Developed as part of the Commonwealth effort to develop Model Laws and other Legal Tools on Computer and Computer-Related Crime, Electronic Transactions, Broadcasting, and the Protection of Personal Information.
The object: to protect the integrity of computer systems and the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data, prevent abuse of such systems and facilitate the gathering and use of electronic evidence.
Contains 3 parts:
– Part I: in section 3 the important definitions of ‘computer data’, ‘computer system’, ‘service provider’ and ‘traffic data’ together with an additional definition of ‘computer data storage medium’; Section 4 deals with the jurisdiction of the enacting state.
– Part II (sections 5-10): concerned with substantive criminal law and the creation of offences; the Model Law does not cover computer-related forgery or fraud.
– Part III (sections 11 to 21): deals with ‘procedural law’, contains provisions as to search and seizure warrants, the obligation to assist the police, recording and access to seized data, the production of data, the disclosure of stored traffic data, the preservation of data, the interception of electronic communications and the interception of traffic data, with provisions as to evidence, confidentiality and the limitation of liability together with the necessary definitions.