DEAR EDITOR, cybercrime is a term we don’t hear often, if at all in the Solomon Islands although we see it happening around us.
The reason why we don’t hear about this kind of crime is because there are currently no laws at all in the Solomon Islands to specifically deal with the issue of cybercrime.
I strongly suggest that the legislature make laws to deal with cybercrimes.
But firstly, what is cybercrime?
A cybercrime is a crime committed using the internet, for example, infecting a computer with a virus or stealing somebody’s personal details through the internet.
One of the most common types of cybercrime in the Solomon Islands is online harassment. Examples of online harassment are impersonation or revenge porn.
Impersonation is when somebody, on a social media platform, creates an account and pretends to be another person.
While this may seem harmless, it can cause a lot of conflicts for example, a person using a fake account can use it to spread rumors and lies about the actual person, creating lots of conflict for the real person and can even lead to harm.
The second type of online harassment is revenge porn and to explain it, we shall use a scenario. Imagine a couple who are in a relationship, and at one point, one of the two people, say for example, the girl, sends intimate and nude, semi-nude photos of herself to the boyfriend.
But then it so happens that they break up and out of anger, the boyfriend posts the photos of the girl online.
This type of scenario seems to be a common occurrence in Solomon Islands these days. If you go on the social media platforms, you will most certainly find photos posted by groups and pages made by Solomon Islanders containing such photos.
Although these photos are blurred out most times, we can clearly see what is going on in these photos and the faces of these people are exposed and are not blurred out at all.
Is this not wrong? Shouldn’t there be laws to protect the victims and convict the perpetrators?
I strongly insist that there should be such laws.
The legislature should create laws and protect its citizens against such crimes and actions.
Yours sincerely,
Francis Peter Waleanisia
