UK, USA and UAE Cybercrime Law - Essay Example

To this effect, communication, business and financial transactions, international trading, storage and distribution of private and public records and even the dispensation of employment duties are exacted online, in these states. Nevertheless, given the high financial and security stakes that have come to stalk the Internet, cybercrime has become increasingly common and complex. To this effect, high-tech cyber based crimes such as terrorism, computer intrusions, espionage, identity theft, child pornography and fraud have become a major concern to the US and the UK.

For this reason, the US and the UK have made legislation to counter and extirpate cybercrime, albeit these laws have their strong and weak points. This study aims to spot the light uponthe major cyber attacks, and associated threats in the UAE, US and UK and makes SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats) analysis of the current cyber crime laws and suggests approaches and mechanisms needed to improve the effectiveness of the cyber act. INTRODUCTION The phrase Cybercrime refers to any legally proscribed action that is performed over the Internet, a local network or the computer or any other device that can support the Internet, a local network or function of a computer. . Because of this, it becomes clear that the concept of cybercrime and laws on cybercrime are state-specific.

The leaps in the communication and information technology have promoted new technological trends like the internet spread, social networks, cloud computing, and VOIP like never happened before. The introduction of information technology solutions including e-commerce solutions, social networks, and on-line banking solutions has opened the door widely to the growing number of cyber terrorism threats and cyber attacks. Despite the rise of the cyber crime rates in UAE, the shortcomings in development of cyber crime laws and legislative provisions that regulate the up-mentioned technologies usage are huge.

According to recent survey conducted by Norton, Bulent Teksoz, Chief Security Strategist, Norton outlines the total cost of cyber crime in the UAE - found to be $626m per year(Teksoz, 2010).Hence, the need to initiate a nation-wide act to counter the cyber crime, either on the national and cross-border levels,arises. The state-specific nature of cybercrime in turn brings about an aspect of variance and makes it possible to identify the pros and cons and strengths and weaknesses of these cybercrime laws, as shall be seen forthwith, in the cases of the US and the UK.

Meanwhile, Trend Micro published a study in 2009, which reported the number of computer system crashesin the UAE as a result of cyber attacks reached 248,000, accounting for 20 percent of the total cases in the GCC countries(Ajbaili, 2009).Few countries in the region, such as; UAE, and Saudi Arabia, have drawn up cyber laws in an attempt to fight the cyber crimes (Bednarski, Chen, Chen,