Computer Crime Law (Introduction)

Abstract

The book covers every aspect of crime in the digital age. Topics range from computer fraud laws and international computer crimes to Internet surveillance laws and the Fourth Amendment. It is part traditional casebook, part treatise. It both explains the law and presents many new and important questions of law that courts are only now beginning to consider. The book is suited either for a 3-credit course or a 2-credit seminar. It will appeal both to criminal law and procedure professors and those interested in cyberlaw or law and technology. No advanced knowledge of computers and the Internet is required or assumed.

The fifth edition of Kerr’s popular computer crime law text includes many updates since the fourth edition in 2018. New cases and materials address the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Van Buren v. United States and Carpenter v. United States; new statutes such as the Cloud Act and state laws on nonconsensual pornography; new state constitutional amendments on digital evidence, and the latest lower court circuit splits on topics including compelled decryption, the border search exception, private searches of computers, and e-mail scanning. The Fifth Edition introduces several new main cases as well as several dozen new notes and questions. Chapters on Computer Misuse, the Fourth Amendment, and International Evidence Collection have been substantially rewritten and reorganized in light of major doctrinal changes since the previous edition.

Note: This is an excerpt from a law school casebook, Orin Kerr's Computer Crime Law (5th Ed 2021). It includes the Preface, Table of Contents, and pages 1-31 of the main text. It is posted with the permission of West Academic Publishing.

Keywords: Computer Crime Law

JEL Classification: K1, K42