Press release
The Internet has successfully made our world too small in almost every aspect. While doing so, it has also bought many concerns and vulnerability with it. The issue of privacy and data protection has become an important issue throughout the world. It has been said by any security experts of Australia that next generation war will not be fought through guns and soldiers but it will be fought through cyber warfare which includes various such ways and techniques under hacking that could be used (is being used) by any hostile nations around the world. Hence, being a special adviser to the federal Attorney General, it becomes a great concern regarding the number of extradition requests received from US authorities related to hacking or distributed denial of service attacks that are carried out through young people in Western Sydney. In this perspective, a short report regarding the issues and the extent of general mater is cyber-crime for its nature and alleged offender in NSW as well as target that normally occurs in the cases are presented in the study. In addition, how an international cybercrime tribunal or forum can be developed for dealing the matters is described in the study.
Henry and Powell (2016) stated that the growing cybercrime in Australia has put a different sort of pressure on the legal system of the country. Australia has been always an ardent follower of the International conventions and laws that are made to facilitate goodwill among the nation. One such nation is the United States of America that have significantly increased the number of extradition request to Australia. Majority of this request is based on the cybercriminal that has been using the Australian soil to attack various internet and networking platforms of the USA. The Attorney General of Australia has been given the legal responsibility of handling all such extradition requests that are made by the government of Australia for certain hacker residing in Australia.
The basic procedure involves the AG carefully reading the extradition request along with the proof that is made available by the USA about the involvement of the person that is or might be residing in Australia (Tsui, 2015). This is usually followed by reviewing the petition that might be filed by the defendant asking for not being extradited. This process does take a lot of time because a lot of investigation and proof are presented by both the parties to the Attorney General to evade and apprehend respectively. Once the Attorney General of Australia is convinced about the extradition of the individual, he/she then contact the concerned authority in Australia to extract that individual to face trials in the USA so that he/she could be punished according to the law of the land of United States of America. This whole process also demands an opaque and transparent cybercrime tribunal like the Interpol but there the focus should be limited to the cybercrimes and unethical hacking from one country to the other.
It has been seen by the cyber cell authority of the New South Wales that most of the attack that is carried out of the servers and networks in the US used DDoS as a main attack by the hackers in Australia. DDoS is a type of service denial attack where the system is made to shut down or crash by the use of malformed data or overloading of the servers (Funk & Hirschman, 2017). This does create a ruckus if the underlying coding of the website is not strong enough. It has been seen that organized crime and group hackers use this technique to crash the system and obtain the information that might be forbidden by the network’s admin of that system. There has been a rise in this type of attack by the hackers in Australia which are most of the time aimed at the USA or European countries. Hence, it becomes important to focus on the precautions or actions that can mitigate the attacks of the hackers. Being a special adviser to the federal Attorney General, it can be advised to adopt specialized on-premises equipment and cloud mitigation provider so that the attack and its impact can be avoided.
Distributed denial-of-service attack
McGlynn, Rackley and Houghton (2017) commented that the system and law of extradition can vary from country to country depending upon the legal structure of that country. Extradition is the process by which it is made sure that a criminal or cybercriminal in our case cannot evade custody or fair trial by just switching one’s country. This process has been very fruitful not just for the justice system of the country but also has been beneficial in maintaining a healthy relationship between countries.
In Australia, the Attorney’s general department is has been given as the central authority in the matters of international extradition. The laws and regulation of any such case are that is taken up by AG office is guided by the service and execution of process act of 1992. It is also to b noted that the extradition request that is sent by Australia must be forwarded only by the Attorney General and not by any other government official.
There are certain limitation and rules which lays down that only those countries that have a legal obligation for fetching extradition request from Australia and to Australia are liable to entertain these request by the general (Dupont, 2017). The USA has been entitled to extraction process through the “Extradition (United States Of America) regulation which says that the united states are among the extradition country which gives authority to Australia to entertain such request from them. It can be seen that due to the above legal clause in Australia is legally binding in entertaining every extradition request that is sent from the United States of America.
Ghappour (2017) mentioned that there is a long list of procedure that is followed from the time an extradition request is made by the US. The Attorney General gives a fair chance to the defendant to prove his/her innocence or the fact that they have not been involved in any cybercrime against the country that has given the petition, in our case, it is the USA. This is done so that a defendant or the accused person is given a fair trial in Australia before they are handed over to the authority in the USA. If the Attorney General is satisfied that the accused has been wrongly framed by the agencies of the USA or any other country, the Attorney General is liable to dismiss the case against the person. The dismissal based on the above ground is also respected by the US considering the sovereignty of Australia and the independent judicial system of our country.
However, if the Attorney General is convinced that the crime was indeed committed by the accused, then he/she can immediately prepare an extradition order for the accused to the USA. In the US too, the accused in the cybercrime is given adequate chance to prove his/her innocence and face a fair trial (Hunter, 2017). The issue that surrounds these extradition cases is that they take a lot of time to be resolved because of the tenacious procedure that is involved in its proceeding.
Extradition
Any place or organization needs a set of rules or law which governs that space or else anybody can do as they wish which might create a negative impact. Likewise, an international cybercrime tribunal is the need of the times. With the increase in technology in the cyber world, rules and regulations need to be put in place as to how to adjudicate disputes.
The rules need to be developed according to the Budapest Convention which is the most important related to crimes committed on the Internet and/or computer crimes. The voices of developing countries need to be also heard as they are the most affected due to flexible national laws as opposed to developed nations. Once crimes like DDOS take place efforts should be made to find out the culprit and once they have been identified they should be given an appropriate punishment (Banks, 2016). These attackers are a threat to international security
It should be composed of a stipulated number of judges which can be decided based on votes. There should be a provision to give an advisory opinion as prevalent in the International Court of Justice, in cases, where the jury might require additional help. The tribunal should look into all kinds of cybercrimes like DDoS, hacking, fraud, phishing, etc. In wake of recent attacks, stringent laws need to be put into place and followed (Rosenzewig, 2014). Thus, the international cybercrime tribunal should be given proper authority so that the decisions taken by them are properly followed and not be treated like many other tribunals that are existing but their decisions are not carried out.
Conclusion
The cybercrimes in Australia is increasing by the day and the authority is coming up with new ways to catch these cybercriminals. Going further into the report, the concept of cyber criminals should be understood. Cybercriminal is those hacker or group of hacker that tries to obtain a private data through a system’s server in order to know about the private details. These cyber criminals do not restrict themselves to just one country rather they operate globally using the internet as there tools. In Australia too, there has been a rise in these sorts of activity where the majority of the culprit is using Australian soil to hack into the systems and networks of the USA. This is usually followed by an extradition request by the USSA to hand over these cybercriminals to the authority of the USA. Therefore, adoption of the above mentioned methods can be helpful to protect the hackers and obtain potential security.
References
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