Cyber laws and acts

I have been meaning to write about this for a long time and as always procrastination has been my best friend all along... Anyways now that I have come around to write this, let me go into this before I start wandering off everywhere.

Indian government has received recommendations from a committee setup for reviewing the Information Technology act. (http://www.mit.gov.in/itact2000/ITAct.doc). The amendment provides for more stringent actions and penalties for the perpetrators; an amount of Rs. 2500000 (Approx. USD 55000). But that's not the point. The IT act in its original form punished only illegal hacking activities, which is pointless. So the Indian government is going in the right direction.

But again that's not the point. India may have toughest of IT laws with a USD 100 million as penalty coupled with 200 years in prison, but what if the perpetrator is committing the crime from a country where the Indian Jurisdiction has no say and neither does India have a extradition treaty. The criminal cannot be punished. So you can have all the strictest of laws, but it would come to naught.

I mentioned earlier that I have been meaning to write about this. I have always believed that there should be a universal law governing cyber crime. The way the Internet has blurred the boundaries of nations today, we cannot possibly have separate laws for different countries. Right now I can sit in USA (or Argentina for that matter) and hack a computer in say... Bulgaria, transfer all the money in the central back back in India and nobody can do anything about it. See what I am coming at? Bulgarian government can prosecute the perpetrator in absentia and label the person as criminal. But what good will it do? The perpetrator will enjoy the money and get away with it. It is a very dangerous situation where people may start thinking that (cyber) crime does pay.