On June 12, 2001, Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff testified before the Members of the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary. In his statement he addressed the nature of cybercrime and the Department’s current efforts to combat that problem.
On May 22, 2001, videotaped remarks by Attorney General John Ashcroft were presented before the first Annual Computer Privacy, Policy and Security Institute.
In his speech, the Attorney General addressed the Institute’s concerns of computer security and threats to information assets and the means by which industry and law enforcement can work together in fighting cybercrime.
On March 8, 2001, the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) issued the NIPC Advisory 01-003, an update to the NIPC Advisory 00-060, "E-Commerce Vulnerabilities," dated December 1, 2000. Below are links to the advisory and press release.
In October 1996, the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996 was enacted as part of Public Law 104-294. It amended the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1030. Below you will find links to the amended version of 18 U.S.C. § 1030, as well as a legislative analysis, prepared by attorneys from the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. This legislative analysis was incorporated into the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's Report on the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act. The Senate Report is also linked below.
In the week of February 7, 2000, hackers launched distributed denial of service (DDS) attacks on several prominent websites, including Yahoo!, E*Trade, Amazon.com, and eBay. In a DDS attack, dozens or even hundreds of computers all linked to the Internet are instructed by a rogue program to bombard the target site with nonsense data. This bombardment soon causes the target sites's servers to run out of memory, and thus cause it to be unresponsive to the queries of legitimate customers. On February 29, 2000, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center Michael A. Vatis testified before a House and Senate Joint Judiciary Subcommittee meeting to talk about the distributed denial of services attacks and about cybercrime in general.
The Melissa virus first appeared on the Internet in March of 1999. It spread rapidly throughout computer systems in the United States and Europe. It is estimated that the virus caused $80 million in damages to computers worldwide. In the United States alone, the virus made its way through 1.2 million computers in one-fifth of the country's largest businesses. David Smith pleaded guilty on December 9, 1999 to state and federal charges associated with his creation of the Melissa virus.
Three documents relating to the Melissa Virus case are linked below:
The first guidelines for responding to attacks on computer systems were made public to our nation’s CIOs (chief information officers) on February 12, 2002. The CIO magazine, a trade publication for information technology executives, published the guidelines which were drafted by private security and government experts. Both the press release and the report are accessible via the links below.
On April 5, 2000, the Department of Justice hosted a Cybercrime Summit at Stanford Law School, titled "Cybercrime Summit:A Law Enforcement/Information Technology Industry Dialogue on Prevention, Detection, Investigation and Cooperation," at which Attorney General Janet Reno and members of the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies met with representatives of information technology and Internet companies. The main topic of the Summit was how to improve cooperation between law enforcement and industry in investigating computer network hacking. Linked below are the Attorney General's Opening Remarks from the Summit, as well as the Question & Answer session between industry representatives and the Attorney General.
On March 15, 1999, Attorney General Janet Reno announced a new Cybercitizen Partnership, a new alliance between law enforcement and the technology community. The goal of the partnership is to coordinate the efforts of government, industry and the public to ensure public safety and responsible computer use. The partnership will also promote computer ethics and civic responsibility in the cyber age and aid law enforcement and industry in the battle against "on-line outlaws." The partnership will consist of three complementary segments. The first segment is a "good cybercitizenship" public awareness campaign. The second is a user-friendly computer and network security directory to help public and private sector organizations quickly find computer security resources. The third is an Information Security Professional fellowship program between industry and government that will raise the awareness levels of participants with respect to the views, perspectives and needs of their respective counterparts.
On June 9, 2000, Attorney General Janet Reno gave the keynote address at the ITAA Cybercrime Summit. In her speech, the Attorney General discussed the means by which industry and law enforcement can work together in fighting cybercrime. The text also includes the question and answer section.
On Monday, February 16, 2000, Attorney General Janet Reno testified before the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations. Her testimony provided an overview of cybercrime and the challenges that it presents to law enforcement today.
On January 10, 2000, Attorney General Janet Reno gave remarks before the National Association of Attorneys General in which she announced a new Law Net initiative. The Law Net will be a "strong, permanent network of federal, state and local computer crime experts to do the following: To share expertise and information technology, to assist each other 24 hours a day, seven days a week, around the clock, to prevent cybercrime wherever possible, and to bring those responsible for such crime, when it does occur, to justice; To work with industry, the academic world and privacy groups to build trust and to protect our privacy and the Constitutional rights of all Americans; And finally, to ensure that the Internet is a force that brings this world together and builds understanding across peoples and places and time.
On Monday, September 20, 1999, Attorney General Janet Reno addressed the High Technology Crime Investigation Association 1999 International Training Conference in San Diego, California. Her speech focused on the importance of interagency and state and federal law enforcement cooperation, as well as on the Department of Justice's policy position on encryption regulation.
On January 22, 1999, President William Jefferson Clinton addressed the National Academy of Science. His speech was titled "Keeping America Secure for the 21st Century." The speech he gave is available via the link below: