Congress has been wrestling with cybercrime legislation ever since the denial-of-service attacks on online retailers such as eBay and Amazon.com earlier this year.

Congress has been wrestling with cybercrime legislation ever since the denial-of-service attacks on online retailers such as eBay and Amazon.com earlier this year, and such legislation now seems especially timely with the latest hacker attack, this time on software giant Microsoft. Holding up the process has been the online industry itself, which often is reluctant to acknowledge attacks for fear it will encourage new ones and discourage business. Just this week, however, some compromises have occurred in Congress that could quickly lead not only to tougher laws on hackers but also to increased authority and funding for federal law enforcement agencies, in particular the FBI. Two cybercrime bills, originally introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and two other Republican committee members, were seen by some in the high-tech community as giving law enforcement too much power to search records and confiscate equipment. The industry also felt the bills threatened the jurisdiction of local governments to grant federal investigators so-called trap-and-trace authority to track an online transmission from end to end under one warrant. Two weeks ago, a compromise between Hatch and the highest-ranking Democrat on the committee, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., led to a bill that contains more due-process rights for parties in an investigation, particularly third-party online providers who may not have been aware of any wrongdoing. The bill also would authorize $100 million for the FBI to create a national cybercrime support center.