The history of computer crimes - Term Paper Example

In 1969, a student riot in Canadian school building resulted to damages totaling around $2 million. The students were protesting against a racist professor when their riots resulted to a fire breaking out and destroying computers and other university property. 97 students were arrested in the incident (Concordia University, 2008). In 1970, several computer crimes were reported. A bomb at the University of Wisconsin resulted to $16 million worth of computer damage; a Molotov cocktail bomb caused $1 million damage to the Fresno State College; and students at the New York University wanting to free a jailed Black Panther damaged computers by placing fire-bombs on top of the Atomic Energy Commission (Kabay, 2008).

Computers were often damaged during the 1970s in order to make a statement; antiwar protests in Australia resulted to the shooting of an American firm’s computers; terrorists poured gasoline on a university’s computers and burned them; and a peace activist destroyed a computer at the Vanderburg Air Base in California as a sign of protest against American military policies (Kabay, 2008). From 1970 to 1972, Albert the Saboteur created problems for the National Farmers Union Service Corporation of Denver.

Albert enjoyed having the repair crews over every time the computer crashed. As a result, he deliberately caused the computers to crash about 50 times in the span of 2 years. He lived an isolated life as a night shift operator. He finally got company and human interaction because of the computer crashes, and he could not help but cause one crash after another just to have company (Kabay, 1996). In 1970, Jerry Schneider posed as a PT&T employee and ordered $30,000 worth of equipment from PT&T.

He retrieved PT&T computer printouts from dumpsters. He was later able to collect detailed information on various procedures in the company and as a result was able to successfully steal $1 million worth of equipment from