Law opinion
Computer crime law before digital Bangladesh
Mohammad Shahidul Islam
As computer technology is changing at the speed of thought, society has started to cultivate the legitimate and beneficial potential of this rapidly changing, extremely powerful technology for business, empowering individuals and communities and for promoting economic developments.
Besides business, governments and individuals, the criminals are also taking advantage of the enormous capabilities of these breathtaking and existing new technologies and consequently crimes related to computer are rising alarmingly. As the chain reaction of internet usage grows exponentially, so does criminal abuse. To make things worse the investigation and law enforcement agencies have been caught on the wrong foot and are under prepared to tackle this exploding new form of crime, as no standard guidelines, methodologies and tools are available.
Computer crime is an individual's attempt, fraudulently or otherwise to prevent the computer to perform its duties as designed, to slow down its operation, to corrupt the data or software and to copy the data software without authority. Computer environment is the occurrence of one or the combination of events, such as unauthorised attempt to access, alter, add, delete or hide date or unauthorised attempt to access, alter, add, delete programme or system or stealing of data or programmes in any manner or unauthorised (physical and/or logical) entry in computer environment or change or alter the defined system.
The growth of internet has also facilitated some of the traditional crimes which are called cyber crimes e.g. criminal abuse of the Internet for illegal transactions or helping an illegal activity, often involving the drug trade, customs evasion and money laundering etc. Various types of Internet crimes are cyber terrorism, computer network break-ins, economic offences (credit card frauds, financial scams, gambling etc), industrial espionage, software piracy, pornography and child abuse, e-mail bombings, password sniffing and spoofing and masquerading.
Criminals can reach thousands of consumers through the Internet, inexpensively quickly and anonymously and easily place deceptive or misleading information on-line. Chat group and e-mail networks are fertile grounds for traditional crimes of false advertising claims, deceptive marketing practices. Such types of Internet frauds pose a major challenge for innocent consumers to judge the accuracy and reliability of on-line information available through the Internet.
Our present government has firmly manifested its aspiration to lead Bangladesh digitally to development. People of the country have widely welcome the dream and are found keen to digitalize our day to day headway. Before initiating activities towards digital Bangladesh, computer crime law should be enacted.
Besides, a comprehensive strategy to tackle the emerging problem of cyber crimes should put emphasis on adequate in-built security features in computer system, and establishing legal framework and evolving investigation techniques to get evidence. International cooperation is also a must as the cyber crime by its nature is a crime that transcends geographical boundaries.
Therefore, there is a need to evolve mechanisms for legal cooperation by reaching international agreements on common definitions of computer crimes, issues concerning jurisdiction and procedural laws.
The writer is National Tourism Worker.
