What a Digital Forensics Investigator should know about IT Law in Ireland?
Information storage and access to computers has brought drastic evolution with the enhancement of internet access and computer usage across the huge range of areas that includes schools, homes, government departments as well as businesses (McClure, Scambray and Kurtz 2009). These changes develop the need for particular laws, which needs to be regulated in the use of computers as well as data storage along with new techniques and tools for forensic that help in investigating the offences (McClure, Scambray and Kurtz 2009). Below are investigators of computer forensic, which is required by lawyers in support for civil as well as criminal proceedings.
Ireland itself has no specific laws, which are meant to deal with the crimes related to computers, but as such they have two laws that could the computers crimes, and these are Criminal Justice Act 2001 that mainly deals with the offences related to fraud and theft, and the other one is Criminal Damage Act 1991 that deal with the section 2 and 5 principle offenses, and these laws cover the section 9 and 48 offenses related to computers. Section 2 (1) discusses that a person who damages without any lawful excuses for the property, or belongings that intend to damage the property or whether the property could get damaged should be guilty for the offence (McClure, Scambray and Kurtz 2009).
In section 2 doesn’t mention about the particular reference related to crimes related to computers, but the definition of section2 given within the statute of property fails to include about the offences linked with data (McClure, Scambray and Kurtz 2009). Section 5 (1) explains the person that work the computer without nay lawful excuse in the state having the intent to easily access the data that is kept within and outside the state or outside the state, with the intent to easily access the data, which is kept in the state, will be considered as guilty of offence and will be definitely made liable about the conviction to get fine or even get imprisonment for 3 months (McClure, Scambray and Kurtz 2009). Subsection 1 is also applied, in case whether the person or not the person has any intension to access the specific data or the data is kept by any other person.
There is no exact definition related to computer crime, but the crimes related to computers are the one where we use the computers for committing the offence. Examples related to it are crime committed through the use of computers such as violation of copyright, personal information, bullying or child pornography (Mitnick and Simon 2002). The current legislation of Ireland is has not specified its guidelines about the crimes related to computers and either categorize the computers as considering it as criminal damage under the act of criminal damage1991 or the dishonesty form under the Act of criminal justice 2001 (Mitnick and Simon 2002).
In case of Europe, the European council has tried to draft the cybercrime convention that was signed in year 2001. This draft was signed by 53 countries and there were 42 countries that have ratified it. This convention is significant in the global legislation as it makes the bond between the countries in the same way just like treaty (Mitnick and Simon 2002).
Digital Forensics is referred as the application for the purpose of investigating as well as analyzing the technique for collecting and preserving the facts through the specific computing devices in such a manner that it’s suitable for presenting within the court (Leavitt 2006). For the purpose of using this information in order to prosecute the criminal act and for avoiding the suppression through conducting the trail, it’s important that investigators should gather the facts in careful and legal manner. An investigator of digital forensics needs to get familiar with every applicable laws as well as needs of regulatory for the purpose of ensuring that the facts are not actually admissible by court. The needs of the investigator ensure that facts collected and are processed through the legislation of privacy data protection (Turing 1936). These facts need to be preceded, analyzed as well as presented in the most unprejudiced manner.
In the present Ireland laws, individuals and organizations are provided with digital rights that includes the present privacy and act of data protection, along with the act of freedom of information 1997 (Gladyshev and Rogers 2012). The European commission has also published the Code of European Union internet rights, and this code mentions that every person in EU has got the possibility to easily access the services of electronic communications at the affordable prices, and could even access the distributed information and could even run the services as well as application of their interest (Gladyshev and Rogers 2012). The highest court of France has also declared that the access to internet is considered as basic rights of human beings, where else in Finland citizens has the legal rights to access around 1 Mbps internet (Gladyshev and Rogers 2012).
International laws in context of the regulation body try to govern the relations among the nations and the state. International laws are considered as obligatory towards the state, and this fact offers the rules related to status of law (Blick 2007). In the Constitution of Irish Article 29.6 that regulates the global agreements defines that the global agreements holds the force of laws to certain extent that determines the Oireachtas. This means that the global agreements require to be incorporated in local laws before it get applicable in the state except the laws of European community that terms the article constitution 29 (Blick 2007).
