The Department of Justice of the United States prosecutes cybercrimes under three different sections of federal law. The first, codified in 18 U.S.C. section 1030, is known as The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), established in 1986. This act covers nine sections of computer crimes, with statutory penalties ranging from one year to life in prison. This act is a protection of the federal government and its agencies from cybercrime. Some of the crimes highlighted under this Act include obtaining national security information, illegally accessing a government computers, trespassing in a government computer, trafficking in passwords and extorting involved computers among others. By allowing for civil remedies, this Act has contributed greatly to jurisprudence, resulting into expansive interpretations compared to scenarios in criminal courts ( Clough, 2015). Second of the laws in place to enforce the fight against cybercrime is the Wiretap Act. According to this Act, it is illegal for any person, inclusive of law enforcement officers, to illegally intercept, disclose, or make use of illegally intercepted material to investigate cyber-crime. Violating the Wiretap Act attracts an imprisonment term of not more than five years, and a fine stipulated under Title 18. The Network Crime Statutes cover a range of cybercrimes, from unlawful access to stored communications, to identity theft, access device fraud and wire fraud.
Background
The age of digital revolution is here, aided by the myriad capabilities offered by the advent of computers. These computers have found a staple position into the modern world, transforming the manner in which humans communicate and interact with each other. Owing to their capacity, it should not come as a surprise that they are used in committing crimes more than we are ready to believe. Cybercrimes are those crimes committed by use of computers, either through the internet or by use of other technologies. This text looks at the laws put in place to counter cybercrime in the United States of America, their adequacies and inadequacies, and offers recommendations to ensure maximum effectiveness for the intended purpose. The existing United States cybercrime laws are adequate in controlling cybercrime activities, but for maximum effectiveness, some identified inadequacies need to be addressed first. This study seeks to examine the current cybercrime laws with a view to offer recommendations for improvement.
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Adequacies of the Existing Cyber Laws
Legislation on cybercrime has focus at both the federal and the individual state levels. In most cases, federal legislation in states becomes necessary only when federal intervention is required. In addition, whereas federal authority can prompt states legislative jurisdiction in a given area, which seldomhappens, federal laws may overlap with those of the state in addressing the same issues. Thus, crimes committed have to fear both state and federal laws, as their legality is guaranteed. The provisions of the federal statute 18 US Code 1030 provides clear guidelines for individuals, institution, agencies, and interstate and foreign entities with regard to cybercrime laws. The provisions clearly prohibit unauthorized entry into government computers to expose information that is intended to be confidential, with intention to disclose to unauthorized persons, citing it a violation of the Law. The provisions further prohibit gaining access by authorized personnel to further the perpetration of fraud (Flowers, Zeadally, & Murray, 2013) . The Statute further criminalizes transmitting any threat with intention to sabotage normal operations of a computer or an entity, in addition to importing or transmitting obscene material. Following the cybercrime statute as guideline, the states have outlawed creation and distribution of harmful programs. The addition of these clauses clearly identifies the potential crimes that transmission of viruses and other computer malware could cause, thus removing ambiguity in legislation ( Clough, 2015) .
Inadequacies of the Current Laws and Recommended Inclusions
Each of the states constituting the United States has the freedom to design own legislative idiosyncrasies. This indicates lack of a formal mechanism both at state and federal levels that would advocate for uniformity in legislature. Further, the existing legislature lacks in definitional sections critical in prosecuting cybercrimes. This brings lack of clarity in setting of the cybercrime offence levels and their respective penalties (Fischer, 2013 ). By adopting sections on clear cyber-crime-specific sections into the statute, benefits such as improved legislative capacity would be realized. The question of jurisdiction is another major inadequacy that the cybercrime statute needs to address. When prosecuting crime, prosecutors often seek for the spatial aspect of commission of the crime. In cybercrime, this aspect is often vague. In such cases, application of traditional jurisdictional predicates of spatial aspects in cybercrime is rarely effective (Hadzhidimova & Payne, 2019) . This inadequacy could be corrected through the inclusion of clauses that provide different approach to jurisdictional issues. An example would be that when a perpetrator uses a computer to access another computer in a different state, that individual should considered to have accessed both computers in both states and as such, be liable to prosecution either state.
