Why India needs to go extra mile to fight cyber crime

New Delhi, Feb 9: With threats emerging online and Intelligence Bureau officials terming it as serious, India will need to go that extra mile to counter this problem which has been described as a bloodless war.

When it comes to fighting cyber crime, India has learnt the hard way and with enemies such as Pakistan and China who hit India on the cyber space regularly, it is now time to take the fight back to another level.

A few days back Union Minister for Communications and IT announced that India is in talks with several countries including the United States of America for cooperation. If this cooperation materialises, then it would be a shot in the arm for India.

The bloodless war:

Investigators have constantly complained about the lack of cooperation from US based companies. Letters have written to service providers such as Google several years back/ However India has constantly complained about these companies never responding.

In addition to the cooperation with other countries India would also need to increase its strength back home. 23 dedicated cyber crime cells in such a big country is not sufficient by any standards.

Looking at the cyber crime graph, India would need at least 200 such cells.Further several police officials need to be trained to counter this problem. If more cells are introduced and India does manage to strike deals with other countries, then the fight against cyber crime is bound to get better and stronger.

Cooperation with US could help increase conviction rate:

There have been several cases which have been stuck in a loop. Take for instance the recent case of Mehdi Masroor Biswas, the alleged ISIS fan boy. The Bengaluru police are virtually fighting a dead case today as information relating to his mails have not been provided by a US based company despite them being requested over an year back.

Such incidents in India are not rare. Thanks to the lack cooperation the conviction rate is meagre. Out of the 9,600 cases of cyber crime registered in 2014, so far the police and prosecution have managed to obtain just 72 convictions. This is a very poor ratio and if the conviction rate is this low, it encourages persons to commit more crimes.

There are various issues attached to the poor rate of conviction. Lack of evidence is one such major issue. The problem
begins when the cyber criminal is abroad. Although there is an extradition clause for cyber criminals, it hardly ever happens.

Further foreign countries have not been cooperative.

OneIndia News