Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "The magnitude of the problems we face is such that it is sometimes hard to imagine how any effort can be enough to confront them. But to quote Nelson Mandela, 'It always seems impossible until it is done'. We must keep working together, until it is done" – Yury Fedotov. Credit: Courtesy of UNODC

By Yury Fedotov
VIENNA, May 27 2015 (IPS)

With terrorism, migrant smuggling and trafficking in cultural property some of the world’s most daunting challenges, “the magnitude of the problems we face is such that it is sometimes hard to imagine how any effort can be enough to confront them. But to quote Nelson Mandela, ‘It always seems impossible until it is done’. We must keep working together, until it is done.”

The words are those of U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Yury Fedotov, who was speaking at the closing of the 24th Session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (Crime Commission) held in the Austrian capital from May 18-22.

Earlier this month, IPS Editor-in-Chief Ramesh Jaura interviewed Fedotov on how the challenges facing the United Nations’ drugs and crime agency translate into challenges on the sustainable development front.“The share of citizens experiencing bribery at least once in a year is over 50 percent in some low-income countries. Many detected human trafficking movements are directed from poor areas to more affluent ones. Research also suggests that weak rule of law is connected to lower levels of economic development” – UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov

Q. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), established in 1997, understands itself as “a global leader in the fight against illicit drugs and international crime”. At the same time, you have taken up the cudgels on behalf of sustainable development. What role does the UNODC envisage for itself in achieving sustainable development goals to be agreed at the U.N. summit to adopt the post-2015 development agenda in September?

A. Crime steals from countries, families and communities and hampers development while exacerbating inequality and violence, especially in vulnerable countries. Trafficking in diamonds and precious metals, for instance, diverts resources from countries that desperately need the income.

The share of citizens experiencing bribery at least once in a year is over 50 percent in some low-income countries. Many detected human trafficking movements are directed from poor areas to more affluent ones. Research also suggests that weak rule of law is connected to lower levels of economic development. These are just some of the many challenges that the international community faces around the world that are related to crime.

UNODC’s broad mandate includes stopping human traffickers and migrant smugglers, as well as tackling illicit drugs. It encompasses promoting health and alternative livelihoods and involves battling corruption, illicit financial flows, money laundering and terrorist financing. Our work confronts emerging and re-emerging crimes, including wildlife and forest crime, and cybercrime, among others, all of which hinder sustainable development.

Currently the United Nations is making the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In Goal 16, the Open Working Group, responsible for identifying the development goals stressed the need to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, and to provide access to justice for all, as well as building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions. Justice is also one of the six essential elements identified by the Secretary-General in his own Synthesis Report on this subject.

Goal 3, which focuses on “ensuring healthy lives”, underlines the importance of strengthening prevention and treatment of substance abuse. These goals – justice and health – go to the very heart of UNODC’s mission. I am hopeful that when the U.N. Heads of State Summit on Sustainable Development in September 2015 takes place these goals will remain.

Q. UNODC organised its Thirteenth Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice from Apr. 12 to 19 in Doha, Qatar. The 13-page Doha Declaration contains recommendations on how the rule of law can protect and promote sustainable development. Is that the reason that you described Doha as a “point of departure”?

A. The Doha Declaration was passed by acclamation at the 13th Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, and contains crucial recommendations on how the rule of law can protect and promote sustainable development. The declaration is driven by the principle that these issues are mutually reinforcing and that crime prevention and criminal justice should be integrated into the wider U.N. system.

At the 24th Session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (May 18-22), there were nine resolutions before the Commission and they pave the way for the Doha Declaration to go before the U.N. General Assembly and ECOSOC for approval. The other resolutions, for instance on cultural property and standard rules on the treatment of prisoners, seek to implement the principles of the Doha Declaration.

It is for this reason that I described the 13th Crime Congress in Doha as a significant “point of departure”. Doha is the first, but not the last step in the process of implementing the Declaration and ensuring that we turn fine words into spirited and dedicated action in the areas of crime prevention and criminal justice – action that can benefit the millions of victims of crime, illicit drugs, corruption and terrorism.

