Afiq Taqiudin

1. Cyber Crime (Cyber Bullying)

Cyber crime is the fastest-growing criminal activity challenging law enforcement officials, as computer criminals invent new crimes such as web jacking and use technology in age-old activities such as extortion. Some may think that crimes committed against computers are victim-less  but the impact on humans is very real and in some cases fatal.

Welcome to bullying in the twenty-first century. Say goodbye to stealing lunch money and getting pushed into lockers, and say hello to anonymous Facebook posts, threatening cell phone texts, and malicious instant messages. Playground bullies have exchanged their brute-force tactics for electronic weapons. Their victims are no longer on school buses or at recess, but in the comfort of their own homes in front of computers with parents just feet away. This old practice with a new twist is called "cyber bullying," and it is defined as the "willful and repeated harm inflicted through the medium of electronic text." Studies from iSafe, an organization promoting Internet safety, have found that forty-two percent of students grades four through eight claimed they had been bullied online. In addition, there are concerns that cyber bullying is on the rise, affecting children of all ages all across the world. 

Cyber bullying's purpose is similar to that of traditional bullying in that the aggressor seeks power and control. Like a traditional bully, a cyber bully strives to make victims feel weak and at fault for the bully's actions. What makes cyber bullying more dangerous, and perhaps more damaging than traditional bullying is that the cyber bully can maintain anonymity. Although in the United States' Constitution anonymity is a protected First Amendment right applauded by many because it allows for free expression over the Internet, bullies have abused the Internet's privilege of anonymity to inflict serious psychological harm on their victims. Furthermore, the mixture of adolescent bullying and Internet anonymity may cause developmental problems. Since adolescents have not fully developed personal and social identities, cyber bullies can rationalize their online acts because the interaction does not seem real and they cannot see its physical manifestations upon the victim. The ability to press 'send' and watch it disappear makes it seem less real. Psychologists have also found that the distance between bully and victim is leading to an unprecedented-and often unintentional-degree of brutality, especially when combined with a typical adolescent's lack of impulse control and underdeveloped empathy skills. Furthermore, many experts who have studied schoolyard bullying misunderstand cyber bullying because the motives and the nature of cyber communications, as well as the demographic and profile of the cyber bully differ from their offline counterpart.

Additionally, cyber bullying has no distinct boundaries and can reach a victim anytime and anywhere. As a result, a cyber bullying victim may experience more damaging effects than a traditional bullying victim because the home is no longer a place to hide from the ridicule. Moreover, cyber bullying is a public interaction that is available for the whole online world to see. Over the Internet, children do not have the ability to automatically delete disparaging comments off of websites and message boards in the same way they can scratch off words written on a school's bathroom wall. This instantaneous dissemination can do considerable harm to a student's psyche and self confidence.

Reference : Kevin Turbert, Faceless Bullies: Legislative and Judicial Responses to Cyber bullying, 33 Seton Hall Legis. J. 651, 656–57 (2009) 

2. United States v. Drew (Megan Meier's Case)

The reports surrounding the case of Megan Meier make it sound as if the hoax started innocently enough. A mother, Lori Drew, created an online profile to determine whether Megan, a thirteen-year-old student, was spreading false rumors or malicious statements about her own daughter. Though the two girls were longtime friends, their relationship had soured following Megan's transfer to a different school. Lori Drew, in collaboration with her then-thirteen-year-old daughter and a then-eighteen-year-old employee, created the fictitious profile of an attractive sixteen-year-old boy who they named "Josh Evans." According to some news reports, however, there is a darker twist to that innocent beginning, including that the profile was carefully chosen to exploit Megan's vulnerabilities and displayed characteristics that appeared specifically tailored to attract Megan's interest. Using this profile, Drew, her daughter, and the employee proceeded to contact Megan, fostering a relationship between the fictitious "Josh" and Megan that lasted more than a month.

On a Monday afternoon, while her mother was out taking a sibling to a doctor's appointment, everything about the relationship changed. After weeks of chatting, flirting, and generally becoming close, Josh suddenly turned mean. ... He called Megan names, and later they traded insults for an hour. Following a message from "Josh" that he, in essence, did not like the way she treated her friends, a number of students who were all linked to "Josh's" MySpace webpage sent Megan "profanity-laden messages." Later, a fight broke out between Megan, "Josh" and another girl online. During the fight, "Josh" told Megan, "in substance, that the world would be a better place without [Megan] in it." Megan replied that "Josh Evans" was "the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over." Megan ran sobbing to her bedroom, and within an hour of the fight her mother found her hanging from a belt tied to her closet. She died in the hospital the next day.

