By NNN-KUNA,
Tunis : The draft for an Arab agreement to combat e-crimes adds on to the framework of pan-Arab cooperation, Assistant Undersecretary for Legal Affairs at the Kuwaiti Ministry of Interior Major General Dr. Khalid Al-Osaimi said on Tuesday.
In a statement to KUNA on the sidelines of the joint meeting for Arab interior and justice ministers here, Al-Osaimi, who is heading the Kuwaiti delegation, underlined Kuwait’s keenness to interact with its fellow Arab countries with the aim to reach an acceptable form for the agreement.
He noted that that the proposed agreement would have the aptitude to counter online crimes, especially the ones related to official documents and information security and with regard to Arab and regional peculiarities.
Al-Osaimi hoped for the final draft to be agrred upon, so as to submit it to the interior and justice ministerial councils for endorsement.
On technical aspects of the agreement, the Kuwaiti official said that the nature of computer and information systems required specialists in this field in order to track down and identify “illegal acts” online.
This, according to Al-Osaimi, necessitated regional and international technical terms to be at hand and cover all aspects of an e-crime, a matter that the proposed agreement would provide.
Terms like: misuse, online fraud, high-tech crimes and hacking, were all newly-originated due to the fact that computer and internet crimes only began with the revolutionary outbreak of online technology, Al-Osaimi pointed out, adding that the means to limit these crimes begins with the complete awareness of its consequences and by getting familiar with technical terms and with the help of trusted specialists.
The Council of Europe Deputies, a key policy-making body on European governmental affairs, approved the first international convention on cyber-crime in 2001. The Council drafted the convention to develop a common criminal policy for protection against crimes committed through the use of the internet and other computer networks.
The convention, one of the recent on an international level on that issue, deals particularly with infringements of copyright, computer-related fraud and violations of network security. It also contains a series of powers and procedures such as the search of computer networks and interception.