If we do this, we have an opportunity to energise the 60-year legacy of Crime Congresses and give it the power to shape how we tackle crime and promote development for many years to come. Indeed, I see a strong, visible thread between the recent Crime Congress, September’s UN Summit on Sustainable Development and the 14^th Crime Congress in Japan in five years’ time.

Q. The Doha Declaration also pleads for integrating crime prevention and criminal justice into the wider United Nations agenda. This suggestion comes at a point in time when the United Nations is turning 70. Are there some issues which the United Nations has ignored until now or is there a range of issues that have emerged over previous decades?

A. Member States are increasingly affected by organised crime, corruption, violence and terrorism. These challenges undercut good governance and the rule of law, threatening security, development and people’s lives.

Sustainable development can be safeguarded through fair, human and effective crime prevention and criminal justice systems as a central component of the rule of law. As stated by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “There is no peace without development; there is no development without peace; and there is no lasting peace and sustainable development without respect for human rights.”  We need to break down the walls between these activities and integrate the various approaches.

UNODC is well placed to assist. We work closely with regional entities, partner countries, multilateral and bilateral bodies, civil society, academia and the private sector to support the work on development. We can also offer our support at the global, regional, and local levels, through our headquarters and network of field offices.

Q. Do you find willingness on the part of all countries around the world to agree on national, regional and international legal instruments, to combat all forms of crime, and their willingness to pull on the same string when it comes to implementation?

A. Our work is founded on the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organised Crime and its three protocols, the Convention against Corruption, international drug control conventions, universal legal instruments against terrorism and U.N. standards and norms on crime prevention and criminal justice.

Almost all of these international instruments have been universally ratified by the international community. Why? Because countries recognise that crime today is too big, too powerful, too profitable for any one country to handle alone. Countries recognise that, today, crime not only crosses country borders, but regional borders. It is a global problem that warrants comprehensive, integrated global solutions.

The UNODC approach to this unique challenge is threefold. First, we are building political commitment among Member States. Second, we deliver our activities through our integrated regional programmes across the world. Third, we are working with partners, both within and outside the United Nations, to ensure that our delivery is strongly connected to other activities at the field level.

In support of this action, and to give just one example, UNODC is networking the networks. Today’s criminals have widespread networks and vast resources; if we are to successfully confront them, we need to ensure greater cross-border cooperation, information sharing and tracking of criminal proceeds.  The initiative is part of an interregional drug control approach developed by UNODC to stem illicit drug trafficking from Afghanistan and focuses on promoting closer cooperation between existing law enforcement coordination centres and platforms.

Q. UNODC has assigned itself a wide range of tasks. Which are your priorities in the biennium ending this year, during which you have 760.1 million dollars at your disposal?

A. I would mention two matters that are of international importance. First, smuggling of migrants not just in the Mediterranean or the Andaman seas, but also elsewhere. We are witnessing unprecedented movements of people across the globe, the largest since the Second World War. People are leaving because of conflict, insecurity and the desire for a better life. They are falling into the arms of unscrupulous smugglers and many of them are dying, while trying to make the dangerous journey across deserts and seas.

Second, the nexus of transnational organised crime and terrorism is a major threat to global peace and security, and has been recognised as such in recent Security Council resolutions. Every extremist and terrorist group requires sustainable funding. The most reliable, and sometimes the only, means of achieving this is through illicit funds gained from transnational organised crime, including cybercrime, drug trafficking, people smuggling and many other crimes.

Information on the magnitude and exact nature of such relationships remains incomplete, and more research is needed. Based on data and analysis, however, for some regions, we can follow the funding in support of violent extremism and terrorism. In Afghanistan, for example, the Taliban could be receiving as much as 200 million dollars annually as a tax on the drug lords.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Excerpt:

Drug transactions are usually conducted using the online peer-to-peer currency bitcoin, which remains in escrow until it is transferred to the seller after the product is delivered. Credit: BTC keychain/cc by 2.0

By Chau Ngo
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 3 2014 (IPS)

In its two years of operation, the online marketplace Silk Road raked in 1.2 billion dollars in revenue and amassed an estimated 200,000 registered users – a success story that would be any start-up’s dream.

