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Change Your Life! |
Top Philippine justice department counsel rejects charge against `Love Bug' suspect |
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News |
May 18, 2000
MANILA, MAY 17 (AP) - Philippine investigators attempting to find the author of the "Love Bug" computer virus that crippled e-mail systems worldwide are facing a new obstacle: the justice department's top lawyer says the law they planned to use to charge any suspects doesn't apply.
The Philippines has no laws specifically addressing high-tech computer crimes such as the "ILOVEYOU" virus, and investigators have had to search for other laws that might be used.
They settled on a 1998 law regulating the use of "access devices" such as credit cards, account numbers and passwords to obtain money, goods or services. The law carries a maximum penalty of twice the amount obtained by fraud plus up to 20 years in prison.
The "Love Bug" virus attempted to pilfer passwords from infected computers and send them to two e-mail accounts in the Philippines.
But Chief State Counsel Elmer T. Bautista, in a memorandum to the secretary of justice, said suspects in the case cannot be validly charged under the law.
"Nowhere in the law is 'computer hacking' ... and the effects thereof dealt with, either expressly or impliedly," Bautista said in the memorandum, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.
Bautista said "the intention of a computer hacker ... is not to defraud but to destroy files" and so computer hacking "cannot be considered covered" by the law.
The National Bureau of Investigation, part of the Department of Justice, said it will not question Bautista's decision.
"We have no problem with that. The ball is now in their possession," said Elfren Meneses, chief of the NBI's anti-fraud and computer crimes division.
Under Philippine law, police agencies file criminal complaints with government prosecutors, who determine whether there is enough evidence for a case to be filed in court.
Investigators have focused their probe on an apartment in Manila's lower-middle class Pandacan neighborhood where a telephone line believed to have been used to release the virus is registered.
One of the apartment's residents, computer student Onel de Guzman, has admitted that he may have accidentally released the virus, but refused to say whether he wrote it.
The virus was released May 4 and spread quickly around the world through e-mail addresses stored in the infected computers. The damage caused by the virus has been estimated at up to dlrs 10 billion.
Since then, Philippine investigators appear to be making little progress in identifying the real culprits.
De Guzman has not yet been questioned and his lawyer said he will respond to a summons only after formal charges are filed.
De Guzman failed to graduate this month from AMA Computer College because his thesis project was rejected by the faculty as a form of computer piracy designed to steal passwords so people could use the Internet for free, a feature similar to the "ILOVEYOU" virus.
On Tuesday, Meneses said investigators had found a second virus on one of 17 diskettes seized from de Guzman's apartment. He said a friend of de Guzman, Michael Buen, may have authored it.
Meneses said the diskette also contained an ominous warning that appeared to have been written by Buen.
The message said: "If I don't get a stable job by the end of the month, I will release a third virus that will remove all files from the primary disk."
Buen, who graduated from AMA college the day after the "ILOVEYOU" virus was released, has denied any role in making or spreading that virus.
His lawyer, Florencio Dalupang, declined to comment on the NBI's claims pending a talk with Buen.
Meneses said the bureau plans to question about 40 people who were acknowledged in the computer code of the second virus. Most are students at AMA college.
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