Police predict rise in cyber crimes

November 29, 2009 03:01:30 PM

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Fiji police is expecting a rise in cyber-related crimes committed in Fiji over the next two years. 

Police cyber-crime unit spokesperson Jemesa Lave said some 70 percent of all reports they receive has a cyber component, a trend they expect would grow.

“Our unit processes reports on frauds, money laundering, drugs trafficking so out of those, around 70 percent has something to do with cyber; whether we are assigned to go and download mobile phone records, for example in murder or drug cases, or extract information from computers," he said. 

"And then we have what we call full blown cases, such as hacking, where computers are used to break into a system to steal data. So we have all these things occurring here,” said Lave, when speaking to the legal fraternity in this weekend’s 11th Attorney General’s conference.

The conference, with the theme “Developing the Law - Challenges and Opportunities” deliberated on the new Crimes Decree which criminalizes, for the first time in Fiji, cyber-related crimes.

“We are expecting that in the next two years, between 2010 and 2012, we will receive 40 to 50 percent more cyber-related reports than this year because of the advent of new technology and broadband here,” Lave told Fiji Live.

“ People are becoming more Internet savvy, technology savvy and the knowledge of computer crime is freely available on the Internet - you type in “credit card hack” and see how many hits you get…so that’s how easy it is to get information. 

"Also, young people now are growing up with new technology and they know more than adults how these things work. Just imagine if they are growing up and they get the wrong motive, they want to rob a bank, it would be very easy for them to do it now because you don’t have to go to a bank to rob it. All you need is a computer and a modem. So this is going to be a problem.” 

He said although cyber crimes were already happening in Fiji and the unit had proved that crimes such as hacking and identity theft were being committed, the perpetrators could not be prosecuted due to lack of appropriate legislations.

“One suspect came to Fiji and committed a crime here. We had been able to prove that he had hacked the systems but we couldn’t arrest and charge him because there was no legislation relating to this kind of crime," Lave said.

"When a person has been proved to have committed an offence, the next step is to charge the person. But we couldn’t charge this suspect because technically, no offence was being committed because there is no legislation saying that the act that he did is criminal."

The inclusion of computer offences in Fiji’s new Crimes Decree is expected to address this shortcoming.

Lave said while the police cyber-crime unit is now equipped with technically skilled people to conduct investigations into cyber-crimes and perform forensic cyber investigation, there was still a need to increase human capacity in this area. 

Fiji’s police technical expertise include 13 INTERPOL certified trainers in IT crime investigation, two certified computer forensics specialists, one certified application forensics specialist, and one certified mobile forensics specialist. 

The unit also has computer forensics equipments that are recognized by courts all over the world in jurisdictions where cyber laws are in place. 

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