DOHA: As criminals were racing to technologically advanced law enforcement, the international community must form legal barriers, including new global treaties, to end impunity, prosecute perpetrators and stop cybercrime and illicit financing in their tracks, experts said yesterday in UN Congress plenary debate on new and emerging forms of transnational crime.
Botnets, online spies and terrorists recruiting foreign fighters were among a league of new threats that required equally unique and innovative responses, speakers said. Some suggested opening channels for information sharing and mutual assistance, while others debated whether or not a new cybercrime convention should be considered. Throughout the day-long debate, delegates agreed that the world had to catch up with the criminals in order to stop their illicit activities.
“We have to be smarter than them to fight their networks,” Morocco’s representative said, describing an evolving cyberspace landscape where criminals were delving into a range of illicit activities, from illegal mining to trafficking in endangered flora and fauna. The rag-tag thugs and old-fashioned gangsters of the past had modernised their operations and were using state-of-the-art technology to run illicit organisations fuelled by trafficking ever more sophisticated products, including human organs and fraudulent medicine. Other speakers agreed that new efforts were needed to stamp out the havoc wreaked by computer viruses and the widespread use of the Internet for criminal offenses, such as child pornography, identity theft and recruitment by terrorist groups.
While agreeing that a cooperative approach was required to fight cyber-crime and transnational crime, a number of speakers were divided on whether existing or new tools would best guide that task. New crimes required new conventions, Egypt’s delegate said, adding that a new instrument should also guide states in addressing trafficking in cultural property. In addition, a new cyber-crime convention should effectively respond to such offenses and provide clear guidance on extradition and repatriation. Agreeing, South Africa’s representative, speaking for the African Group, said there was an urgent need for a legally binding cyber-crime instrument, with Iraq’s speaker saying that such a tool would help to contain crimes whereby “dirty” money could be transferred across the world within seconds. On existing treaties, some speakers said that, even though the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cyber-crime, known as the Budapest Convention, was open to non-member States, it fell short in certain areas. The representative of the Russian Federation said that the instrument provided for the respect of human rights; however, it did not recognize the sovereign rights of all States to lead investigations. India’s speaker asked: “Can we truly fight against this crime with a decade-old instrument?”
The Pninsula
