Mr. Speaker, I was deep in thought about what the member across the way said, however, I am thankful to the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt for introducing this private member's motion. I believe every member should support the motion.
I do not believe that the criminal code is sufficient as it is. It is perhaps outdated regarding Internet crime and I believe it is yet another symptom of how we are failing to keep up with the times in having a judicial system that protects Canadians.
Ever since the Internet entered the public domain there has been an enormous resistance to any regulation or interference by the government in the Internet. The Internet is believed by some to be the last bastion of pure freedom. Some people believed it could not be regulated and some people want freedom without limits, without consideration for others and without any accountability. However, freedom does come with responsibility, with limits, with consideration and with accountability.
Internet crime has proven to be harmful to personal property and will even destroy it. My own son's computer contained the files for my personal website during the election campaign. The night that he was to go home and finish that campaign site he found that a hacker had entered his computer and had actually destroyed the computer itself. He actually had to replace the hard drive because of the action of that hacker. We know it can happen. We know that Internet crime can also interrupt business. We believe it is time to shut down crime.
The Internet came on in the early nineties. It was the gateway to a new era. It developed so quickly that it seems to have left a lot of things in its wake. It moved so quickly that technology was perhaps slow in keeping up with the hackers, in keeping them out. Also, though, I believe that we were slow in heading them off.
Moving just as quickly, of course, were those we call hackers, who were attempting to destroy opportunities. The word virus took on a new meaning. Those who would destroy the opportunities and those who would create destructive viruses are the criminals that the member of parliament from Saskatoon—Humboldt and others want to shut down through this type of motion.
Existing crime legislation was never designed to deal with the types of Internet crime we are witnessing. Some of this crime was never even imagined in those days and it continues to develop in things that are happening on the Internet.
I believe amendments to the criminal code are required that will allow it to specifically deal with Internet crime. Amending the criminal code would provide law enforcement agencies and the courts with the tools they need.
Many have benefited personally from crimes on the Internet. It reminds me of the old protection racket in the old west, for instance, or in the Al Capone days. It seems that one of the ways to get a good computer job is to learn how to be a good hacker, to hack into some company's files and then offer oneself for hire. I do not believe that should even be allowed.
I support those who want to keep the government from unduly regulating the Internet and I support measures that will secure the existing network for us and for future users.
However, I believe there are things that we have not even mentioned and that this bill certainly does not address. I believe, for instance, that we also ought to look at sites that would entrap children in pornographic sites. I know this bill does not address that. That is just an example of how things progress on the Internet. We should broaden our look at what might be considered an Internet crime.
I have information here which indicates that by May 10 of this year the number of viruses tracked by MessageLabs SkyScan virus scanning service passed 185,000. That exceeds the mark reached in the whole year of 2000. We are seeing this kind of steady increase. Another consultant with another firm said “Around a year ago we would probably expect to see 1,000 new viruses each month. Nowadays we aren't surprised to see 1,200”.
There have been two major viruses this year, and we all know about the one last year, the love bug virus. These viruses are developing very rapidly.
I believe that the laws need to be tough enough to punish those who would willfully spread computer viruses and those who write them. We must take the cool out of writing viruses and we must not allow people to profit from it.
I understand that people who distribute viruses get the code from a virus exchange website where authors post viral source codes. This in itself should be illegal. To allow the tools for writing viruses to be on the Internet seems to me to be quite comical, but it is happening. If our laws are so sufficient, why is it continuing to happen? Why are those sites there?
It has been stated that no one is ever shown anything useful about a computer virus. It is bad and it only does harm and the law should treat it accordingly. Peter Tippet, a chief technology officer for TruSecure Corporation, wrote a recent article in which he says that making a bomb is illegal while writing about a bomb is not illegal and with a computer virus the words are the bomb.
Virus writers are glory seekers. They believe they are free in the wild, wild west of the computer Internet world to do whatever they want to do. It is time that we introduced some effective crime legislation to deal with hackers. I am pleased to support the bill which calls for some important steps to be taken toward the real control of Internet crime.