It took nearly a year for Drew's involvement in the case to come to light. In the initial aftermath of Megan's death, Drew told a child in her neighborhood who may have had access to the "Josh" account to "keep her mouth shut ... stay off the MySpace [and] avoid accessing the Josh Evans account." 

It was not until six weeks after Megan's death, during a meeting with grief counselors and another neighbor, that the Meiers learned "Josh Evans" was a hoax. At the request of FBI agents investigating the case, the Meiers did not publicly discuss Drew's involvement in their daughter's death for a year after it initially happened. It was not until a story was published in a local newspaper that reports of the incident began to surface in the national news media. Although the local paper's initial story about Megan's death and the MySpace hoax did not name Drew, her name and address were published by Internet bloggers outraged by the events. The story was subsequently picked up by the national news media. 

The case of Megan Meier and her suicide after she received abusive statements that were part of a MySpace hoax is a tragic example of the problems encountered in this arena. Megan Meier was a thirteen-year-old girl living in Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, when she suffered a vicious hoax perpetrated by her neighbors through a fraudulently created profile on MySpace. After the fictitious profile of an attractive sixteen-year-old boy had been used to cultivate a close relationship with her, the communications turned mean, eventually ending in a message that drove Megan to commit suicide. Her death became the focus of a media storm a year later when it was publicly released that her adult neighbor had been intimately involved in the plot.  This Comment discusses the issues surrounding online cyber bullying, and the California federal jury in United States v. Drew that returned a guilty verdict for Lori Drew, the adult perpetrator of the hoax of which Megan Meier was the victim. 



References: 

1. United States of America, Plaintiff, v. Lori Drew, Defendant. (No. CR 08-0582-GW)
2. http://abbykorinnelee.hubpages.com/hub/Cyberbullying-Megan-Meiers-Story#

3. Punishing Cyber Bullying: Regulations and the CFAA and The Malaysian Context

Prosecutors ultimately charged Drew with violating the CFAA. Passed in 1984, the CFAA prohibits various types of hacking of government and other protected computers. In the past, this law has been reserved for prosecution of cyberhacking crimes, and is described by the American Bar Association's Data Security Handbook as falling into the category of "laws governing unauthorized access and intrusions into computers and networks (hacking attacks) .... , In Lori Drew's case, federal attorneys used the CFAA to prosecute her for accessing MySpace through fraudulent means, and using such access to engage in tortious conduct. The MySpace terms of service require that registrants provide information that is "truthful and accurate." The tortious conduct at issue in this case was intentional infliction of emotional distress, whereby Drew engaged in a series of acts designed to embarrass or humiliate Megan Meier. They also charged her with engaging in a conspiracy to violate the CFAA. Each of the three charges for violating the CFAA "alleged that the access was for the purpose of intentionally inflicting emotional distress on [Megan] .... As the government's proposed jury instructions reveal, its theory of the case required as one of the elements of a CFAA violation that Drew's access was for the purpose of furthering the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

In enacting the CFAA,  legislators were working to enact an omnibus criminal statute that would address issues of computer crimes without requiring the law to be amended every time a new technology is introduced into the market. The existing statute was designed to be broad and adaptable to changes in technology without the need for constant and time burdened alterations of the criminal code. Therefore, it should be entirely appropriate to apply the statute in situations that could not have been articulated when it was enacted.

Additionally, an indictment of this kind did not attempt to criminalize the mere violation of a website's terms of service. Rather, Drew was charged with violating the MySpace terms of service, which caused her access to be unauthorized, and then using that unauthorized access to obtain information that she then used to engage in intentional tortious conduct. Without each step in that process, it would not be possible to prosecute her under the felony provisions of this statute. Unless someone has engaged in the kind of activity that would be punishable under other areas of the law, there cannot be a felony prosecution under this statute.

The provisions of the CFAA under which Drew was charged criminalize "intentionally accessing" a "protected computer" for the purpose of obtaining information, and using that information in furtherance of any tortious act." The term "protected computer" was broadly defined to encompass any computer used in interstate commerce that could properly be regulated under Congress' commerce clause power.

Reference: Sarah Castle, Cyber bullying on Trial: The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and United States v. Drew, 17 J.L. & Poly 579, 593-597 (2008-09).