9781422283981

Cyberspace is a new territory, a new dimension almost, in which we live and work. For example, I have a question for a colleague who works in an office two doors down the hall. Once, I would have picked up the telephone, but now I use e-mail. The reply comes back minutes later. It turns out he is not in his office, but in Australia. I had not realized that, but it does not matter—we can do our busi- ness just as easily 12 yards or 12,000 miles apart. However, along with the benefits of new territory comes new crime. Never before has a new technology been taken up faster than the Internet. Growth, driven by the World Wide Web, started to explode in the last decade of the 20th century, linking people in ways never contemplated (and never possible) before. The benefits are immense, but criminals have found opportunities too. Words to Understand Cyber crime: crime involving the use of networked computers Disgruntled: discontented Hacker: someone who is a computer expert or someone who gains illegal access to computer systems Internet Service Provider (ISP): business that provides customers with access to the Internet Jurisprudence: a system or body of law Xenophobic: having an unreasonable fear of what is foreign and especially of people of foreign origin The Community of Cyberspace

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