Almost every major political candidate in recent history has used, and often exploited, on of the many facets of crime to attempt to convince American voters that they can feel secure and safe with the candidate at the leadership helm, coveted feelings in a tumultuous world. As a result, we have more policemen patrolling the streets, laws such as the death penalty and three strikes your out, proposed increases to defenses spending for both the latest weapons and more armed service men, beefed up airport security measures, and catchy candidate slogans such as tough on crime. And yet, the one facet of crime that no one is talking about is the one issue that has the potential to destroy the American economy, the American political system, and the lives of the American citizens. As new cops patrol the streets at night and technologys most advanced weapons sit ready to deploy in order to protect our land, some of the worlds most vicious and dangerous criminals invade our homes and our countrys borders each day almost without a trace. Computer crime and terrorism are plaguing our nation, and our leaders continue to march the nation into the criminals hands. Today, more and more, computer crime has made its way into the headlines, the evening news, and major newspapers. In recent years, we have seen attacks on major websites such as Yahoo, America Online, the FBIs home page, and many others. These attacks, known as hacking, have ranged from defacing web pages to shutting down entire sites, costing thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars each time (Quinn, 1). In other areas of computer crime, individuals use credit card fraud to buy items online in an environment where they are not checked by anything more than a card number, expiration date, and billing address. In a one year period, it is estimated that computer crime causes hundreds of millions of dollars in damage (Carter, 3). These crimes and attacks have become so...
