A speech by Joseph P Longo, National Director, Enforcement, ASIC, at the ACCC's Global Commerce Conference, November 1998.
Cyberspace and electronic commerce: Challenges for law enforcement
The past decade has seen explosive growth in new products, new technology and cross-border financial activity. Cyberspace has now become a powerful forum for the conduct of business, and is regarded by some as a vast unregulated marketplace, with a number of significant advantages over other media, including speed of access, relatively low cost and immediacy of response.
The present law and regulatory structure in Australia however, does not yet fully accommodate electronic technology, in the sense that there is not a viable, legally secure replacement for paper text.
The cyber world has made dramatic changes to the way the financial services industry operates. The independent forces of technology and globalisation will continue to be the major impetus for innovation and structural change in electronic commerce for the foreseeable future. It is these developments which pose both new challenges and opportunities for ASIC. This paper will look at these developments essentially from an enforcement perspective.