Moily seeks laws for cyber crime

In an effort to curb the spurt in cyber crime incidents around the country, the Union law and justice minister, Mr M. Veerappa Moily, on Sunday advocated the enactment of separate laws and the creation of a specialised agency to deal with IT-related cases.

The law minister said that only amending the existing IT Act would not solve the problem. “I think instead of amending the IT Act, we should have separate laws for cyber crimes. It is a matter we need to deal with instead of tinkering with the IT Act from time to time,” Mr Moily said.

The law minister regretted that India did not have a specific enforcement agency to deal exclusively with cyber laws. “Countries like the United States and South Korea have created such agencies and are way ahead in investigation of such crimes,” Mr Moily said.

The country did not have skilled experts who could help the government tackle such crimes, he pointed out, saying “creation of a specialised agency will help us bring down IT-related crimes.”

Enacting laws only to deal with specific contingencies was “not a desired thing”, the minister said, noting that judicial officers too lacked the necessary training to be able to handle cases related to cyber crimes.

The minister, speaking at the launch of the Cyber Law Enforcement Programme, said even India’s IT industry lacked self-regulation in areas such as privacy and data collection.

Quoting 2005 data provided by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, he noted that American companies had lost at least $67.2 billion due to cyber crime.

The Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, speaking at the same function, suggested that the government should impose a ban on websites that exclusively display pornography and hate speeches.

“For local jurisdiction, there are problems on account of the structure of the flow of information over the Internet. End users can fake identities using proxy servers to misguide investigating agencies. The government can ban websites that exclusively circulate pornography and hate speech,” he said.