Law needs to be upgraded to combat cyber crimes

The Information and Communications Technology Act 2006, without being amended, cannot help the lawmen to fight against cyber crimes, which are in early stages in Bangladesh, lawmen and legal experts think.
No special tribunal, as envisaged in the law because of the technical features of such crimes, has also been set up to try such offences, said a legal expert.
The lawmen, meanwhile, think they are not trained enough and do not have enough logistics and manpower to combat such crimes while the people who are harassed are not willing to file cases as they might face further harassment during trial.
After the enactment of the law, a cyber crimes unit was formed under the Criminal Investigation Department in December 2008. Rapid Action Battalion intelligence and communications division also work with the unit in fight against cyber crimes.
Illegal intervention in any computer system, hacking, screening face, vulgar and libellous information in electronic forms, fake representation and hiding information and issuing false digital signature certificates are among the matters considered crimes in the act.
CID special superintendent SM Ruhul Amin, who now heads the organised crime department which runs the cyber crimes unit, told New Age late June that Clause 76 of the act says, ‘Offences under the act will be non-cognizable.’ He said law enforcers could not take steps against such offences because of the clause.
‘For crimes such as online dissemination of pornographic contents or online sexual harassment, some offences under the act should be made cognizable,’ he said.
The Criminal Investigation Department at a conference of the police in May 2010 gave a brief presentation on the elimination of drawbacks in the act in fighting cyber crimes. High officials who attended the conference agreed on the issues, but nothing has happened since then, the said.
Legal expert Tanjib Ul Alam, who was involved with the preparation of the draft of the act, late June told New Age, ‘We tried to make offences under the act cognizable but the government refused to do so for shortage of experts.’
He also said the act provisioned for the establishment of a special tribunal to try cyber crimes because of the special nature of the crimes. But no such tribunal has as yet been set up, he said.
Detective Brach assistant commissioner HM Abdur Rakib said in the middle of June, ‘Sometimes we need to use both the ICT Act and the Repression on Women and Children (Prevention) Act in procedures against crimes.’ He said the law had some grey areas which needed to be clarified.
The battalion’s intelligence wing director, Ziaul Ahsan, in the third week of June told New Age that the ICT Act should be amended to cover some more crimes such as piracy of discs having contents in digital form.
The Bangladesh Computer Samity president, Mustafa Jabbar, said financial cyber crimes were still rare in the country but harassment of people using online means were taking place frequently.
Lack of skilled and sufficient manpower with technical knowledge and logistic supports are also major problems in curbing cyber crimes.
Ruhul Amin said the eight-member cyber crimes unit has only one assistant superintendent of police and one inspector.
The unit has computers given by the Detective Branch and the people are being trained, according to the Detective Branch assistant commissioner Abdur Rakib. He said the police had no experts in online matters.
Ruhul Amin said there were no scopes for people to lodge complaints in the cases of such offences over telephone, by e-mail or logging onto some web site.
‘According to the ICT Act, there is no direction for any helpline in the cyber crime units. So we cannot work outside the law’, he said.
A female officer of a bank, who was harassed online on Facebook, said, ‘There is no online complaints system in place.’
Ziaul Ahsan of the battalion, which also does not have any helpline for such cases because of inadequate manpower and logistics supports, said,
‘We encourage people to make calls to our main office for any kind of help, including online sexual harassment.’
When the acting information and communication technology secretary Mohammad Abdur Rab Hawlader was asked about the effectiveness of the law in curbing cyber crimes, he declined comments.
An official of the ministry later said the ministry was yet to receive any communications from any of the law enforcement agencies regarding the problems faced in the enforcement of the act.