It’s mentioned above that Ireland failed to have computer crime laws, but the one who is explored to be offended is included under the criminal justice and criminal damage act 2001 (Jones, Bejtlich and Rose 2005). However, it’s noted that the UK failed to have the exclusive laws, which could deal with the crimes related to computers. There is an act of Computer Misuse 1990 that is specifically designed for the purpose of addressing the misuse of computers and explains that there are three offences that related to misuse of computers, which is mentioned below:
Unauthorized access to the material saved in computers
Unauthorized material modification associated with the computers (Hanna 2009).
Unauthorized access with an intention to make easy for the commission of future offences (McIntyre 2008)
While comparing the Oreland with other countries like USA and EU holds the comprehensive laws that are mainly regulated towards offences of computers and could be divided in few sections such as:
Since the year 2003, two additions are done in Irish laws associated with crimes related to computers. First were the district court rules of 2003 that relates with fraud and theft offences that were later amended as criminal justice act 2001 (Hanna 2009). As per the form 34.1 the warrant provides the certain powers such as:
To operate or either operated by an individual through accompanying their purpose
To offer their password required for operating
This act helped in bringing various changes related to offences of white collar crime. All these changes have offered power to Garda in context of the passwords and files decryption along with the duty for reporting the specific crimes (Hanna 2009).
Act of Freedom of Information 1997
Act of Data protection 2003
Act of Copyright and related rights 2000 (Walden 2007)
Act of criminal evidences 1992
Act of Data protection 1988.
eDiscovery is referred as the process that is mainly used for the facts in the legal cases related to crime and civil in context of requesting, reviewing, as well as searching the electronic information. In the year 2009, the committee of Superior courts rules tries to amend the superior court rules in the year 2009 (Reed and Angel 2000). These amendments need increase with the use of electronic technology in the interaction between more than 2 parties. The main changes could be mentioned in brief:
One party in the process could try to send request in electronically storing the information in the searchable way through the other party (Casey 2011).
The court might order one party to offer the information stored in electronic format in the searchable format for the other party.
In the case of computers that includes the sensitive information but not the discoverable data, which could be ordered by court that act as the independent investigator for searching the appropriate electronic data (Reed and Angel 2000).
A request could even be send to the court for the purpose of narrowing the discovery scope in case where the party could offer the discovery that believe in exploring the data and its documentation might be time consuming and costly (Reed and Angel 2000).
Conclusion
This report is helpful in understanding various policies and laws related to protection of computer misuse. This report is also supportive in understanding the crimes undertaken in Ireland and the legislative regulations for protecting it.
References
McClure, S., Scambray, J. and Kurtz, G. 2009. “Hacking Exposed.” McGraw Hill.
Mitnick, K. and Simon, W.L. 2002. “The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security”. Wiley
Leavitt, D. 2006. “The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer”. Norton
Turing, A.M. 1936. “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungs problem”. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Series, 2 (42), pp 230 – 265
Blick, R.H. et al. 2007. “A nanomechanical computer—exploring new avenues of computing”. New Journal of Physics, 9, pp. 1-241
Jones, K.J., Bejtlich, R. and Rose, C.W. 2005. “Real Digital Forensics: Computer Security and Incident Response”. Addison Wesley
McIntyre, T.J. 2008. ‘Cybercrime in Ireland’ In: Reich, P (eds). Cybercrime and Security. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Walden, I. 2007. Computer Crimes and Digital Investigations. Oxford University Press.
Reed, C. and Angel, J. 2000. Computer Law; 4th edition. Grant Thornton International.
Casey, E. 2011. Digital Evidence and Computer Crime: Forensic Science, Computers, and the Internet. Academic Press.
Gladyshev, P. and Rogers, M. K. 2012. Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime: Third International ICST Conference, ICDF2C 2011, Dublin, Ireland, October 26-28, 2011, Revised Selected Papers. Springer.
Hanna, N. K. 2009. e-Transformation: Enabling New Development Strategies. Springer Science & Business Media.
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