I believe we need to seriously reconsider the Federal Criminal Code with an eye toward modernizing existing statutes and creating new ones. In other words, Mr. President, Elliot Ness needs to meet the Internet. Mr. President, I sit on the Board of the Office of Technology Assessment. That Office has clearly indicated that organized crime has entered cyberspace in a big way. International drug cartels use computers to launder drug money and terrorists like the Oklahoma City bombers use computers to conspire to commit crimes.
Computer fraud accounts for the loss of millions of dollars per year.
And often times, there is little that can be done about this because the computer used to commit the crimes is located overseas. So, under my bill, overseas computer users who employ their computers to commit fraud in the United States would be fully subject to the Federal criminal laws. Also under my bill, Mr. President, the wire fraud statute which has been successfully used by prosecutors for many users, will be amended to make fraudulent schemes which use computers a crime. It is not enough to simply modernize the Criminal Code. We also have to reconsider many of the difficult procedural burdens that prosecutors must overcome.