Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime

Hi frenz this is a information about a organisation which protect society against cyber crime. This is one of the way to protect society against the cybercrimes where Malaysia can apply the same application as other country. Enjoy read it.

Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime

The aims of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime (“COECCC”) are to achieve a common criminal policy to protect society against cyber crime by adopting appropriate legislation and to foster international co-operation.

The working group proposed that legislation regarding computer crime should look towards international developments so that it remains up to date. In particular, the working group compared the COECCC with Hong Kong’s existing legislation and the group’s proposals are in line with the COECCC, some interesting points arising from the comparison are discussed below.

Article 6 of the COECCC states that each party to the convention still shall make it an offence to produce, distribute or possess devices, computer programs or password designed specifically for the purposes of committing offences such as hacking. There is no legislation in Hong Kong outlawing “hacking tools”, nor would the working group recommended legislation to make them illegal. The reason cited was that system managers may wish to use these to test their security measures. However, it might be possible to license these “hacking tools” to legitimate users only and make it an offence to sell hacking tools (in line with Article 6 of the COECCC). This would make it more difficult for hackers to operate and make it easier to prosecute them, as prosecution would simply rest on of these devices.

Article 9 of the COECCC deals with child pornography on a computer system. The CRO does not deal with this issue but the Prevention of Child Pornography Bill is currently being discussed and will, in the future, create concrete legislation to address this.

Reference: Internet Law in Hong Kong
by Renuka Jeyabalan