Dar es Salaam: Cyber crime laws in the works

BY DAVID KISANGA.

Policy and law to define and provide a framework for operation and enforcement of legally-accepted cyber activities in the country is in the works.

This comes after the country has, as all others, experienced increasing cyber criminal activities.

The Consulting Engineer and Director of ICTs in the Ministry of Communication, Science and Technology, Dr. Zaipuna Yohan, warns that it is high time for the country to acclimatize the technology era and that includes creating legal frameworks to govern its use.

“While cyber crimes and other related on-line activities in Tanzania pose a significant threat, existing Tanzanian laws do not recognise many cyber space crimes …,” Dr. Yohan explained.

Highlighted is theft through Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), un- authorised online posting of personal information and creation of country disorder through online interception and revealing of government secret information and the posting of false accusations against government operations and leadership. 

He acknowledged that cyber crime is a growing global concern and that it is the fastest growing criminal trend. 

While the sector is closely associated with information and communication technologies (ICTs), however, the laws of the latter do not provide adequate legal framework to safeguard on-line services.

“Needless to say, there is a huge gap between existing laws and ICTs advancement which creates loopholes for cyber criminals to act with impunity …,” he said.

Detailing, Dr Yohan revealed that pursuant to the aforementioned facts, a need exists to have a new set of legislations that will address and advocate the ongoing cyber criminal activities. 

The proposed set of legislations will cover Electronic Transactions and E-commerce, Cyber and Computer systems and also provide the Privacy and Data Protection Act.

Dr. Yohan said that legislations will help define the laws, create governing bodies for cyber operation on the identified cyber areas and/or add roles to the current controlling bodies to govern the new cyber issues.

The legal framework will create a ‘controlled environment’ against virtual crimes that threaten national security and stability. Also, it will provide legal guidelines to bring to identify and charge crimes committed through or in electronic transactions and e-commerce that threaten business growth between companies, organisations consumers, suppliers and other service providers.

This is vital for authorities and agencies like the Tanzania Revenue Authority(TRA) who are at great risk of hackers. It will also improves their revenue collection which as of now, is but negligible when it comes to on-line sales which are not regulated.

Also, it will help combat tax evasion and tax avoidance as well as provide protection of personal information.

“TRA does not have the capacity to monitor tax sales online or any other cyber market activities via credit/debit cards …,” he revealed.

Nonetheless, the ministry has advocated consequential amendments of some existing legislations with the view of creating an avenue for the smooth enforceability of the proposed legislations.

The process is complex and they must avoid conflict of laws but still enable prosecution of cyber criminals.

The implementation plan, Dr. Yohan explained, be in two phases and take up to a year to activation.

First process will include the endorsement of the proposal to enact cyber legislations, review of the draft inputs, Bills drafting, stakeholder workshops on drafted bills and eventually, incorporation of stakeholders comments. 

The second process, the political process, also expected to take another 12 months, will include submission of the cyber laws draft to the Attorney General, stakeholders, legislators, campaigns to raise awareness of the cyber bills, first parliamentary bill reading, incorporating parliament comments and then the second parliamentary bill reading.

Further, in respect to capacity building, the ministry has prepared a training plan which will be executed concurrently with the cyber legislations.

It is planned to aide the imparting of knowledge, skills and techniques to the masses of the cyber laws’ formulation and implementation. 

Targeted groups for training purposes include the Judiciary, cyber laws, stakeholders, and cyber laws technical team. 

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN (15/04/2013): http://www.ippmedia.com/frontend/index.php?l=53558