Forwarded From: William Knowles <erehwon@kizmiaz.dis.org>
BEIJING (October 12, 1998 08:44 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - As
China becomes ever-more wired, computer police must raise Internet
security standards to catch the growing numbers of cyber-criminals, the
People's Daily said on Monday.
China has detected more than 100 cases of computer crimes in the past two
years, the most serious case involving the theft of $1.2 million, China's
ruling party mouthpiece said.
Internet surveillance in China was hampered by an inefficient computer
police force, out-dated computer protection equipment imported in the
1980s and the slow development of computer protection products, the
newspaper said.
It estimated that assets worth $60 billion were exposed on the Internet.
An expert team of "Internet police" was needed to protect investments
against hackers trolling the worldwide computer network, the newspaper
said.
China has seen an explosion in Internet use in recent years. The country
had 620,000 active users at the end of 1997 and industry experts predict
the wired population to jump to five million by 2000, industry experts
say.
Government attempts to police the Internet have focused on filtering out
pornography and political messages from pro-democracy activists and
Taiwanese or Tibetan independence movements.
The first Chinese regulation protecting computer systems was issued in
1994 along with the first criminal law against computer crime.
However, it was only last year that China enacted a criminal law which
that made it illegal to break into computer systems and set a maximum
five-year jail term for a conviction.
Police in the commercial hub of Shanghai arrested China's first suspected
computer hacker under the new law in September.
The 22-year-old had broken into a Shanghai computer network and discovered
the passwords of more than 500 users.
This year China published its first training manual on protecting computer
systems, the newspaper said.
-o-
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Received on Mon Oct 12 21:20:48 1998