The protection of data in computer-based systems is a serious and growing problem. It is one of the most challenging technical problems in the field of computer science today. The objective of this paper is to provide a technical overview of the problem and to suggest some steps that need to be taken to assure progress in the field toward cost-effective systems that provide adequate protection.

The Problem: Protecting the privacy of data in computer systems involves establishing safeguards against accidental disclosure as well as protection against a deliberate attack. During system failures and restart procedures errors in coding procedures often cause data to be stored in the wrong files or put sensitive data out on the printer along with diagnostic information intended for maintenance personnel. You have probably had the experience at some time of being wired into someone else's telephone conversation.

The advent of a new brand of intellectual creativity, which followed developments in computer technology, created a considerable body of proprietory interests in computer software and data. There was therefore a search for legal instruments to provide protection against unauthorized exploitation of the intellectual property in them.

Several legal paths were attempted: contractual protection, patent law, trade secrets law and copyright. Of these, the current opinion is that copyright law is the most suitable instrument to protect rights in software and data.

Let me first say a few words on a personal theme. I had the privilege of being a student at our Faculty of Law of Mr. Shimron, to whose memory this conference is dedicated. I have very vivid memories of him. He taught us the course on Criminal Law, and he was a most impressive teacher. I should like to congratulate Mr. Shimron's family and Prof. Goldstein who co-operated in organizing this occasion.

When I heard the opening remarks by Judge Shalgi I made a note that I should tell the audience that the Committee for the Revision of the Copyright Law in Israel has up till now done very little with regard to computer software. However, on hearing Dr. Shalgi's following remarks I began to realise that actually our Committee had already done a lot in the context of computer software. The Committee reached a decision that it was suitable and proper for the new Copyright Law to address itself and apply its rules to computer programmes, and to list computer software among the works that are protected by copyright.

Since this is a legal seminar, I thought it would be appropriate to begin with a case. There is a person in Los Angeles who has been operating an electronic bulletin board on his personal computer. What that means is that he has memory attached to his computer, and it is possible for anyone else in the country with a computer to dial into that bulletin board and leave a message automatically in the memory. That message can then be accessed by anyone else who dials in.

This person does not exercise any control over the messages that are put in. It is open to anyone who wants to put a message in there. Somebody put into that bulletin board the telephone credit card number of a rich person. Subsequently, many other people dialed into the bulletin board, got the telephone credit card number and charged phone calls to that person. No one knows where the number came from. The board operator was prosecuted under a criminal charge. The question is, is he liable?

From the first, when human beings started to communicate with each other, information carried a message. The Information Society was born as soon as the first human creatures exchanged information.

Over history, information, like everything else, has developed and changed character. Information still carried a message, but rather quickly it must have also become power. When Francis Bacon coined the expression “Knowledge is power”, at the end of the 16th century, it had already been a truth for millions of years. Knowledge postulates information.

It is an indisputable fact that since the 1950's, the computer has assumed so central a place in our society that it is already difficult to visualize our society living and functioning without its assistance. And from the earliest period of the computer's development, it has been clear that this major addition to our society presents the legal world with new legal problems. Another aspect of this phenomenon is that as it became increasingly clear that the legal world was going to have to cope with these new problems, our legal community tended to produce more questions than answers.

Thirty-three states have enacted statutes that encompass in some way what is referred to in this paper as “computer crime”. In some states, computer crime laws are referred to as such only because of the inclusion of the word computer in some general provision. In others, complex and specific statutes exist.

Each of the computer crime state statutes presently in effect has its own peculiar combination of a variety of possible offenses. The bulk of the statutes proscribe as computer crime a core set of activities such as accessing, altering, damaging or destroying a computer with the intent to devise or execute any scheme or artifice to defraud or deceive. This “computer crime”, and a few others to be outlined later, are found in a majority of the state statutes with some individual variations. This paper presents a list of computer crimes common to many of the statutes, describes variations in those crimes and examines in more detail the unusual crimes.

In the name of all those who had the privilege to listen to today's enlightening lectures and discussion, I should like to express our gratitude both to our guests from abroad and to the Israeli participants for their valuable contribution to the illumination of problems connected with the relationship between computerized data-collecting and the law. As was stressed by Chief Justice Shamgar, Erwin Shimron was very much interested in questions of mutual interaction between the progress of social life and legal development. May I, as a retired teacher of constitutional law, ask your permission to refer briefly, in these concluding remarks, to the crucial issue of the protection of privacy in the computer age.

The need to protect privacy is deeply rooted in the respect for human dignity, the highest and most fundamental of all values in the civilized world. Considering then the close link between the private sphere of the individual and the very essence of human dignity, we have to attach the greatest importance to the task of protecting the private sphere in the relationship between State and individual and among individuals themselves.