Hacker intrusion subject to punishments by the Criminal Law
E030604Y9 Jul. 2003（E46）
The Legislative Yuan passed yesterday the 3rd reading of the bill of amendments to the Criminal Law, adding a specific chapter for the offenses of hindering computer use. Any person who produces computer virus programs and causes others to suffer damages shall be punished with a prison term of not more than five years, detention and/or a fine of not more than NT$200,000. Any person who overflows another person’s e-mail box without cause shall be punished with a prison term of not more than three years, detention and/or a fine of not more than NT$100,000.
Additionally, the punishments to be received by any person who intrudes governmental computers shall be increased one half further. The relevant offenses are indictable only upon compliant. The bill of amendments makes up the gap caused by the failure in applying traditional Criminal Law to hi-tech crimes and the regulations for cybercrime finally can tally with the standards provided by the network laws of advanced countries. Computer hackers who have run amuck on the network in the past years will no longer be out of law’s reach.
The newly passed specific chapter for “offenses of hindering computer use” of the Criminal Law includes the “offense of intruding computer without cause.” Any person who, without cause, inputs the secret code of another person’s account number, decodes the protective measure for compute use or utilizes the loophole of a computer system to intrude another person’s computer or its relevant equipment shall be punished with a prison term of not more than three years, detention and/or a fine of not more than NT$100,000.
“Provision for protecting magnetic records” explicitly specify that any person who, without cause, obtain, delete or change the magnetic records of another person’s computer or its relevant equipment and consequently causes damages to such person or the public shall be punished with a prison term of not more than five years, detention and/or a fine of not more than NT$200,000.
As intrusion of computer systems of official organizations will always make national secrets leaked and likely jeopardize the national security, the aforementioned bill of amendments stiplates that the punishments to any person who commits any of the offenses stated in the above three provisions on official computers or relevant equipment shall be increased to one half further. Nonetheless, the offenses set forth in the three provisions are indictable only upon compliant.
“Provision for the offense of producing computer programs particularly for cybercrime” focuses on the designers of computer virus programs. Any person who produces computer programs particularly for committing, by himself or another person, the offenses as provided by this chapter and consequently causes damages to the public or another person shall be punished with a prison term of not more than five years, detention and/or a fine of not more than NT$200,000.
