Government to bring new laws to combat cyber crimes

The Defence Ministry is set to introduce new laws to stop publishing defamatory posts and comments on social media and also a mechanism for immediate removal of ethnically and religiously sensitive posts that spread hatred via social media networks.

The new legal framework will be introduced under the National Cyber Security Strategy, which will be formulated soon to address emerging cyber crimes issues that pose a threat to the national security.

Defence Secretary Maj. Gen. Kamal Gunaratne has instructed officials of the Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team to finalise drafting the proposed Cyber Security Act, which will establish a comprehensive framework for the prevention and management of cyber security threats and incidents effectively, and protection of critical information infrastructure.

SLCERT officials stated that the draft was handed over to the Legal Draftsman for final legal clarifications.

The crimes includes cyber crimes against individuals such as credit card fraud, revenge, pornography, crimes against property, crimes against hacking and intellectual property theft and cyber crimes against government and other organisations such as cyber terrorism, hacking of websites, processing of unauthorised information and hacking into sensitive financial data.

Maj. Gen. Gunaratne highlighted the importance of introducing the new mechanism to prevent spreading hate speech using popular social media networks.

(Source: News Radio)