Cyber Crime (Part - 3)

Cyber crime on social networking sites does not fall within the category of computer as the target but widely fall under rest three. For example: pornography, hate crime falls under computer as incidental to crime, cyber stalking falls under the crime associated with prevalence of computers. The following cyber crimes are frequently committed on social networking sites-

1. Obscenity
2. Hacking
3. Cyber fraud and cyber cheating
4. Hate crime
5. Information theft
6. Cyber stalking
7. Pornography.

Obscenity

Obscenity refers to anything which is indecent and offensive to public moral. It is a variable term as public moral varies from one society to another. It is more difficult to define obscenity on social networking sites because it’s a virtual place where everybody has right to access and a thing may be obscene for one society but may not for another. The Indian Supreme Court has addressed obscenity as social crime in the Ranjit D. Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra (cited in Cyber Crime). In 1973 The Miller case established what came to be known as the Miller test, which clearly articulated that three criteria must be met for a work to be legitimately subject to state regulations. The Court recognized the inherent risk in legislating what constitutes obscenity, and necessarily limited the scope of the criteria. In determining whether speech is obscene, the basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be:

(a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest of sex,

(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and

(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literacy, artistic, political, or scientific value.

In Bangladesh women become victims of crime of obscenity in most cases e.g. publishing photos with obscene quotes in obscene pages or groups, getting obscene messages etc. But still neither the Penal Code, 1860 nor the ICT Act, 2006 has defined the term obscenity.

Hacking

Hacking is most known offence in the cyber world. From the beginning, hacking has raised serious concerned about the misuse of powerful, new electronic technology. The offence described by hacking refers to unlawful access to a computer system. Robert Moore described (cited in Alam pp247-248) that hacking involves the unlawful access to another’s computer without the legitimate owner’s permission. Section 56(1) of the Information and Communication Technology Act, 2006 has given definition of hacking. It provides that If any person--

(a) with the intent to cause or knowing that he is likely to cause wrongful loss or damage to the public or any person, does any act and thereby destroys, deletes or alters any information residing in a computer resource or diminishes its value or utility or affects it injuriously by any means;

(b) damage through illegal access to any such computer, computer network or any other electronic system which does not belong to him; then such activity shall be treated as hacking offence.

Origin of Hacking: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was one of the first institutions in the United States to offer computer programming and computer science courses. It is believed that the members of the Artificial Intelligence Lab of MIT have used the term Hacking. But they were not criminals rather they were a highly devoted research team. They referred themselves as hacker since they were capable of taking computer programs and of making them to perform actions not originally intended by the designers of the computer software.

Causes of Hacking Social Networking Profile: Hacking on social networking website is a common phenomenon. There are certain factors behind hacking. This are-

1. To hamper the reputation of persons by posting obscene materials on his/her profile
2. To harass persons with a view to open fake profile
3. For fun as a hobby
4. To steal personal information and photographs to commit further offence

Source:

1. Ranjit D. Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra.(1965) ISCR65 SC
2. Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973)http://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/constitutional-law/constitutional-law-keyed-to-sullivan/freedom-of-speech-why-government-restricts-speech-unprotected-and-less-protected-expression/miller-v-california-4/visited on 23 March 2015
3. Alam, Advocate Md. Jahangir, Understanding Cyber Law in Bangladesh,Titu publication p.247
4. Moore, Robert, cybercrime: Investigating High-TechnologyComputer Crime