But the site was shut down by the FBI last October amid charges that it was essentially the Amazon.com of illegal drugs, shedding light on the increasing sophistication of a cyber drug trade that offers both buyers and dealers high-tech anonymity.“The new markets that have replaced Silk Road can now encrypt all communications and use advanced techniques to launder the bitcoins used in transactions." -- Prof. David Hetu

In its World Drug Report 2014 released last week, the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) warns that illicit online drug sales will pose unique challenges for law enforcement.

“The online marketplace for illicit drugs is becoming larger and more brazen,” it said. “If the past trend continues, it has the potential to become a popular mode of trafficking in controlled substances in years to come.”

The growth of online drug dealing has gone hand in hand with advancements in technology. The UNODC’s review of global drug seizure data shows that cannabis seizures obtained through the postal service rose 300 percent in the decade from 2000 to 2011.

The majority of the reported seizures came from Europe and the Americas, with high-quality drugs and new psychoactive substances, according to the report.

Governments’ efforts to curb this crime brought down a number of networks last year, with Silk Road being the most prominent case so far. The United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested the website’s owner, Ross Ulbricht, a 29-year-old physics graduate, and seized bitcoins worth 33.6 million dollars at the time of the capture.

Silk Road was for some time the most sophisticated and extensive marketplace on the Internet, where dealers sell illegal goods and services, including illicit drugs of almost every variety, the FBI said.

So far the value of cyberspace drug trafficking is still marginal in comparison with the overall drug trade, which is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, according to David Hetu, assistant professor of criminology at the University of Montreal, who specialises in cybercrime. But the upward trend is troubling.

“We are seeing an exponential growth of virtual drug markets,” he told IPS. “What we have seen is a lot of markets with a heavy focus on drugs and prescription drugs.”  

There are some 200,000 drug-related deaths worldwide every year, and 39 million people had drug disorders or dependence in 2012, according to the U.N. Despite a stabilisation of drug use around the world, illicit opium production still rose to a record level last year, with Afghanistan continuing to be the world’s largest producer.

Taking advantage of high tech

Online drug trading has existed since the early days of the Internet. However, its sophistication has only accelerated recently, experts say. Technology has enabled online dealers to offer goods and services, and make transactions anonymously.

“Two distinct technologies that have emerged in the past decade – anonymous networks such as Tor, and pseudonymous payments systems such as Bitcoin – have made it possible to create online anonymous markets which provide reasonably good anonymity guarantees,” Nicolas Christin, assistant research professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told IPS.

“This is the most important development in online drug dealing in the past three years.”

In his research paper “Traveling the ‘Silk Road’: a measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace,” Christin noted that the top three items for sale on this website were “weed”, “drugs” and “prescriptions”.

Introduced in 2009 as a virtual currency, the bitcoin has no physical existence. Operating on an electronic system built on the peer-to-peer network where users are directly connected instead of going through the central servers in the traditional system, transactions in bitcoins are almost untraceable and anonymous.

Despite not being recognised by any central bank or government, the bitcoin is widely seen as not being illegal. People can buy anything from from pizzas to houses with bitcoins, as long as the sellers accept it.

Tor, or The Onion Router, is software that enables data to transmit globally almost untraceably. It allows users to connect to another location in the network while keeping their Internet Protocol address invisible – known as the Dark Net.

Because of the technical issues, buying drugs online is more complicated than in the streets, said David Hetu. However, it is not too difficult for those who seek to circumvent law enforcement. All that a buyer needs to do is to buy bitcoins online, install Tor, choose to buy drugs from the listings and have it delivered at home through the postal service.

For dealers, drug trafficking has become easier with technology. After Road Silk was taken down by the FBI last year, new markets emerged just within days.

“The new markets that have replaced Silk Road can now encrypt all communications and use advanced techniques to launder the bitcoins used in transactions,” Hetu said.

