Everywhere is Here
In 1990, Florida police investigating several vampire-style killings found a map leading to a body---in a suspect's computer. Although authorities never found the body, the suspect pleaded guilty to rape. Police say he lured victims to his home through a computer network. In another case, a California man operated a computer bulletin board to lure young victims to his home. One policeman logged on posing as a fifteen-year-old boy, while another signed on from Pennsylvania pretending to be a fellow pedophile. The suspect was simultaneously corresponding with the California ``boy'' while sending the Pennsylvania ``pedophile'' explicit messages about his intentions. Police nabbed him when he tried to attack a police cadet sent to his house undercover.As the net's demographics broaden, more fraud artists, rapists, and killers will inevitably enter it. The crimes they will then commit will be as much computer crimes as bank robberies are gun crimes. The more we use computers, the more we will find ways to abuse them. We're rapidly approaching the point where we can live in both a physical world and an electronic world. And in both, we will be doing exactly the same things.
Today's net is a frontier boomtown, with all the energy and all the vice that entails. It breaks down all traditional jurisdictions and changes all the rules. Walking a new beat in a neighborhood without an end, today's police, used to nabbing crooks with fingerprinting and brute force, are now learning to track electronic footprints across continents. We will, inevitably, try to map crimes on the net to our present understanding of the law. But the map won't be very accurate. Until now, everything happened somewhere. Now even the most basic things, such as where a crime occurred, is open to question. Is it where the assailant is? Where the victim is? Or somewhere else? Where should it be tried? Whose laws should be used?
Questions that once had clearcut answers are now blurring into meaninglessness. Who should be involved in a computer chase? Who has jurisdiction? If you invade someone's computer, is that burglary or trespass? Where should the search warrant be issued? And what for? What happens if someone living in country A commits a crime in countries B and C using computers in countries D, E, and F? What are the rules?
The Empire Strikes Back