Legal Aspects

Good morning Colleagues,

Cyber crimes will continue to grow and flourish in Jamaica because the technological, financial and legal infrastructures are not sufficiently able to proactively mitigate manifestations and associated risks that the telecommunications liberalization has brought about.  Hence, today, Jamaica is not only an attractive destination to tourists, but to international predators and perpetrators of organized cyber crimes.  Consequently, on a daily basis the Information Communications Technology of many businesses, corporate bodies and government organization and business infrastructures come under various forms of attacks, i.e. fraudulent transactions, hacking and other kinds of cyber crimes, which have caused them to suffer huge financial setbacks.  Similarly, ordinary citizens have been victims of harassment, invasion of privacy, bullying, propaganda, character degradation, etc., with no meaningful source for redress.  The rise in frequency of these occurrences are on the radar of  Jamaica's law enforcement system, however, our policing practices and existing legislation have proven to deficient as they lag behind the world when it comes to cyber crimes.  It appears as though the Jamaica Constabulary Force, in particular, is so inundated with cyber crime that affects national security and financial stability that is has opted to focus on policing and bringing to justice perpetrators of cyber crimes that have large scale impacts.  Therefore, there is much effort, internally, to develop investigative systems to lessen incidents in this category of cyber crime, and on development of the requisite forensic science skills to adequately extract and preserve evidence in order to successfully prosecute cybercrimes that impact government organizations, corporate entities and business, and general national safety, there is little or no attention given to crimes that directly affect the rights of ordinary citizens.  This approach has left several vulnerable groups within the Jamaican society unprotected by the law,  and with no redress when they fall victim to cyber crimes that are of a personal nature and the short as well as long term physical, emotional and social damages that they suffer as a result.

Please consider the following and let us know your thoughts:

1.What do you know about the offences against the people act; the cybercrimes act, and the trafficking in person act?

2.Do you feel you know enough about these categories of crimes and what your rights are where each are concerned?

3.What do you feel should be done to help lawmakers to catch up legislatively to adequately fight and punish cybercrimes?

4.What role do you feel schools should play in the legislation and enforcement of cybercrimes law?

Paula Daley - Morris, PhD