“This makes it much more difficult for law enforcement to trace buyers and vendors.”

International cooperation

There is no reliable data on how many people are buying drugs online, but the types of drugs being sold are multiplying, according to the UNODC.

Before its shutdown, Silk Road was the marketplace for a vast majority of illegal drugs, with nearly 13,000 listings of controlled drugs, the FBI said. Despite the anonymity of transactions, the FBI said dealers might be located in more than 10 countries, stretching from North America to Europe.

Cyberspace drug dealing is particularly challenging, as offenders can easily and quickly adapt their practices to avoid risks posed by law enforcement, Thomas Holt, an assistant professor at Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice, told IPS.

Holt, whose research focuses on cybercrime and identity theft, said that law enforcement agencies need to engage in undercover operations to understand the practices of buyers and sellers within the market.

“International cooperation is essential to these efforts as the buyers and sellers may be half a world away from one another,” he said.

“Incorporating postal inspectors, customs agents, and other agencies is vital to ensure that points in the supply chain could be more effectively cut off and make it more difficult for buyers to obtain products.”

Map showing the NSA’s collection of intelligence from computer networks around the world. The colour scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance). Credit: Creative Commons

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 1 2014 (IPS)

A lack of controls, regulation and transparency marks the monitoring and surveillance of electronic communication in Mexico, one year after the revelations of cyberespionage shook the world.

This Latin American country of 118 million people was one of the targets of the massive illegal cyberespionage practiced by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). But no substantial changes have been made in response, to prevent further interception.

“There is no legislation on surveillance and intervention, no good practices for companies,” Jesús Robles, with the non-governmental organisation Propuesta Cívica, told IPS. “There is a legal vacuum. They could be gathering metadata.”

Metadata is information that describes other information – data generated as people use technology, such as the date and time of a phone call, the location where someone last accessed their email, who sent or received an email, or where someone made a phone call and how long it lasted.

The British newspaper The Guardian reported on Jun. 5, 2013 that the NSA had been collecting the telephone metadata of the customers of Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile phone provider, both within and outside the United States.

It was just the first of a series of leaks to the press about the secret operations of the agency, made by Edward Snowden, a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contractor, now hiding under guard in Russia, which granted him political asylum.

The NSA used the PRISM internet surveillance programme to spy on a number of countries, including Mexico, in areas like anti-drug efforts, energy and security.

And with BLARNEY, the international version of the PRISM programme, the United States intercepted the communications of several embassies in Washington, including Mexico’s. Using another tool, Boundless Informant, it illegally intercepted phone calls and email that passed through U.S. telecoms networks.

On Sep. 1, 2013, U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed that in 2012 the NSA had spied on the email of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, in the latter case during his presidential campaign.

The United States has ignored Mexico’s protests, including a diplomatic note demanding an investigation and a condemnation by Congress.

Greenwald’s online U.S. publication The Intercept reported on May 19 that a surveillance programme, Mystic, collects metadata on the nearly 100 million cell phones operating in Mexico.

“Not much has been done,” Cédric Laurant, one of the four founders of the Mexican non-governmental group Son Tus Datos (It’s Your Information), dedicated since 2012 to advocating the protection of privacy in communications, told IPS. “If the public knew more, they could pressure local and foreign businesses to exert more pressure on the government.”

Mexico also acquired computer programmes to record voices and track phone calls, emails, chat conversations, visited website addresses and social networks.

Since 2010, Mexico’s Federal Law for the Protection of Personal Information Data guarantees the right to privacy and establishes that, if an institution wants to transfer information to third parties at home or abroad, it must give the owners of the information notice and explain the purpose for which it was authorised.

But the law’s guarantees were undermined when a Law on Geolocalisation entered into force in 2012. This legislation allows the government to gather, without notification and in real time, geographic data from cell-phone users.

Furthermore, the new national penal procedures code in effect since March allows the authorities to access real-time geo-location data without a court order.

