Cops get net-savvy on cyber crime

Cops get net-savvy on cyber crime
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

MUMBAI, JULY 10: It was a crash course on cyber crime. Twenty-five-odd police officials, primarily from the Economics Offences Wing (EOW), marked their attendance at the first seminar on cyber policing in the state since the Information Technology Act, 2000 came into effect from the first of this month.

Police officials familiarised themselves with the concepts of hacking, cyber squatting, tagging and electronic data tampering, taking down notes on how to implement the brand new laws of the cyber world. Gearing up to deal with the World Wide Web and complaints from Mumbaiites, police are also in the process of establishing a 10-member net-savvy, cyber police crack team.

Inaugurated by the joint commissioner of police D Shivanandan, the seminar was addressed by Dr Mohan Diwan, an expert on intellectual property rights and cyber law. Police officials from the EOW and a few from the preventive wing attended this seminar and got their fundamentals on the subject in order.

Explaining, DCP (EOW) Himanshu Roy says: ``This is a spanking new law and today's seminar was to familiarise my department with its nuances. This is the first step and we are working on creating a core team of officials who will specialise in dealing with cyber crimes. It is going to be the crime of the future and we are gearing up to deal with it.''

Describing the session as stimulating, Diwan says: ``The officials were very enthusiastic. In fact, they were also quite aware. Since this act is an extension of the already existing laws that are broadly classified under the head of intellectual property rights, there was a lot of discussion and interaction at the seminar.''

The participants were familiarised with the all the possible crimes and the possible punishment. Duties, responsibilties and powers given to police officials under this act were discussed at length.

According to officials, the new laws are among the strictest in the world with penalities for hacking going upto Rs one crore. Further, a cyber squatter faces imprisonment up to two years while hackers could do jail time for five years. In addition, the new laws deal with pornography sites on the internet and tampering with electronic records. Police officials have been given a lot of powers under the law to ensure that the cyber world is a crime-free world.

At present, netizens can lodge their cyber complaints at the local police station, which will be forwarded to the EOW. While the initial response to them might be a little slow, officials are promising that by the time they are through with the new laws, hackers and squatters will be in trouble. In the grander scheme of things, officials hope to eventually equip their police stations to deal with some of the complaints.

But for the time being, policmen of the EOW are busy hitting the books and clicking the mouse, trying to keep pace with the world wide web.