If a person therefore gains unauthorised access to a computer system while knowing that he does not have authorisation, he commits the crime. This crime basically prohibits a person from gaining unauthorised access if he has the intention to commit a further crime. Battcock reports in a commentary on the Computer Misuse Act that there has been 16 known prosecutions for the mentioned offences up to and including 1995. Only one involved an external entry into a computer system, while the other cases were of employees and ex-employees gaining unauthorised access to their employer's computers. This means that many of the culprits fall within the jurisdiction of the sovereign country.
National legislation can therefore play a very important role to combat online crime.
In those few instances where the culprit falls outside national jurisdiction, International Law can play its part. I will, however, get back to this issue in a few moments. The next country that we can look at, is Singapore. This crime is committed when a person unlawfully intercepts information which is being sent to another recipient via an online service. Unfortunately I do not have any statistics on the effectiveness of this Act.