Until the dawn of the 20th century, incidents of crime where limited to physical attacks on individuals or the society at large. However with the advent of the computers and the internet, criminal opportunities have increased tremendously. One of the mostly widely committed internet crimes is that of data theft. The earliest incident of data theft was reported in the year 1962, where an insider hacked into the MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System and stole information. Several incidents of internet data theft have been reported ever since the most famous being the Ellery System’s case in 1994. In this case, an employee of the American firm transferred the entire source code of the firm via the internet to a Chinese competitor forcing the firm to file for bankruptcy. Incidents of data theft aren’t limited to western developed countries, they plague developing nations as well, in particular India. The incidents of data theft in India have multiplied at an escalating pace over the past decade. The most recent case, being the ICICI bank case at Pune, where two IIT Kanpur directors were duped of several lakhs of rupees electronically after an internet attack targeted their bank accounts. It is alleged that the victim’s confidential information was leaked by an insider that facilitated the theft. With the growing occurrences of data theft in India the question that one needs to ask is whether the laws protecting data in India are adequate or whether they need to be revamped in light of the numerous technological advancements. The author in this paper analyses the criminal behaviour which causes an individual to resort to data theft and demonstrates that a change in the laws governing data protecting would increase deterrence. Several criminological theories suggest that if the punishment is higher and opportunity to commit crime is lower, then the occurrence of data theft would consequentially reduce. Thus the author argues for an amendment to data protection laws which increase the punishment and enforcement mechanisms which would inevitable reduce crime rates. The author has analysed the data protection laws followed in an international setting in light of the nuanced angle of data theft, specific analysis has been carried out with the data protections laws in the United Kingdom as it is one of the few regions in the world to enact strict data protection legislations keeping in sync with to the theories of causation of crime.

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