An Overview of Cyber Crimes and Victimisation of Women and Minors and the Indian Scenario at par with International Protocols
(Sree Vidya.V, Judicial Magistrate, Fast Track Court,Theni)
Almost everybody in our country is the proud owner of Mobile Phones, thanks to the cheap rates of phones and network across the country. A person without a mobile phone feels less independent than his living counterparts. Almost 28% of women possess mobile phone which is more them the number of house holds having toilets, according to the British Broadcast Company Survey and Census 2011. Indian Citizens are new world netizens and the whole world is under their palm. Indian women are found very active on all social networks such as Watsapp, Face book, Twitter, in etc., It cannot be refused simply that women are those who do not know technology. As a result, it is the bitter truth that every woman is a victim of cyber bullying at one point of time, over a period of their active indulgence in social networking
No doubt India has a whole set of laws in hand to protect its daughters from the hands and clutches of vulnerability. Indian women nowadays have been kept well informed about the Vishaka Committees present in each working atmosphere and have never hesitated to approach the appropriate forms for upholding their rights.
The www or world wide network is similar to a co-education college. Where as bullying in a college can be easily detected and perhaps also uprooted in the form of Anti ragging Act - this growing epidemic of cyber bullying in not as easy as ragging to track out, unless the victim shows courage to open up to tell what she is going through. This type of cyber bullying can be also termed as torment.
Torment in legal parlance can be used to term harassment coupled with humiliation or harassment with embarassment. In practice, scholars have termed cyber bullying to be one involving minors and cyber harassment to that of the older ones i.e. adults.
The type of torment exercised upon women and minors does not bleed or have lacerations on bruises but the impact of injury is left harshly on the victim to suffer and leaves an everlasting scar in the mind of the victim. A thorough research with regard to the criminology and modus operand is warranted from the Indian perspective to call for the regulations to be used for each type of cyber crime.
Truly though the diversity of crime is spread over the whole world, we seclude the home user, the small population of women and children, the domestic user from the large enterprises, the corporate sector and the global giants.
Today, infringement of Privacy which is collections of all information of a person, without his knowledge, theft of data, theft of identity, cyber stalking and cyber hacking lead the list. Among these wide spread criminal activities, child pornography and obscenity are the topmost. While hackers continue hacking these criminal miscreants, continue uploading obscene material, and hence the victims are on the steep rise in number.
An overview of various legislation of various countries will help one understand the obstructions in overcoming the barriers in an effective legislation. It is not mandatory that victims be regular users of internet and one can easily see that victims are very usually new on the net and do not have any netiquette ( the etiquette for netizen or net citizens)
In India we do see that the Information Technology Act 2000 in its whole come does provide enough security and Section 65 deals with in tampering of Computer Source document, and Section 66 with hacking of computer system, Section 67 with publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form. All and above one can find no section or sub section to deal with the cyber crime in regard to women and children.
A topical research on the legislation of other countries would help us better to deal with the lacuna in our set of laws. Cyber crime is a global phenomenon. The reach of cyber crime is so vast that there is daily development in new techniques and methods of cyber crime.
1. The UN, International Review on Criminal Policy has identified five areas of training to be imparted to the members of judicial administration and includes (i) the rights of accused and victim, Technological training to particular departments and intensive training on computer mechanisms.
The proper means of obtaining and preserving evidence, the difference between civil and criminal mind and also training regarding the intricacies of the international nature of the problem also to study the stand of different countries is necessary to understand the severity of the methodology of crime.
In the Indian Scenario, It is true that most of the victims have not sought any relief. The difficulty ratio can been attributed to various reasons such as
(i) Non reporting of the crime primarily for fear of bad publicity.
(ii) Difficulty in locating the physical location of the miscreant.
(iii) The victims lack realization of the crimes committed against
them.
(iv) Jurisdictional issues.
(v) Lack of Technical literacy among officers and hence the
regulative hesitation to take up a case.
Keeping the above in mind, continuing education regarding technological changes and updation is required in all fields from students to the investigation agency and judicially and also India does need to undertake a legislative exercise to reform the law relaxing to cyber space concerning women and children.
Various aspects of cyber space such as Data protection cyber security, Online transactions, computers misuse needs dedicated legal responses guidelines.
There are isolated brilliances, but the need of the hour is empowering the entire system with adequate technology and awareness. The problems of International cooperation, and the possibility of involvement of all the different countries must be realized.
Universally no law is static. It needs to adapt to the changes, and the need for a paradigm shift in the mind of netizens is the salvation.
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References:
i) The Information Technology Act: 2000
ii) Law of Cyber crimes and Information
(Policy, Law & Practice alongwith the text of global legislations focusing of Cyber crimes etc., etc., by S.V. Joga Rao.
iii) Evidence seizure methodology for computer forensics cited in WWW.Crazytrain.com
iv) Omited nations manual on the Prevention and Control of Computer related crime.
v) ‘Declaration’ of Human Rights in Cyber space, Draft Proposal, WWW.be-in.com