CYBER CRIMES

DEFINITIONS of most crimes committed in worldwide real space are gender neutral although a significant number of crimes are committed mostly against women. The scenario remains the same regarding the crimes committed in cyber space. There are no distinct crimes known as cyber crimes against women and consequently there is no compact definition of cyber crime against women. Like the real space crimes, women are the main target of many cyber crimes.

Most cyber crimes are of general nature and they target men and women alike. But there are certain cyber crimes that are more likely to target women than their male counterparts. These include cyber stalking, cyber harassment, morphing and obscene publication, email/profile hacking, spoofing, cyber pornography including revenge porn, internet voyeurism, cyber defamation, cyber bullying, e-mail harassment, cyber blackmailing, threatening, emotional cheating by impersonation, intimate partner violence through internet and abetment of such offences.

Women's rights in the cyber space are abused in many ways in Bangladesh and use of internet and mobile phones to stalk, abuse, intimidate and humiliate women is rampant. Women especially the young girls who have been newly introduced to the internet are comparatively inexperienced in cyber world, and consequently they are most susceptible to falling into the bait of cyber criminals and bullies. Morphing, cyber stalking and cyber pornography including revenge porn are the most common cyber crimes that target women in Bangladesh. These attacks against women are carried out to destroy their personal reputation, create fear for physical safety and also monetary losses.

Morphing means changing smoothly from one image/video to another by small gradual steps using computer animation techniques. As various morphing tools are widely available in internet, offenders often download girls' pictures from various social websites through real or fake profiles and then morph them.  The morphed images may be used to blackmail the girl or her family by threatening to publish the morphed images.

Cyber stalking involves following a girl's movements across the internet by posting messages on the bulletin boards, discussion groups and entering the chat-rooms frequented by the girl, constantly bombarding the girl with emails, often threatening and abusive. Cyber stalkers target and harass their victims via websites, chat rooms, discussion forums, open publishing websites and email. A cyber stalker relies upon the anonymity afforded by the internet to allow them to stalk their victims without being detected. The harassment can take on many forms, but the common denominator is that it is unwanted and often obsessive. Cyber stalking is often perpetrated not by strangers, but by someone a girl knows. It could be an ex, a former friend, or just someone who wants to bother a girl or her family in an inappropriate way. Cyber stalking can be terribly frightening. It alarms, torments, and terrorizes a girl. It can destroy friendships, careers, self-image, and confidence. If coupled with real-space stalking, cyber stalking can lead the victim into far greater physical danger including suicide attempts.  

Cyber pornography refers to portrayal of sexual material on the web. Criminals often rape or molest a girl, capture the incident by webcam or mobile phone and spread the video over internet. These incidents are becoming alarmingly common even in the rural areas of Bangladesh.  

We have several laws to deal with cyber crimes and among them two enactments are important for practical purposes: the Information and Communication Technology Act, 2006 (ICTA) and the Pornography Control Act, 2012 (PCA). Cyber pornography can be prosecuted by section 8 of the PCA and also by section 57 of the ICTA. It will be extremely difficult to prosecute an act of morphing if the morphed image/video does not fall within the meaning of pornography. Acts of cyber stalking will probably continue to be immune from legal process as these laws do not specifically define them and our trial judges will rationally be reluctant to convict a person for acts not defined as crimes.

Beyond the general definitions of cyber offences we need to use very specific definitions for most common cyber crimes against women in a technology-neutral language. To successfully prosecute a digital offence we need to produce digital evidence in a court of law, but alas, we still do not have any established digital evidence protocols in place. For these reasons we are yet to see in Bangladesh a successful trial of a cyber crime in its true and real sense. The Government, private sectors especially the ISPs and mobile networks and NGOs need to work together to stop the menace. The Digital Bangladesh vision will not achieve its cherished goals if we fail to secure a safe and creative cyber space for our girls.

The writer is an Associate Professor of Law, University of Dhaka.