In March 2013, the interdisciplinary Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto in Canada
reported that FinFisher surveillance software command and control servers, made by the U.K.-based company Gamma Group, were hosted on two Mexican Internet service providers: Iusacell, a small provider; and UniNet, one of the largest in Mexico, a subsidiary of Teléfonos Mexicanos (Telmex).

After this was discovered, Propuesta Cívica and the digital rights collective ContingenteMX asked the Federal Institute for Access to Information and Data Protection (IFAI) to investigate the Obses company for the use of the programme.

In March IFAI approved sanctions against Obses for selling FinFisher to the government at more than double the market rate. Obses is a Mexican firm that has received dozens of no-bid governmental projects.

On May 12 a British court ruled that UK Revenue & Customs acted unlawfully in refusing to disclose information on the status of an investigation into the export of British Gamma International’s FinFisher surveillance technology, paving the way for a review of the programme’s sales abroad.

In February, Citizen Lab produced two reports on the use of spy programmes. In one of them, “Mapping Hacking Team’s ‘Untraceable’ Spyware”, it reported that agencies in 21 countries used or use the Remote Control System (RCS), sophisticated computer spyware marketed and sold exclusively to governments by the Milan-based Hacking Team, including Mexico, Colombia and Panama.

The RCS can copy files from a computer’s hard disk, record Skype calls, emails, instant messages, and passwords, and turn on a device’s webcam and microphone to spy on a target.

Citizen Lab reported that it mapped out “covert networks of ‘proxy servers’ used to launder data that RCS exfiltrates from infected computers, through third countries, to an ‘endpoint,’ which we believe represents the spyware’s government operator. This process is designed to obscure the identity of the government conducting the spying.

“For example, data destined for an endpoint in Mexico appears to be routed through four different proxies, each in a different country.”

And in another article, “Hacking Team’s U.S. Nexus”, Citizen Lab said that in at least 12 cases, U.S.-based data centres are part of a “dedicated foreign espionage infrastructure.”

Citizen Lab states that in tracing these “proxy chains,” it found that U.S.-based servers appeared to assist the governments of 10 countries, including Mexico and Colombia, in espionage and/or law enforcement operations.

Citizen Lab found 14 IP addresses, 12 of which are apparently still active.

Mexico’s legislation does not require telecommunications companies to reveal government requests about the activities of Internet users.

“The action taken has not proven to be effective; rights are violated,” Robles said.

“Awareness-raising is needed among users so that a larger number of them exercise mass pressure on companies, in order for users to take privacy into their own hands, using new tools that are available,” Laurant said.

A teenage girl surfs the internet at a resource centre in Nairobi. But cyber crime and bullying against Kenyan women is on the rise. Credit: David Njagi/IPS

By David Njagi
NAIROBI, Jan 30 2014 (IPS)

For a seasoned politician like Kenya’s Rachael Shebesh, few things hold her back from rallying for women’s rights. But when it comes to furthering her platform on social media – it is the one thing that this Nairobi County women’s representative avoids.

Like all women hooked on technology here, this hardliner politician has not been spared the muck of cyber bullying.

She has endured demeaning attacks suggesting that she is a feminist “not fit for leadership” and also comments full of sexual innuendo on social media sites.Kenya’s office of the Director of Public Prosecutions acknowledges that women who are victims of cyber crime and bullying very rarely report the crime.

“Cyber crime [and bullying] is targeting everybody. I am a politician and I know we get targeted and that is why I keep off social media,” Shebesh tells IPS.

According to the Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet), a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation, cyber crime and bullying against Kenyan women is on the rise.

The organisation says that this involves incidents of cyber stalking, sexual harassment, persistent abusive mobile messages, sex trafficking and humiliating comments that reinforce gender stereotypes.

There have also been cases of professional sabotage, identity theft and incidents where intimate photos and videos have been used to blackmail women.

“They seem to go hand-in-hand with women and girls’ lack of knowledge of the risks and the extent of the damage that they continue to sustain through cyber crime,” says a KICTANet report released in June 2013 titled, “Women and Cybercrime: the Dark Side of ICTs”.

