Cyber Crime law, that re-emerged few days back, in shape of presidential order (despite, there is a parliament available, I am unable to comprehend what urgency was there that President had to put forward this ordinance, anyway, its not part of our discussion), we need to fully understand this law. Because, it can be really very crucial for us, as the law have all the capabilities for trapping any one of us.
There are certain discussions going on over the technology forums, where Gurus are pointing out several aspects of cyber crime law, similarly, I wanted to put forward my opinion and observations as well.
The first thing after going through the draft of this ordinance, is that it is largely un-practicable – due to incompetence of our law enforcement agencies, and overall judicial structure. There are good chances, that lawyers never ever carried away any training or courses for getting familiar with internet and computer related criminal procedures.
Government of UAE can be taken as a good example, for instance, they never make anything a law until they can’t implement it. Because, making a law without any implementation or without availing the technology to get the rules implemented, just introducing a law makes no sense at all.
By the way, we are still unable to eliminate piracy, and some other cyber laws that were recently made, such as punishment to those spammers who sent SMS/Emails against Government (I just received this anti-Salman Taseer Email)
Getting back to Cyber Crime Law, it is unclear and as well un-ethical. I am terming it un-ethical, just for a reason that, as a security person, I know the real damage that this law can do to normal people just like you; who are innocent and just visit websites, read blogs, chat and that’s it.
Why I am saying this is because you can not control your flow of browsing. For example, if you Google around something and it redirect you to a website that is encrypting data and that website is harmful as well… so who is the responsible then?
All your life belongs to Government – they can access your emails, chats, web browsing, everything…Where is the privacy?
Just imagine a life, where you can encrypt, you can’t use putty (it’s a software used to access remote computers and uses encrypted data), you can’t do any thing in your life…
Similarly, you can’t do anything when a hacker gets into your system and using your PC he/she does anything wrong, or against this law….
Same would be the case when viruses or torjans doing the damage from your system without your consent… how will you prove your innocence then?
Government must look into such issues as well by consulting IT and web security experts, and once all cleared, there must be a very comprehensive awareness campaign to educate internet and computer uses.
By the way, you can can view Cyber Crime Law’s draft by cyber-crime-law (PDF File – Size: 1 MB)