Cyber Security
Technology (FIST), which aims at finding solutions to security-related problems and updating the diverse sections of society on cyber crime and cyber safety. At a past RSA conference in Singapore where he estimated 14 people falling victim to cyber crime per second, James Pang, assistant director at the INTERPOL Digital Crime Centre (IDCC), pointed out that law enforcers yet have no unified perspective on cyber crime. “Investigations are often hampered due to slowness of mutual legal assistance (MLA) and by the time MLA is processed, the electronic evidence may no longer be available if it is not preserved,” he explained. “Some countries do not even have cyber crime laws for empowering their law enforcement agencies to launch investigations, not to mention prosecuting the criminals.” INTERPOL now focuses more on the intersection of crime and technology in an increasingly inter-connected world and has, in consultation with its member countries, framed a model for international law enforcement cooperation on digital security. The Mumbai police have had developed a browser-based Crime Criminal Information System (CCIS) software for recording and assessing cognisable cyber crimes to assist investigation. “Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and other reports are being sent online and in the next phase, we plan to introduce the facility of collecting and analysing fingerprints online,” mentions Prasanna. The police department has also set up its own Virtual Private Network where all police stations and senior officials from the rank of Assistant Commissioner to Commissioner are connected with the remote database and application server.
34 | Australian Security Magazine
The police are seeking certain amendments in the Information Technology Act of 2000, which they feel will help them combat cyber crime more effectively. For instance, they want section 78 – that restricts investigation only to officers of the rank of PI and above – to include also those at the PSI level. “We have very few PI-rank officers, and most of them are old and hence not computer-savvy,” notes Prasanna. “Our PSIs are recently recruited and young, and hence can be more easily trained to handle cyber crimes.” The police also want a replacement for section 66-A that came to be evoked by them so ruthlessly that the country’s highest court last year declared it draconian and unconstitutional and struck it down. The section provided for imprisonment upto three years and fine for anyone convicted of sending offensive messages by means of a computer resource or a communication device, ‘offensive’ implying “menacing character” or “for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will”. The apex court intervened when it ascertained gross misuse of the proviso by the police who arrested people simply for posting critical comments on social and political issues and political leaders on social networking sites. The government now seeks to introduce new guidelines for enforcing this act, though cyber law experts believe that tweaking the guidelines will retain the draconian nature of the law. Prasanna also indicates that the IT Act does not cover online radicalisation and this aspect needs to be included. The Mumbai police are also urging the government to include Internet etiquette in school curricula for fourth standard and above.