Senate Members Take Action to Pass New Bill Against Cybercrime

Posted 03/26/2010 at 5:49am | by Paul Lilly

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There's a new bill floating around Congress that's been introduced by a bipartisan group of Senators that includes Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Dirsten Gillibrand (D-New York). It's called the "International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act" and if passed, it would require the president to evaluate the state of a given country's efforts to crack down on cybercrime. Those countries not doing enough could fall into the category of "Countries of Cyber Concern."

The bill also requires that the executive branch come up with a plan of action for changing the situation for any country that lands on its concern list. If a country fails to follow through and clean up their online security environment, it could then be cut off from various forms of aid and preferential trade status.

No doubt driven at least in part by recent events, the bill's accompanying press release even mentions that "hackers in China launched a large, sophisticated attack on Google and other American businesses." And of course the bill has the support of U.S. companies now being hit by cyberfraud, including American Express, Mastercard, Vista, and eBay, as well as a handful of tech heavyweights like Facebook, Microsoft, Cisco, and Hewlett-Packard.

Read more here.

Image Credit: cyberwarfaremag.wordpress.com