By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net
Bhopal: The morning session of the second day of the ongoing 31st All India Criminology Conference here was mainly devoted to Cyber Crime and Law wherein more than 70 papers were presented. A paper on “Crime Against Women” was also presented on Saturday.
The agenda for Legal Reforms in Cyber Crimes included: (a) Emerging patterns of Cyber Crimes; (b) Victims and offender characteristics in cyber crimes; (c) Legal measures to prevent and control cyber crimes & (d) The role of Criminal justice functionaries and Internet Service Providers in dealing with cyber crimes
In the first session Prof. Keith Harries (USA), Prof. B. N. Chattoraj (NICFS, New Delhi), Prof. G.S. Bajpai (NLIU), Prof. Shanta Singh (South Africa) etc. presented their research papers on various subjects and issues.
Prof. Keith Harries of Department of Geography & Environmental Systems in University of Maryland, Baltimore (USA), talked about a very pertinent issue- “Crime Mapping” and presented his paper. He concluded through his paper that how do criminals choose and attack different vicinities and this research applies to every country, every state and every place in the world.
However, during his presentation, Prof. Harries also said that there have been many instances of “Snipper Shooting” where the plan of crime mapping fails badly since the offenders use high tech, high speed vehicles and thus their area of victimization increases highly. The principles of crime mapping prove beneficiary when one category of crimes occur simultaneously at same places.
He delivered his case study done on Turkey, during his presentation and linking it to the ‘crime mapping’ said that if we observe the place where the crime has been committed and the accessory preparations, we come to know that where the population is dense more and more crimes occur in those areas.
Stephanus Van Zyl, a cyber crime expert from South Africa, gave a very important research paper and an eye-opener study on “Sexual Offences and the Internet”. He said prostitution is flourishing online and that must be a major concern for law-enforcers across the world. Although the Sexual Offences Bill simplifies the South African rape and sexual offences laws, it still faces to address the possibility of the crimes being committed online. He concluded with that the legislator should, however, be very cautious not to be over-sensitive towards protecting the moral rights of a society and in the process criminalising what used to be socially acceptable and innocent actions.
In the beginning of the session Prof. Chattoraj said that the pace of formation of legislations is more as compared to the implementation pace of those legislations in India. He gave two examples referring to this context. In Delhi, smoking in public places is prohibited. But the law is implemented only against the poor and downtrodden and the elites are seen humiliating the law publicly.
Another session on cyber crime was held under the Chairmanship of Shailesh Shrivastava, IG, Bhopal, where he called upon the gathering for serious discussions over issues related to cyber crime which could help in the fulfillment of the objectives of this conference. How the police, government and justice system can be made aware about cyber crime management, this has to be thought upon by scholars. Attending this session, he noted down the recommendations and conclusions coming out of the discussions.
Manchandra, the Income Tax Commissioner of Bhopal, personally came to attend the sessions and showed keen interest in the discussions.
Meanwhile, in the first session Abhijit Kumar Pandey in his paper on “Crimes in cyber age and its response by Indian judiciary” posed the upcoming challenges in the Indian judiciary by cyber crimes. Among the various problems emerging out of the internet are the menace of hackers, cyber terrorism, spamming, Trojan horse attack, denial of service attacks,pornography, cyber stalking etc.
Through this paper Pandey tried to study the problem of cyber stalking, cyber defamation, various types of data theft and the laws relating to it. An effort was also made to look into the loopholes of the Information Technology Act.
Ms Disha Atri, presenting her paper on “Cyber Crime: Agenda for Legal Reforms”, emphasized that cyberspace is the non-physical terrain created by computer systems. It is not restricted as physical boundaries, and it demands protection on an international basis. Thus, legal efforts have to be made at international level.
Gaurav Tyagi and Shailesh Sharma, in their paper on the same topic as Ms Disha, said the role of criminal justice functionaries and Internet Service Providers, (ISP), in dealing with cyber crimes have to be more dynamic and crucial in resolving the issues regarding the crimes of internet.
