Australia warned on e-crime

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Australia warned on e-crime

By SOPHIE DOUEZ Sunday 12 March 2000

Australia is ill-prepared to deal with the threat of transnational computer crime in the new millennium, according to the former head of the National Crime Authority, Mr John Broome.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000312/A3272-2000Mar11.html

Speaking to delegates at the Australian Institute of Criminology conference on transnational crime, Mr Broome said the most significant threat to Australia was posed by the sheer size and speed with which electronic commerce was developing, coupled with an inadequate legislative framework.

"We have legislation that is totally inadequate and doesn't in fact provide any legal regime at a federal level," he said.

Electronic commerce is worth about $40 billion a year to the Australian economy - about 10 per cent of gross domestic product. Mr Broome said although Britain had enacted legislation to deal with computer crime in 1990, the Australian Government had only last month released a discussion paper recommending Australia enact similar legislation.

He said entrenched distrust between state and federal governments would continue to hamper efforts to legislate against computer crime.

Mr Broome said that unless there was a massive improvement in the pace at which both international and domestic arrangements were advanced, there was little hope that Australia would be equipped to deal with computer crime.

"Around the globe, we've had 50 years of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and we still haven't got an international criminal court," he said.

"This is about as big as it gets in terms of the economy ... if we were really serious we would see these things as major issues for our economy."

Mr Broome said it would require minimal resources to establish a sensible regulatory regime that did not impose upon the commercial possibilities of electronic commerce, but which provided the business community with a framework in which Internet crime could be investigated.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 11, 2000


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