A bill is currently moving through the the Louisiana state senate which could have private users paying an additionally $0.15 a month on top of their current internet bills. The money would be collected into an “Internet Crimes Investigation Fund,” which would be used to fight online crimes. Any fund to do good, however, only makes sense if the people using the money understand how to do good, and for the most part it seems that the Louisianan politicians who are trying to push this bill through have a minimal understanding of what sort of cybercrimes are actually a threat to the public.
The vast majority of cybercrimes perpetrated on the public are in the form of botnets which compromise users’ computers and use them as servers for spam email. Most cybercrimes are not of public concern as they are committed by disgruntled former employees who seek to do harm against their old places of work. Louisiana representative Simone Champagne propagandizes the bill, saying that “I don’t think that 15 cents per month is too much to ask for our children’s protection,” but a quick glance over cybercrime statistics quickly reveals that crimes which target children are so rare that the United States’ Department of Justice does not even list them on what they say is a representative sampling of the frequency at which cybercrimes are committed.
It’s possible that Ms. Champagne is in bed with the companies which want more by way of protection from enraged system administrators, but it is more likely that she and the other politicians pushing this bill simply do not understand cybercrimes. So the idea behind the law is not in itself a bad one, though one would hope that the people who are trying to pass it would have a better idea of what cybercrimes are actually a threat.
