The announcement made by Industry, Investments and IT Minister Austin Gatt about the setting up of a national e-crime working group is welcome news.
The working group, according to the minister, will be drawing up a set of policies and procedures to regulate internet use. Considering the widespread use of the internet and, unfortunately, the widespread misuse of the service, such a working group is necessary as a means of control.
Another important innovation will be the setting up of a hotline to prevent the abuse of children over the internet.
As the minister pointed out, the virtual world of the internet is “merely an extension of the real world, so just as people generally accept the existence of crime in society, so they must accept that it exists” on the internet too.
As such, the criminal code must be updated to cater for what is now known as cyber-crime. New laws will enable the police to prosecute criminals for attempting to, say, seduce a child, without having to wait for the actual crime to be committed.
Children are the most vulnerable members of our society and their innocence leads them to act differently from adults. What for a mature person would immediately be suspicious could, for a child, be just another game.
This is why, first of all, it is important that parents or those taking care of children must always be on the lookout when young ones are using the internet. This monitoring must also apply even when children are carrying out searches on the internet. Recently, for example, a woman phoned up The Malta Independent to say that a search for a cartoon character led her child to photos of sex scenes.
Of course, there are more serious situations than this. News reports from abroad about children being induced to meet strangers via the internet, with all the consequences that this could bring, are unfortunately quite frequent. So far, Malta has been spared horrible stories of children being chatted up on the internet and seduced to meet adults who turn out to be child abductors or paedophiles. But this does not necessarily mean that it cannot happen here too.
This is why it is a good idea to prevent such crimes from happening before they start. As Dr Gatt said, criminals “try to do wrong before that wrong has even been thought of and forbidden by law. There will always be robbers, child-abusers, information-traffickers and criminals of all sorts, whether on-line of not”.
People must also be careful of other types of crime that are emerging with the wider use of technology. Identity theft, for example, is one of them. It is the fastest-growing white collar crime, increasing at a five-fold rate every year.
The e-crime working group must take all this into consideration. It must also work hand in hand with similar organisations that have been set up in other countries. Their experience could be very useful in overcoming the teething problems the local working group will encounter.
It is a pity that such a useful tool as the internet is abused so widely. Not so long ago, the same Minister Gatt said that a better use of technological means would help businesses and individuals in no small way, adding, however, that there are still many who are sceptical about the use of the internet when it comes to reaching deals.
Well, it is precisely cyber-crime that keeps more people away from making use of the internet to the maximum of its potential. While being a comfortable and easy tool, the possibility of being hacked leads many not to trust the system.
It is also up to the businesses and individuals concerned to see that their network is properly secured, to make it more difficult for them to be hacked.