Comprehensive study on cybercrime

Introduction: In its resolution 65/230, the General Assembly requested the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice to establish, in line with paragraph 42 of the Salvador Declaration on Comprehensive Strategies for Global Challenges: Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Systems and Their Development in a Changing World, an open-ended intergovernmental expert group, to conduct a comprehensive study of the problem of cybercrime and responses to it by Member States, the international community and the private sector, including the exchange of information on national legislation, best practices, technical assistance and international cooperation, with a view to examining options to strengthen existing and to propose new national and international legal or other responses to cybercrime. In its resolution 67/189, the General Assembly noted with appreciation the work of the open-ended intergovernmental expert group to conduct a comprehensive study of the problem of cybercrime and encouraged it to enhance its efforts to complete its work and to present the outcome of the study to the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in due course. The first session of the expert group was held in Vienna from 17 to 21 January 2011. At that meeting, the expert group reviewed and adopted a collection of topics and a methodology for the study. The collection of topics for consideration within a comprehensive study on cybercrime included the problem of cybercrime, legal responses to cybercrime, crime prevention and criminal justice capabilities and other responses to cybercrime, international organizations, and technical assistance. These main topics were further divided into 12 sub-topics. Within this Study, these topics are covered in eight Chapters: (1) Connectivity and cybercrime; (2) The global picture; (3) Legislation and frameworks; (4) Criminalization; (5) Law enforcement and investigations; (6) Electronic evidence and criminal justice; (7) International cooperation; and (8) Prevention. General Assembly resolution 65/230 requested the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice to establish an open-ended intergovernmental expert group, to conduct a comprehensive study of the problem of cybercrime and responses to it by Member States, the international community and the private sector, including the exchange of information on national legislation, best practices, technical assistance and international cooperation.   This report was prepared for the open-ended intergovernmental expert group on cybercrime by Conference Support Section, Organized Crime Branch, Division for Treaty Affairs, UNODC, under the supervision of John Sandage (Director, Division for Treaty Affairs), Sara Greenblatt (Chief, Organized Crime Branch), and Gillian Murray (UNODC Senior Focal Point for Cybercrime and Chief, Conference Support Section). Study team: Steven Malby, Robyn Mace, Anika Holterhof, Cameron Brown, Stefan Kascherus, Eva Ignatuschtschenko (UNODC) Consultants: Ulrich Sieber, Tatiana Tropina, Nicolas von zur Mühlen (Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law) Ian Brown, Joss Wright (Oxford Internet Institute and Cyber Security Centre, University of Oxford) Roderic Broadhurst (Australian National University) Kristin Krüger (Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security