CYBERCRIME BILL Allows FG To Spy On Nigerians - Death Sentence For Hackers
A draft law empowering security agents to
intercept, record and seize electronic
communications among individuals has been
crafted by the Federal Government and sent to
the National Assembly.
Dubbed the Cybercrime Bill and submitted to the
National Assembly last week by President
Goodluck Jonathan, the legislation will allow
authorities, particularly during criminal
investigations, to intercept and record personal
emails, text messages, instant messages, voice
mails and multimedia messages, if enacted into
law.
The stiffest penalty for hacking of Critical
National Information Infrastructure, is death
sentence.
However, if the offence does not result in death
but leads to "grievous bodily injury," the offender
shall be liable to imprisonment for a minimum
term of 15 years.
If found guilty of cyber terrorism, the penalty that
awaits an offender is life imprisonment, while
production and distribution of child pornography
fetches at least a 10-year jail term or N20 million
fine for any person convicted.
The bill specifies 10 years in jail, N15million fine
or both for paedophiles.
The bill, whose operations can be invoked without
recourse to issuing of warrants where the need
for "verifiable urgency" is established allows
security agencies to ask telecommunication
companies to conduct surveillance on individuals,
and release user data to authorities.
If, however, there is no urgency, an ex parte order
of a court will suffice before a law enforcement
officer conducts a cybercrime investigation.
Section 22 of the bill,
under the sub-heading: 'Interception of electronic
communications,' provides that: "Where there are
reasonable grounds to suspect that the content of
any electronic communication is reasonably
required for the purposes of a criminal
investigation or proceedings, a judge may on the
basis of information on oath:
"(a) order a service provider, through the
application of technical means to collect, record,
permit or assist competent authorities with the
collection or recording of content data associated
with specified communications transmitted by
means of a computer system; or
"(b) authorise a law enforcement officer to collect
or record such data through application of
technical means."
The bill defines "electronic communication" that
could be intercepted to include "communication in
electronic format, instant messages, short
message service (SMS), e-mail, video, voice mails,
multimedia message service (MMS), fax and
pager."
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