This East African nation lacks legislation to police cyber crime. Last year, the Business Daily Africa reported that the country’s cyber security remained one of the weakest in the world and that experts were able to “intercept [mobile phone] voice traffic and obtain temporary secret keys for some subscribers, revealing the high level exposure.”

Currently, Kenya’s laws are unable to effectively prosecute cyber crime and online hate speech. This is why the Kenya Internet Governance Forum Steering Committee (KIGFSC) is now pushing for the draft Cyber-Crime and Computer Related Offences Bill 2014 to be signed into law. The draft will only be presented to parliament in March.

KIGFSC chairperson, Alice Munyua, tells IPS that the legislation is expected to protect all Kenyans, but there is a need to specifically protect women from cyber attacks.

“Cyber crime affects women differently,” argues Munyua. “The cyber security bill should have a few clauses that deal specifically with how cyber crime affects women.”

However, not everyone is convinced that Kenya can deliver on this legislation. The Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), the agency charged with drafting the bill, refuses to share details of the legislation with the public.

And the International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IAWRT) believes that Kenya should first engage in finalising the African Union Convention on Cyber Security, which covers issues of e-transaction, cyber security, personal data protection and combating cyber crime.

According to IAWRT, once African countries become signatories to the convention, they will be bound by international law to have their own legislation in place.

“The convention is expected to serve as a blueprint and guide countries to develop cyber security legislations,” Grace Githaiga, IAWRT vice-chairperson, tells IPS.

Githaiga says that the convention was originally meant to have been signed this month, but the process was postponed until June because of Kenya’s involvement with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto have been charged by the ICC for crimes against humanity, which occurred during the country’s disputed 2007 elections. Ruto is already on trial while Kenyatta’s case has been postponed.

However, the Kenya Police Service insists that cyber violence against women is classified as a serious crime.

“Officers have been trained on cyber investigation at the Criminal Investigation Department and are well equipped to handle such cases,” Marcela Wanjiru Andaje, the superintendent of police in charge of community policing, gender and child protection, tells IPS.

However, Kenya’s office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) acknowledges that  women who are victims of cyber crime and bullying very rarely report the crime. The DPP receives more cases of child pornography than ones of cyber crime and intimidation against women.

But Shebesh believes that government agencies like the CCK and the Kenya Police Service can easily contain this emerging crime.

But, she says, the process of seeking justice is too lengthy for anyone’s comfort.

“Today, if you want to catch someone who has abused you through social media you can. But you have to go through a process that is too taxing for the ordinary Kenyan and so they normally leave it,” says Shebesh.

Critics say Peru's new law on cybercrime is vaguely worded and threatens access to information. Credit: Public domain

By Milagros Salazar
LIMA, Nov 27 2013 (IPS)

A new law against cybercrime that restricts the use of data and freedom of information in Peru clashes with earlier legislation, on transparency, which represented a major stride forward in citizen rights.

The advances made in the law on transparency and access to public information have been undermined by the hastily passed law on computer crimes, which restricts and penalises the use of online databases, according to experts consulted by IPS.

The new law was put into effect to crack down on cybercrimes, including sexual harassment of minors. But civil society organisations complain that elements attacking the right to information were incorporated without debate or public input.

The Defensoría del Pueblo or ombudsman’s office says the transparency law, which entered into force in 2002, has a few shortcomings, but is important because of the creation and use of government databases – which would be hindered, however, by the law on cybercrime.

The transparency law was passed with the aim of making government more transparent, to comply with the 1993 constitution, which guaranteed the right of people to request and obtain public information, and established the right of habeas data, under which any government official or civil servant who denies that right can be sued.

Since then, the Defensoría del Pueblo has received 6,714 complaints about requests for public information that did not receive a satisfactory response from the authorities, according to a report to be published in the first week of December, to which IPS had access.

Based on those complaints, the assistant ombudsman on constitutional affairs, Fernando Castañeda, told IPS that his office identified and interviewed 122 public employees responsible for turning over the information, to find out why the requests had not been met.

