to crack down on Internet attacks. Starting today, leaders from Group of Eight countries will be in Paris for a three-day discussion on Internet crime. Separately, the 41-nation Council of Europe, working with the United States, Canada, Japan and South Africa, is drafting a treaty to standardize cyber-crime laws. Though their efforts preceded the appearance of the “Love Bug” virus, the attack that crippled corporate and government networks around the globe earlier this month may have boosted the sense of urgency among government leaders to implement Internet safeguards and create ways to fight crime in cyberspace. Computer attack, unlike murder or robbery, is still not universally recognized as a crime. Laws to fight it are typically found only in industrialized nations that depend on computers, said Stein Schjolberg, a Norwegian judge who tracks computer criminal laws around the globe. In the Love Bug case, investigators in the Philippines had to delay a raid for several days while prosecutors searched for laws that could apply. The European treaty under discussion would require countries to pass laws against hacking, computer fraud and online child pornography, and set penalties, preserve evidence and cooperate in international investigations. The United States has one of the world’s strongest hacking laws.