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Violation of Human Rights in Cyber Crime

The internet has been in existence since 1960's and the World Wide Web (WWW) since 1990's. The International Telecommunications Union estimates that almost 40% of the world's population and over 79% of people in developed countries are now internet users. Government, business and organizations in civil society are increasingly using cyber space platforms in the communication question that arose is the impact of cyber security and cyber crime on Human right? Does it infringes Human Right?

Cyber Security and Human Rights:

There are many international or domestic laws which applies to cyber security, includes Article 19 of the UDHR includes protections of freedom of speech, communication and access to information. Similarly, Article 3 states Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. But enforcing these rights is difficult under international law. As a result, many countries like India ignore the rules.

Cyber security breaches the human rights of freedom of speech and expression, right to privacy, freedom of opinion and free flow of information. Government has created many policies which intend to protect crime related computer, but many of these policies are overly broad and ill-defined, and lack clear checks and balances or other democratic accountability mechanisms, which can lead to human rights abuses and can stifle innovation. This all reveal that the state defines security as protecting itself from political instability, applies disproportionate measures to ensure its own preservation, and itself becomes the source of insecurity.

As we see there were some restrictions of social sites what we can write, speak or post. More often cyber security laws can be used to censor dissidents, monitor communications, and criminalize online users for expressing their views. Government officials can at any point of time and track users communication whenever they felt suspicious about someone, sometime their assumption result absurd. This all directly violates human right given by UHDR or countries own law.

For example, the surveillance of Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz, which contributed to the extrajudicial execution of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. According to a lawsuit, Abdulaziz's cell phone was targeted by the Saudi Arabian government with spyware, compromising the confidentiality of his communications with Khashoggi about opposition projects in the months leading up to Khashoggi's killing.

Shreya Singhal v Union of India, 2012

This is case of 2012, in which two girls were arrested by Mumbai Police for expressing their displeasure against a strike by Shiv Sena for Shiv Sena chief's death. The accusation made against the petitioners was that they were involved in posting their comments on Facebook and liking the comment at the same time which resulted in widespread public protest. The issue raised in this case was:
  • Whether Sections 66-A, 69-A, and 79 of the IT Act are constitutionally valid?
  • Whether Section 66A of IT Act is violative of the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression?

Verdict

The court observed that the expressions used in 66A are completely open-ended and undefined and it is not covered under Article 19(2) of the Indian Constitution. Section 66A of the IT Act actually had no proximate connection or link with causing disturbance to public order or with incitement to commit an offence and hence it was struck down by the court. The approach adopted by the court was to protect the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression and in no way the legislation can take away this right by claiming the shield under Article 19(2) of the Constitution.

Cyber Crime and Human Rights

Cyber crime violates human rights such as the right to privacy, the right to secrecy, the right to be free from any kind of blackmailing and torture. Hackers usually lock secret data of the user or of any company and demand ransom to unlock them, they also steal data and misuse them. Like in the recent case they hacked the Twitter account of many well-known persons and misused their account to collect money by fraud, some demanded money to give back their account. They blackmail and violate children's rights by using their videos and pictures on different sites.
  • Nasscom v Ajay Shood and Others: It was a landmark judgment by the Delhi High Court, phishing on the internet was declared to be an illegal act, entailing an injunction and recovery of damages. The court stated that phishing is a form of internet fraud where a person pretends to be a legitimate association, such as a bank or an insurance company in order to extract personal data from a customer such as access codes, passwords, etc. The Delhi HC stated that even though there is no specific legislation in India to penalize phishing, still the court held the act of phishing as passing off and tarnishing Nasscom's image.

One of the leading cybercrime cases is the Bank NSP case is the one where a management trainee of the bank was engaged to be married. The couple exchanged many emails using the company computers. After some time the two broke up and the girl created fraudulent email ids such as "Indian bar associations" and sent emails to the boy's foreign clients. She used the bank's computer to do this. The boy's company lost a large number of clients and took the bank to court. The bank was held liable for the emails sent using the bank's system.

How To Prevent Cyber Crime?
While it may not be possible to completely eradicate cybercrime and ensure complete internet security, businesses can reduce their exposure to it by maintaining an effective cybersecurity strategy using a defense-in-depth approach to securing systems, networks and data.

Cybercrime risks can be reduced with the following steps:

  • develop clear policies and procedures for the business and employees;
  • create cybersecurity incident response plans to support these policies and procedures;
  • outline the security measures that are in place about how to protect systems and corporate data;
  • use two-factor authentication (2FA) apps or physical security keys;
  • activate 2FA on every online account when possible;
  • verbally verify the authenticity of requests to send money by talking to a financial manager;
  • create intrusion detection system (IDS) rules that flag emails with extensions similar to company emails;
  • carefully scrutinize all email requests for transfer of funds to determine if the requests are out of the ordinary;
  • continually train employees on cybersecurity policies and procedures and what to do in the event of security breaches;
  • keep websites, endpoint devices and systems current with all software release updates or patches; and
  • back up data and information regularly to reduce the damage in case of a ransomware attack or data breach.

Information security and resistance to cybercrime attacks can also be built by encrypting local hard disks and email platforms, using a virtual private network (VPN) and using a private, secure domain name system (DNS) server.

Although there are much cyber laws to stop cyber crimes in India but somehow all these laws seems to be ineffective. Hackers always creates new techniques to surpass all the cyber security and hacks important data. Government should make policy in such a way that basic human rights doesn't violates. Issue of Surveillances, communications monitoring, privacy, consent and technology need to be coupled with analysis of legal, ethical position and practices. Then only there could be a chance to of protecting basic human rights and fostering responsibility in this techno-savvy world. Now, this is need of time for different organizations to stand up against this contagious like disease of cyber crime.

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