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Computer Crimes

Irish Criminal Law Journal - Volume 15, No.1, 2005 1
Computer Crime in Ireland: A critical assessment of the substantive law
T.J. McIntyre B.C.L., LL.M., B.L., Lecturer in Law, University College Dublin.
Introduction
Irish law on computer crime is an afterthought. The principal
offences in this area are contained in the Criminal Damage
Act 1991 and the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences)
Act 2001: in both cases, the offences have been tacked on
to an Act whose primary focus is elsewhere, and in both
cases the drafting reflects this lack of attention. In addition,
the offences are beginning to show their age: recent
technological developments have resulted in new threats
and responses which do not fit easily into the existing law.
Some reform of the law is overdue, and in any event will
be necessary if Ireland is to implement the Council of
Europe Convention on Cybercrime and the (proposed)
Council Framework Decision on Attacks Against
Information Systems. This article looks at the substantive
law relating to computer crime with a view to identifying
problems which currently exist, flagging some developing
issues and offering some suggestions for reform.1
Background
“It appears an inevitable feature of technological
development that criminal applications follow
legitimate uses with very little time lag.”2
Although computer misuse soon followed the development
of computers, laws dealing specifically with computer crime
took somewhat longer to appear.3 In part, this may be
because many computer related crimes were essentially
conventional crimes4 which were merely facilitated by the
use of computers: as such, they could be prosecuted under
existing laws. As Kerr points out:
“For the most part, traditional crimes committed using
computers raise few new issues for criminal law. The
basic crimes remain the same regardless of whether
wrongdoers use computers or some other means to
commit them. For example, a death threat is...