Electronic Crime Partnership Initiative
Legal and Policy
    As the Electronic Crime Needs Assessment for State and Local Law Enforcement report
    explains,

    Currently there is no formal legal mechanism to allow for the enforcement of State
    subpoenas in other States. Cooperation can be achieved when one State attorney
    general's office voluntarily assists a sister State authority in either serving an out-of-State
    subpoena or seeking an in-State court order to enforce the out-of-State subpoena.
    However, the reliability and consistency of this procedure is not uniform, and the ability to
    secure enforcement of an out-of-State subpoena on a recalcitrant party is questionable at
    best.

    This working group will address issues of reciprocity raised above and issues involving
    Federal privacy laws and State statutes.

    To address reciprocity, the panel will:

    Define the contours of the need for reciprocity in the enforcement of evidence-gathering
    mechanisms (e.g., is it limited to subpoenas or does it also encompass warrants and/ or
    court orders?).

    Identify the mechanism that can best be used to establish State-to-State reciprocity.

    Regarding Federal Privacy law, this group will concentrate on identifying the respects in
    which revisions need to be made in the following, and perhaps other, Federal statutes, as
    well as in analogous State statutes modeled after ECPA.

    The Privacy Protection Act, 42 U.S. Code § 2000aa, which "potentially applies to almost
    every search of any computer" and which has, therefore, "shielded criminal activities from
    legitimate law enforcement investigations; and the Electronic Communication Privacy Act
    (ECPA), 18 U.S. Code §§ 2510-2521, 2701-2710, which "no longer effectively balances
    the competing interests of telecommunications users, service providers, and the
    legitimate needs of government investigators."

    In addressing State statutes, the working group will determine if they:

    "encompass the new ways that crimes are being committed", e.g., with the use of
    computer technology;

    establish consistency in the definitions of what is and is not an electronic crime; and

    ensure that the penalties and offense levels for electronic crimes are sufficiently stringent
    to make them a priority for law enforcement.

    The group will gather empirical data about the types of deficiencies that exist in State
    statutes, (e.g., how do substantive statutes need to be revised/amended/enacted to
    address electronic crime, what types of variations exist in the definition of electronic
    crime(s) and as to what types of offenses do penalties and offense levels need to be
    increased). The Policy and Legal Working Group can then use this data to formulate an
    approach for proposing uniform legislation that addresses these issues and that can
    serve
    as a template for state legislators wishing to improve the way through which Out-of-State
    information is obtained.

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