London - United Kingdom; - Probably wary of sporadic incidences in the world of virtual reality, the Caribbean Island nation of Trinidad and Tobago has ambitiously decided to make a mark in the international fight against cyber crimes by announcing the piloting of a cybercrime bill.
For some, it’s a step that was long overdue, and is also an essential tool in the continued quest for online safety in most jurisdictions.
But outside of local concerns over Clause 21 of the bill, among other things, several international cybercrimes experts are adamant that the Twin Island Republic would be wasting hundreds of millions of dollars to tackle the almost ever elusive realms of cyber crime, unless other preceding legislations and dozens of international judicial agreements are in order.
And even if the land of Calypso spends another five years implementing these prerequisites, there will still be a slim chance of solving anymore than 1% of such offences.
At least these are the views of an international cyber crime expert with previous exposure to the various challenges and gains associated with its enforcement.
In an invited interview with the Epoch Times, Gerry Olivier, a former cybercrime security analyst at Google, explained that Trinidad’s first hurdle would rest on the fact that most technology companies are reluctant to share user information even to the U.S Government, much less with a smaller Island state like Trinidad.
He suffice that since around 98% of Trinidad’s and Tobago’s technological infrastructure are dependent on foreign services providers such as Google etc, international law dictates that no proper cybercrime case can be built without the input of these tech giants.
Mr. Olivier also indicated that most cyber crime operators functions from remote jurisdictions. And if they were in Trinidad, they may most likely channel their traffic through other technology rogue States such as Russia, Romania, China, and India.
This would all make it almost impossible for the Trinidad and Tobago Government to secure the extradition of a foreign accused person or successfully call any required witnesses from those countries.
He stressed that too many preceding cases have cost other countries hundreds of millions of lost dollars in their efforts to extradite accused cyber criminals from uncooperative jurisdictions; - since it is a quest that often fails. As such he does not see how a country like Trinidad and Tobago can achieve otherwise.
Questioned on the possibility of at least being able to successfully prosecute potential local incidences using locally available evidences, the respected cybercrime expert explained that; for example, it would amount to a fundamental breach of human rights if Trinidad is to imprison someone on allegations that they have committed a crime via their Gmail account, when no evidence was provided by Google, the owners of Gmail, to substantiate the accusation.
“Relying on an ISP for an originating IP address or the presumed identity of the email sender will be insufficient”, he said.
Cybercrimes covers an extensive field of more than fifty types of electronic related offences, ranging from publishing supposedly blackmailing articles to financially defrauding someone via an online sale.
Conviction rates are conflicting, but is said to be somewhere around 8% to 12% worldwide.
It is responsible for more than $800 billion in losses to the global financial system annually.
