Online Information Security & Cybercrimes
In the light of serving the community through enhancing the legal culture, a session on online information security and cyber space was facilitated by Dr. Mohamed El Gendy, expert in cybercrimes onn the 19th of March 2017.
Dr. Mohamed shared with the audience the evolution of the internet technology through the years and its transformation from bare science fiction into real time actualities.
The guest speaker mentioned that it was not until 1948 that a writer of science fiction novels created the term cybernetics when describing events, at the time, seemed to be more related to fiction than it is to reality. It was also clarified that cyber in itself means the one that is in control of things.
In 1970, Alvin Toffler, the father of information, wrote a science fiction book entitled the “future shock”. In this book, he discussed the future influence of the technology and predicted that there will be a revolution of technology.
However, the guest speaker clarified that Although Alvin saw that people will be shocked from the evolution of technology, Another writer “John Brunner” wrote in 1975 a book entitled “The shockwave rider” which states that although there will be a revolution in technology, some people will be able to ride the wave and adapt with the situation and get use of it.”
The term itself “Cyber Space” was first used in 1982 by the Canadian “william Gibson” in his book the necromancer. He has also defined it as “consensual hallucination”
This evolution in science fiction novels gave basic to start the industry of science fiction movies. From cyber space novels to science fiction films, to the actual usage and dependence on internet and having it connected with almost everything, the guest speaker shared statistics of number of users of internet and devices connected to it and its influence on economies of states in the so entitled “The digital economy”.
Dr. Mohamed after introducing in the above mentioned way to the audience, he started to demonstrate the link of such crimes with the different types of crimes. He has specified the scope of his presentation to actual cases and crimes which have occurred in the Middle East and more specifically in Egypt.
As per the guest speaker, the lack of culture and awareness in the Middle East, renders it one of the most fertile fields for cybercrimes. He referred to the simple user of the internet could easily upload personal information to any social media platform without paying much attention to the consequences of such acts.
The speaker discussed an actual case figuring Egyptian young men and women who stole through electronic data from an American bank and who was not sanctioned because of the legislative vacuum in Egypt. To conclude, the quest speaker clarified the issues confronted by the majority of states around the world and preventing them from sanctioning cybercrimes effectively.
One of the most remarkable problems is that the nature of these crimes is transnational. Accordingly, the minimum that states could do is to adopt some sort of common legislation criminalizing it and defining it clearly. The dean of the faculty of law attended the seminar as well as the academic staff. Students from the faculty of law and computer science were present and intervened by some very active questions before the end of the session.
