New cybercrime legislation in Romania

Romania has implemented the Cybercrime Convention in Title III of the
Anticorruption law no 161/2003, published in the Official Monitor no 279
from 21 April 2003. Romania signed the convention in the end of 2001. There
are no provisions regarding data retention, even though in some previous
versions of the law there was an obligation for service providers to keep
all traffic data for 6 months. The Romanian implementation precedes the
ratification of the Convention. Only Croatia, Albania and Estonia have
ratified the Convention.

The main crimes foreseen in the law are :

Art 42 – illegal access to a computer system
Art 43 – illegal interception of any transmission of computer data
Art 44 par 1 – illegal alteration, deletion or deterioration of computer
data of the access restriction to such data
Art 44 par 2 – unauthorized data transfer from a computer system
Art 45 – serious hindering, without right, of a computer system operation
Art 48 – Input, alteration or deletion, without right, of computer data or
the restriction, without right, of the access to these data
Art 51 – Child pornography through computer systems

In a press conference held on 7 May, the Romanian Police gave insight in
the number of internet related crimes. During the year 2002 242 complaints
were registered about 35 internet related crimes. 96 persons were
investigated and 54 were preventively arrested. The damages were estimated
at 800.000 USD. From the beginning of the year 2003, 82 complaints have
been solved in 12 penal cases where 18 people were arrested.

Unofficial translation of the law
http://www.legi-internet.ro/en/cybercrime.htm

(2 contributions by Bogdan Manolea, legal coordinator RITI – Romanian
Information Technology Initiative)