Romania

The Romanian Criminal Code contains no special legislation on computer crimes. Several years ago, the government drafted "The Code for Information Technologies Development and Use." The draft Code stipulated that "IT offenses" would be punishable by imprisonment for terms ranging from two to ten years, depending on the offense and its severity. The offenses include: unauthorized access to an information system for the capture, storage, processing and distribution of data and/or programs or for altering, damaging and destroying hardware, data and/or software; data embezzlement, program disturbance, alteration and erroneous data transmission resulting in data flow disturbance; and computer fraud. An accidental entry into data flows that caused any of the above-mentioned types of damage would be criminalized if the perpetrator did not immediately acknowledge the act to the Romanian Authority for Informatics. Infringements, such as disobeying the recommendations or authorizations of Romanian Authority for Informatics, would be punished by fines.536 The Code for Information Technologies Development and Use was submitted to the European Commission, with comments received in March of 1998.537 The second revised Code was approved by the Government and forwarded to the Romanian Parliament in 1999, but Parliament has so far not acted upon it. 538