The economic cost of cybercrime

FOR the 21st-century criminal, a new image has emerged. It is locked in shadows, often faceless, anonymous. It lives in a virtual world made up of pixels. It waits for the unthinking, the brash, the carefree.

We call it by many names, but only one stands out: the hacker.

The economic cost of cybercrime for victims is immense. Recent US studies reveal a 50-percent increase, reaching a global total of $113 billion, depending on who’s doing the estimates. For others, it’s $1 million to $1 trillion annually (E&T Magazine, August 2013). Companies that suffered attacks posted a spending average of $11.6 million last year, an increase of $2.6 million from 2012. “Cleaning up” the system costs roughly $1 million.

Cybercriminals make a killing using fraud. By using fake anti-virus applications alone, hackers from three gangs were said to have garnered $97 million, based on the analysis of their financial records (Bloomberg/BusinessWeek). The trick is to convince an Internet user to download the application, which is infected with malware. Once activated, crimes like identity theft are committed, allowing the hackers to steal money from their victims.

The keynote speech delivered by former Sen. Edgardo J. Angara during the Second International Conference on Cybercrime states that about “30 million Filipinos use the Internet on a regular basis.” Based on studies by Symantec, 87 percent of them have suffered a systematic online attack.

Angara says: “The economic cost of cybercrime is no petty issue. Stolen personal or business data could lead to catastrophic losses. In the Philippines, the average loss for 28 days of undetected attacks is $223, or P12,203. Those who are attacked would not know how much they are losing until they find out that their confidential information is being used. This is a silent epidemic and one that we cannot adequately address with the current law-enforcement tools we have.”

The risks to business, personal endeavors and even national security make for a strong, unassailable argument for a cybercrime law. But Angara himself admits that “cyber law is more complicated than traditional laws.” A thorough understanding of technological breakthroughs in computer science is crucial to its success.

“No country has fully resolved all the issues surrounding these crimes,” the former senator says. “The range of activities, which are to be governed by these laws, is largely technology-driven, an area [that] is dynamically changing and is beyond anyone’s control.”

What Angara fails to mention is that our cybercrime law—Republic Act (RA) 10175—comes with provisions that are deemed by many netizens as a breach of the constitutional right to freedom of expression. The one that stands out is online libel, a “crime” deliberately excluded in most cybercrime laws of other countries. Why online libel was included in RA 10175 has remained a mystery, albeit speculations abound.

No doubt there is a need for a cybercrime law, but one that doesn’t seek to breach the constitutional rights to free speech. The Internet is the last remaining bastion of independent expression. It would be a crying shame if the Philippines would be the first to spurn its proud status as a working democracy in Asia. –The BusinessMirror Editorial