Fighting cyber crimes

Fighting cyber crimes

Winahyo Soekanto, Lawyer, Consumer Care Foundation, Jakarta,
winahyo@yahoo.com

Internet users may account for less than 1 percent of
Indonesia's population of 210 million; but this is a country
where some Internet cafes provide free cards for customers to
hold cyber-transactions, thus opening the doors wide open to
abuse. In fact, Interpol has already lodged at least 150
complaints with the Indonesian police concerning abuses of
Internet transactions, mostly credit card fraud.

This is also a country that does not have a law on cyber
crime. "So far, we have been able to handle less than 15 percent
of those reported crimes," said Iman Santosa who works at
National Police Headquarters. Why? "Because they're difficult to
handle," Iman said recently. Very often, "the victim is a card
owner in the United States, but the fraud has been committed via
the Internet in Yogyakarta. The thief has purchased goods from
online shops in Japan, and asked that they be delivered to
Jakarta".

Suspects in those cases are usually charged under the articles
372, 378, 263, 362 and 480 (on forgery, fraud and theft) of the
existing Criminal Code.

Indonesia has reportedly been identified as the second
country, after Ukraine, with the most cases of cyber crime,
according to Budi Rahardjo, an information technology expert at
the Bandung Institute of Technology. Indonesia is finding itself
overwhelmed by the sudden outburst of Internet crime, which more
often that not takes place in either Bandung or Yogyakarta.

To give credit where credit is due, the Indonesian police have
prepared themselves by establishing a cyber crime unit under its
IT sub-directorate, which has been working for the past year. In
fact, according to AKBP E. Brata Mandala, head of IT Sub-
Directorate of the Directorate of Special Crimes of the National
Police Headquarters, the sub-directorate was conceived 15 years
ago when the police predicted the birth of "hi-tech crimes".

The 1997 economic crisis was to blame for the late development
of the unit, Brata said.

The government has attempted to circumvent this legal void by
taking some ad-hoc measures such as establishing cooperation with
other countries. Australia and Indonesia have recently signed a
memorandum of understanding that will help the two countries
fight transnational crimes such as the trafficking of women and
children, the smuggling of firearms, terrorism and cyber crime.
The MOU on Transnational Crimes would provide a framework for
preventing, investigating, disrupting and dismantling
transnational crime involving both countries, according to
Australian Justice Minister Chris Ellison.

Late last year, the Non Aligned Movement Center for South-
South Technical Cooperation agreed to build e-linkages among
developing countries as a way to boost connectivity and overcome
the digital divide. That meant greater opportunities for Internet
usage and an e-network for e-commerce and e-transactions.

Indeed, it took only six years for the developing countries of
the Non-Aligned Movement to give birth to 88 million new users of
the Internet. In India, 10 percent of its population now have
access to the Internet and cellular telephones, bypassing the
limited growth of fixed-line telephones and enabling farmers to
obtain real-time changes in commodity prices.

In Indonesia, a large percentage of Internet service providers
have collapsed, especially after the facility Voice over Internet
Protocol was declared illegal; but the number of Internet users
continues to grow even in remote areas as they go hand-in-hand
with the growth of Wartel (telecommunication kiosks).

The European Council Convention on Cyber Crime, signed into
being by 30 countries last November in Budapest, identifies cyber
crimes as:

* Offenses against the confidentiality, integrity and
availability of computer data and systems that cover illegal
access, illegal interception, data interference, system
interference and misuse of devices. Included in this category is
hacking.

* Computer-related offenses such as forgery and fraud;

* Content-related offenses such as child pornography;

* Offenses related to the infringement of copyright and
related rights including intentional aiding and abetting these
offenses.

In short, a cyber crime is defined as a crime related to
technology, computers and the Internet.

Legal expert Mardjono Reksodiputro recently suggested during a
workshop at Surabaya University that cyber crime be treated as
either:

* An ordinary crime using the hi-tech means of computer
technology, which our Criminal Code (with some amendment) would
be quite adequate to handle, or:

* A new breed of criminal acts that need a new, comprehensive
legal framework to overcome its special characteristic of
technological sophistication that would continue to develop,
which means that Indonesia needs a separate provision outside the
existing Criminal Code.

Another approach, however, would be to combine the two
approaches as the U.S. government has done by amending its 1933
Securities Act and, at the same time, launching its Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act.

There are about 20 other countries such as Australia, Canada,
Japan, India and the Philippines that have updated their legal
instruments by introducing provisions on computer-related crimes;
but these have rarely been tested in court.

The Indonesian government is working to prepare legislation on
telematics such as a draft bill on electronic transactions and a
draft bill on e-signs (digital signatures). The Ministry of
Justice and Human Rights has reportedly experimented with the
concept in its administration. This is in addition to the work in
progress on the new Criminal Code draft.

Several experts, including Budi Rahardjo and Mieke Komar of
Padjajaran University in Bandung, West Java, have also drafted
the Cyber Crime Bill, an effort that reportedly has yet to be
taken seriously by the government.

What would be an equally important step in the campaign to
fight the increase in cyber crime in the absence of a cyber crime
code is to improve the implementation of existing legal
instruments, because, regardless of whether it is a low-tech or
hi-tech crime, damage and loss has been inflicted on its victims.

However, the law and government-sponsored measures are only a
partial answer to the problem. IT-based organizations have to
remain vigilant against the onslaught of cyber crime that
threatens them once they enter the cyber world.

In fact, it is important for any institution or individual
entering the cyber world to have cyber security plans. This means
a commitment to train personnel to handle sensitive data, record
transactions and build security technology such as a firewall
system, anti-virus software and authentication services.