Aplicability of information technology law to avoid computer and internet crimes in Sri Lanka

Abstract

"The modern thief can steal more with a computer than a gun. Tomorrow's terrorist maybe able to do more damage with a keyboard than with a bomb." The world has entered in to a new era with full of facilities as well as with the new technology. Early days the technologies which were helping to fulfill the humans need was in a very poor condition. Fulfilling of their needs was difficult due to lack of technology. As a result of that people tend to find new ways of solving their problems as well as ways of fulfilling their needs. At the end of the day humans had won the technology and they do marvelous things from it. People had invented much equipment, machines by using the technology. However, an extreme version of an invented machine was the computer. After invented this extraordinary machine the day today work of the people had become much easier. Almost every work of day today life can be done using a computer system. Computer technology and the Internet are growing rapidly and this technology has given many new opportunities to us in every field such a entertainment, business, education, etc. Today, computer and telecommunicationtechnology have spread into nearly all areas of life and it has become cheaper and more user friendly. Also it becomes a very useful tool in our day today life. In today's environment, most businesses and government processes could not survive without the computer, especially web based businesses. Also the internet usage is very high compare with old days. However, the growth of international data communication made computer crimes more common and difficult to avoid. Computers and other electronic devices use by criminals to commit various crimes. These computer crimes have become more diverse and more dangerous. Because of such situation, the security of computer systems and the prevention of computer misuse have become the central questions of today's information society. So there's a challenge to avoid such computer crimes by using the legislation. During the last decade Sri Lanka has expand its use of information technology & internet and doubled the number of computer literate citizens. With this rapid development Sri Lanka also has faced the problem of increasing computer crimes. Sri Lanka had updated its criminal law recently to overcome this problem.