few years the range of computer crimes being committed increased, and laws were passed to deal with issues of copyright, privacy/harassment (e.g., cyber bullying, happy slapping, cyber stalking, and online predators) and child pornography. It was not until the 1980s that federal laws began to incorporate computer offences. Canada was the first country to pass legislation in 1983. This was followed by the US Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1986, Australian amendments to their crimes acts in 1989 and the British Computer Misuse Act in 1990. 1980s–1990s: Growth of the field The growth in computer crime during the 1980s and 1990s caused law enforcement agencies to begin establishing specialized groups, usually at the national level, to handle the technical aspects of investigations. For example, in 1984 the FBI launched a Computer Analysis and Response Team and the following year a computer crime department was set up within the British Metropolitan Police fraud squad. As well as being law enforcement professionals, many of the early members of these groups were also computer hobbyists and became responsible for the field's initial research and direction. One of the first practical (or at least publicized) examples of digital forensics was Cliff Stoll's pursuit of hacker Markus Hess in 1986. Stoll, whose investigation made use of computer and network forensic techniques, was not a specialized examiner. Many of the earliest forensic examinations followed the same profile. Throughout the 1990s there was high demand for these new, and basic, investigative resources. The strain on central units lead to the creation of regional, and even local, level groups to help handle the load. For example, the British National Hi-Tech Crime Unit was set up in 2001 to provide a national infrastructure for computer crime; with personnel located both centrally in London and with the various regional police forces (the unit was folded into the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) in 2006). During this period the science of digital forensics grew from the ad-hoc tools and techniques developed by these hobbyist practitioners. This is in contrast to other forensics disciplines which developed from work by the scientific community. It was not until 1992 that the term "computer forensics" was used in academic literature (although prior to this it had been in informal use); a paper by Collier and Spaul attempted to justify this new discipline to the forensic science world. This swift development resulted in a