Chetan in course of presenting his paper on “Cyber Crime: Legal Perspective” said that the weapon with which cyber crimes are committed is technology. Cyber crimes are thus done by technocrats who have deep knowledge of internet and computers.
Gursimran Singh Bhatia, in his paper on “Legal Measures to Prevent & Control Cyber Crimes” said, the Information Technology Act 2000 still has some grey areas that exist within the law. The IT Act is primarily meant to be a legislation to promote e-commerce. It is not very effective in dealing with several emerging cyber crimes like cyber harassment, defamation, stalking etc. Hemal Shah paper, “Cyber Crime: Agenda for Legal Reforms”, discussed about the cyber crimes in detail. Terms like GUID, WEBBUGS, E-mail spoofing, Phising, Viruses etc. are dealt in detail in this paper. Shah pointed out the types of cyber crime like (i) crime against government, (ii) crime against person, (iii) computer related crimes, (iv) computer assisted crimes.
Hemant Thadani and Ajay Bishnoi presenting their paper on “Emerging Patterns of Cyber Crimes” said that computer technology poses new challenges to social policy regarding issues such as privacy, as it relates to data mining and criminal investigations.
Kaushik Saha in his paper “Cyber Crime: Agenda For Legal Reforms” discussed the functional problems faced by the law enforcement agencies while dealing with cyber crime. He looked forward and suggested possibilities of a uniform reform in various penal and procedural laws, initially by proposing a set of ideal reformatory measure and then by comparing two major practical conventions endorsed by the developed countries of the world.
Mohd. Shawahiq Siddiqui with a new idea of “Cyber Space: A New Space for Wildlife Trade on Internet” in his paper attempted to argue a kind of parallel with the “offer” as understood in commercial law and the “offer” that has been used in the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 to disable the “offer” for sale of illegal wildlife items via internet.
Priyangee Guha Kashyap tried to trace the history of cyber crime. Other who read their papers included: Kush Kalra & Ayush Verma, Srishti Sharma & Deepika Verma, Megha Chauhan etc.
The other parallel session on Cyber Laws had some interesting jurisprudential issues. Aditi Singh presented her paper on “Cyber Forensics: Challenges to Law Enforcement in India”. She came out with a conclusion that the science of cyber forensics is still in its infancy in India and it has to be developed keeping in view the fact that its significance emanates from the interface of justice delivery system with the Information Technology.
Mayank Jain and Digvijay Singh in their paper “Safely First: The Online World” said that considering the nascent stage of cyber law enforcement in India, the first stage to prevent crime is the Individual; hence safely first. This paper outlined the various methods of protection of privacy, prevent online fraud and e-mail scams and how to prevent them. What measures should be taken have also been incorporated in the paper.
Nour Mohammad from Bangladesh in his paper “Cyber Space Claiming Conceptual and Institutional Innovation” attempted to focus on existing law, legal system and jurisprudence circling round territorial concept. He said that certain new institutions have to be established in order to apply new principles to resolve the problems to come out of computer, internet and cyberspace.
Prashis Kanwar and Chandan Singla in their paper “Cyber Crime and Indian Regulations: A message to all the NETIZENS” discussed about the Indian provisions relating to cyber crime but pointed out the lacunae in implementation where the police is unaware and the law breaker walks two steps ahead of law maker.
Meanwhile, Vijay Kumar Singh discussed a very potential area in Cyber Criminal Justice Administration. In his paper “Role of Police Authorities in Prosecution of Offences under the Information Technology Act: A Need of Reform”, he presented a socio-legal study conducted in the city of Nagpur by collecting empirical data from various police stations and the analysis of the same depicts alarming results for example – unawareness about cyber crimes, evidentiary issues involved in cyber crimes, un-organisation of cyber cafes etc.
Ved Pal Singh and Rubal Garg from GGNUL, Patiala, suggested legal measures to avert and control cyber crimes.
Meanwhile, Prof. B. N. Chattoraj (NICFS, New Delhi), presented his important research paper on “Crime against women”. Concentrating his study to rape, dowry death and domestic violence, he said that the graph of these crimes is increasing in India and supporting the fact, he presented some data collected by CRB from different states. ([email protected])