The statute further fails in addressing online threats, harassments or stalking perpetrated through use of electronic equipment and the like. Such a provision criminalizing use of electronic communication devices to repeatedly call with intent to harass, annoy, bully, irritate, threaten and similar malicious acts should be included in the cybercrime law (Yar, & Steinmetz, 2019) . While the law makes it an offence to solicit for sexual favors online, such provision rarely works with respect to underage victims/ minors, as witnessed by the many cases of cybercrime involving minors. In some cases, states have included provisions that offer reprehensions that are more serious when such acts are committedonline, than they do when the offence is committed on a one-on-one basis ( Clough, 2015) . This indicates a failure in legislation. While the considerable effort and resources have been assigned to fight cybercrime, the existing laws in freedom of speech and expression counteract against those of cybercrime. Many of the so-called internet laws only serve to protect IP addresses and respective copyrights, while failing completely in the fight against cybercrime ( Flowers, Zeadally, & Murray, 2013).
Conflict of interest: Cybercrime and human rights
In the digitally connected modern world, respect for and protection of human rights features prominently from the drafting and implementation of policies and laws to legitimacy of rule and law enforcement. In the fight against cybercrime, like all other crimes, the offender is considered innocent until proven guilty without considerable doubt ( Clough, 2015) . Admittedly, this brings a very weak point in the fight against crime. Offenders are known to twist their narratives to counter allegations of crimes, citing pro-social good-intention from their illegal activities. For instance, in the case of one hacker, Gary McKinnon, a Briton who hacked into US forces networks between 2001 and 2002, obtaining sensitive information that had the potential to harm the United States, was to be extradited for trial, but obscurities in laws saw the extradition order dropped on human rights grounds. Boundaries should be drawn to establish between criminals hiding in civil liberty and genuine human rights. Studies have established that prosecutors in the US are hesitant to pursue cases involving underage international offenders, due topolitical administration, cultural and diversity in legislation that make international agreements on cybersecurity and extradition unsuccessful ( Hadzhidimova & Payne, 2019).
Conclusion
Cybercrime, over the last three decades, has escalated to a widely discussed topic, whose understanding by the public has been obstinately informed and obscured by the media and the government. Internet growth has proliferated new opportunities for offenders to commit cybercrime. Society’s dependence on computers renders it vulnerable to cybercrime that spans globally through the cyberspace. While nations are encouraged to establish domestic laws to counter this vice, there is need for cross-national cybercrime laws, and harmonization of domestic laws to eliminate hurdles that come with legal issues in handling cases committed by both natives and non-natives and to address issues of extradition of non-citizen offenders. Proper law enforcement enhances deterrence through external collaboration. However, organizations should be wary of unexpected and undesirable consequences such as facilitating security-outsourcing markets due to interdependence of security providers, which could lead to changes in mix, and nature of cyber-attacks.
Review of the cybercrime legislation in the US should be a priority for the following reasons. The different states of the federal government of the United States should have legislation uniformity in dealing with cybercrime. This is necessitated by the great deal of variation evident in cybercrime legislation. The cybercrime law evaluation indicates offer of protection not only to the federal and state governments, but also to individual, private institutions and non-citizen entities. However, the law on cybercrime has not clearly addressed law enforcement. It is known that law enforcement agencies have been targeted by cybercrime, with the intent of compromising officer’s personal safety, their immediate families, or the general policing for malicious reasons. therefore, inclusions should be made to the cybercrime law prohibiting any form of disruption to law enforcement, including disrupting the individual law enforcement officers through such acts as disseminating their personal information online such that to threaten their safety or that of their family.
References
Clough, J. (2015). Principles of cybercrime . Cambridge University Press.
Fischer, E. A. (2013, June). Federal laws relating to cybersecurity : overview and discussion of proposed revisions. Library of Congress Washington DC Congressional Research Service.
Flowers, A., Zeadally, S., & Murray, A. (2013). Cybersecurity and US legislative efforts to address cybercrime. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management , 10 (1), 29-55.
Hadzhidimova, L. I., & Payne, B. K. (2019). The profile of the international cyber offender in the US. International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime , 2 (1), 40-55.
Yar, M., & Steinmetz, K. F. (2019). Cybercrime and society . SAGE Publications Limited.
