Million-dollar fines and jail terms of up to 15 years are some of the severe penalties being proposed by Government in new legislation to deal with specific cyber crimes including child pornography. This as two new pieces of legislation—the Cybercrime Bill 2014 and the T&T Cyber Security Agency Bill 2014 — were laid in the House of Representatives on Friday by Science and Technology Minister Dr Rupert Griffith. No date has been set for the debate on the legislation, which requires a special three-fifths majority vote to be passed.
In June last year, Griffith spoke about the need for such legislation, saying it will not deal only with hacking. He said then: “We will also be dealing with legislation in areas such as electronic evidence and electronic transfer of funds of crime.” The Cybercrime Bill seeks to address child pornography via a computer system or other information and communication technology (ICT). It provides for a fine of $1 million and ten years imprisonment on summary conviction. That fine and imprisonment will increase to $2 million and 15 years respectively, for conviction on indictment.
Another clause in the bill addresses the violation of someone’s privacy by capturing and sharing pictures or videos of a person's private area without his/her consent. That offence is proposed to carry a fine of $2,000 and two years imprisonment on summary conviction. The fine and imprisonment on conviction on indictment are $.5 million and three years respectively.
Clause 18 deals with the issue of child predators. It seeks to “create the offence of luring, which is the use of a computer to set up a meeting with a child for the purpose of abusing the child.”
It says a fine of $1 million and ten years imprisonment will be imposed for the offence on summary conviction. A $2 million fine and 15 years imprisonment are proposed for a conviction on indictment. The legislation seeks to "criminalise the sending of multiple electronic mail messages that are unsolicited and which cause harm to a person or damage to a computer," the explanatory note to the bill said.