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Cyber Security and Cyber Crime Infringes Human Rights?

In this techno-savvy world, where everything is in your computer. It became much easy to get almost any information which we want. We can connect to a person from any country within a second. Although all these technology and internet has changed our life and made easy for us but it has many drawbacks too.

Internet and Digital Communication Technology has created an enormous opportunity for people of all ages including student community to contribute and accumulate information. It is indeed not exaggerating that people are getting connected to each other through e-mails, chatting rooms, social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter etc. But with increase in use of internet, cybercrime rates are also increasing rapidly. Any important data can be easily hacked by cyber attackers.

Cases of crime related to cyber space are increasing day to day. There is more technology advanced hackers, professional cybercrime organization. For example, hacker receives payment to infect end user device with malware. Today's Malwares are difficult to trace and they steal data for financial gain. Some people think that they get more money if they become hackers compared to securers. They are too many bank fraud cases where hackers took all your money from your bank account by calling you.

Cyber Security:

Cyber security or IT security refers to the practice of ensuring the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of information It is comprised of an evolving set of tools, risk management approaches, technologies, training, and best practices designed to protect networks, devices, programs, and data from attacks or unauthorized access.

This field of security is important because of increase of reliance of people on computer, internet, Bluetooth, Network, growth of smart devices and other technological or internet of things. A network or any smart devices like Mobile, computer has a lot of personal data of the user, which misuse can lead to dangers of the user. To protect this data from hacked by someone cyber security is needed. Cyber security is something which is always evolving because every change time new cyber threats are there, and therefore need of new cyber security.

Some common types of cyber threats are:

  • Malware[1],
  • Ransomware[2] and
  • Phishing[3].

Some common cyber security were:

  • Network Security:
    It guard against unauthorized intrusion of your internal networks due to malicious intent and also secure network by protecting infrastructure and inhibiting access to it.
  • Cloud Security:
    It protects and monitors the data in your cloud resources. Cloud providers are constantly creating and implementing new security tools to help enterprise users better secure their data.
  • Antivirus:
    It protects the data by scanning known threats in the computer.

Cybercrimes:

United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders, broke cybercrime into two categories and defines, Any illegal behavior directed by means of electronic operations that targets the security of computer systems and the data processed by them. while in broader sense it defines it as, Any illegal behavior committed by means of, or in relation to, a computer system or network, including such crimes as illegal possession [and] offering or distributing information by means of a computer system or network.

According to IT Act 2000, Any crime done through a computer, any illegal activity committed on the internet, where the computer acts as a tool and exposed to internet security.

The Internet Crime Report for 2019, released by USA's Internet Crime Complaint Centre (IC3) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has revealed that India stands third in the world among top 20 countries that are victims of internet crimes. As per the report, excluding the USA, the UK tops the list with 93,796 victims of internet crimes followed by Canada (3,721) and India (2,901).

According to data released by NCRB, a total of 27,248 cases of cyber crime is registered in India in 2018. In which Bank fraud calls was the most. The National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal that was started last year by the Central government received 33,152 complaints till now, resulting in lodging of 790 FIRs.

Some common types of cyber crimes:

  • Unauthorized access to computer network or Hacking:

    In this type of cyber crime the hackers directly hacks user computer or any network device by illegally login it and steal their stored data. They also misuses the data or sell it to other for some sum of money. It is one of the common cyber crime in most of the countries, recently hackers have hacked twitter account of many well-known persons and conducted cyber fraud.
     
  • Virus Attack:

    Viruses are programs that attach themselves to a computer or a file and then circulate themselves to other files and to other computers on a network. They usually affect the data on a computer, either by altering or deleting it. Worms, unlike viruses do not need the host to attach themselves to. They merely make functional copies of themselves and do this repeatedly till they eat up all the available space on a computer's memory. Ex: Girlfriend, LOVELETTER, ILOVEYOU.
     
  • Salami Attack:

    It attacks on a computer network which involves the intruder siphoning off small amounts of money from a file and placing them in another file that he or she can access. For example, deducting small amount of money from X,Y,Z's account and putting in A's own account.
     
  • Cyber Defamation:

    This occurs when defamation takes place with the help of computers or any internet network. For example, sending derogatory message, Email to a person. India's first case of cyber defamation was reported when a company's employee started sending derogatory, defamatory and obscene e-mails about its Managing Director. The emails were anonymous and frequent, and were sent to many of their business associates to tarnish the image and goodwill of the company.
     
  • Theft of computer system:

    It involves the theft of a computer or any part(s) of a computer or a peripheral attached to the computer.

Cyber security, Cyber crime and Human Rights:

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 76% 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 of information and delivery of services. But due to increase in cyber crime and cyber security the concerned question that arose is the impact of cyber security and cyber crime on Human right? Does it infringes Human Right?

Cyber security and human right:

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 UOI [4]:

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 the 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? And Whether Section 66A of IT Act is violative of 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 Indian Constitution. Section 66A 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.[3]

Cyber crime and human rights:

Cyber crime violates human rights such as right to privacy, right to secrecy, right to 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 twitter account of many well-known persons and misuses their account to collect money by fraud, some demanded money to give back their account. They blackmail and violates children rights by using their videos and picture on different sites.
  • Nasscom v Ajay shood and others [5]:
    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. 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 the 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 "indianbarassociations" 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.

Conclusion:
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.

End-Notes:
  1. Computer viruses, key loggers, spyware ( damages/steal your data)
  2. Locks personal data, demands ransom to unlock
  3. Obtains sensitive information through mail, message or call
  4. AIR 2015 SC 1523
  5. 119 (2005) DLT 596, 2005 (30) PTC 437 Del

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