The main conclusion reached by his office was that an independent authority was needed to monitor and oversee responses to information requests, because civil servants are limited by the orders of their superiors, and in some cases have been punished when they provide information to members of the public.

And things do not get any better when citizens take legal action to complain about the lack of response to their requests for information, especially in rural areas.

Between January 2007 and March 2013, 841 habeas data actions were handled in the justice system, where cases can take up to a year in the first instance court, another year in the second instance court and two more in the Constitutional Court, Castañeda pointed out.

In other words, a four-year journey to try to obtain public information that has been denied.

The official said that the most significant aspect of the law was the creation of tools to facilitate citizens’ access to information, with websites and open access to databases, under the concept of open data.

However, that access will be directly restricted by the new law on computer crimes, which was given fast-track treatment in Congress and signed into law a few weeks later, on Oct. 22, by President Ollanta Humala.

Protests by experts and civil society groups forced Justice Minister Daniel Figallo to state on Nov. 13 that he would study proposed reforms to the law. “We will revise some articles of the law,” he said.

But Figallo defended the legislation, saying the aim was to fight data interference or interception rather than the dissemination of information. His ministry argues that Peru is thus accepting the guidelines of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime, the first international treaty of its kind, which since 2001 has provided global guidelines for the adoption of laws against computer crimes.

The president of the congressional justice commission, Juan Carlos Eguren, also said he was open to suggestions.

The law creates a three- to six-year sentence for people found guilty of capturing computer information from a public institution, to find out, for example, what is spent on social programmes and to complement that with the introduction of new data or alteration to analyse the information, lawyer Roberto Pereira of the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) told IPS.

That is based on article three of the law, which penalises those who use computer technologies to “introduce, delete, deteriorate, alter or suppress data, or render data inaccessible.”

The law also establishes a three- to five-year sentence for creating a database on an identified or identifiable subject to provide information on any aspect of his or her personal, family, financial or labour life, whether or not it causes harm.

A common practice by journalists is to create databases on companies that are subcontractors for the state, in order to monitor public spending. But under the new law, doing that would automatically make them “cyber criminals,” Pereira explained.

The IPYS stated in a communiqué that the law poses “a serious threat to the freedom of journalistic information, and to research and investigation in general.” The majority of the local media, regardless of their ideological bent, agree with that criticism.

The law on cybercrime could “end up criminalising legal behaviour in cyberspace,” said Pereira.

It also creates “an unacceptable framework of discretionality in its application,” because of the broad, ambiguous criteria it contains, and ends up undermining other basic rights, he said.

There has been a great deal of speculation in Peru on what lay behind the passage of the controversial law.

Pereira cited three explanations: the legislators’ ignorance about cyberspace; the interest on the part of some public figures in criminalising digital freedom and thus blocking investigations of corruption; “and the genuine interest of sectors of the government in improving penal legislation on cybercrime.”

The non-governmental organisation Hiperderecho, which defends digital rights, noted in a communiqué that Congress passed the law “in less than five hours, with their backs turned to the public.”

The organisation criticised the fact that on Sept. 12, Congress suddenly began to debate a bill that had just been introduced by the government, without incorporating in the discussion a long-debated justice commission ruling on another cybercrime bill.

The executive branch presented its bill after a telephone conversation by Defence Minister Pedro Cateriano was made public, and after progress was made towards a common regional code against cybercrime during a technical level meeting of experts of the Ibero-American Conference of Justice Ministers (COMJIB), held in Lima in June.

Miguel Morachimo, a representative of Hiperderecho, admitted to IPS that it was reasonable for the government to fight cybercrime. But he said that when the bill was debated in Congress, “it was completely overhauled.”

In his view, the government was pressured by COMJIB and the banking association – which is worried about card cloning – and ended up acting in haste as a result.

The Defensoría del Pueblo’s office on constitutional affairs has not yet taken a stance on the details of the new law, said Castañeda. But it did acknowledge that it runs counter to some objectives of the transparency law.

Hiperderecho has sent suggestions to Congress for improving the law on cybercrime. Meanwhile, what one law defends, the other blocks.