The draft treaty should be ready for adoption by the Millennium General Assembly. Over the past few years, the Internet has grown explosively. Compared to only 26 million users in 1995, over 200 million people now communicate, shop, pay bills, conduct business and even meet with their doctors online. As the Internet has expanded, so has its misuse. These card numbers may be sold for sizeable amounts to counterfeiters, who use special programmes to encode them on counterfeit credit and bankcard magnetic strips, the UN Manual notes.
Computer criminals are as diverse as the offences they commit.
They may be students, terrorists or members of organized crime. The workshop at the Tenth Congress is intended to serve as a forum for sharing information about investigative techniques and computer crime laws between countries with a wide range of experience and approaches to the problem. In one World Bank survey, more than 150 high-ranking public officials and top citizens from over 60 developing nations ranked corruption as the biggest impediment to economic development and growth in their countries. Corrupt practices drain government coffers, play havoc with free trade and scare away investors. The World Bank estimates that corruption can reduce a country's growth rate by 0.5 to 1.0 percent per year.