Just yesterday, we came across a very interesting piece of news regarding cyber crime. To deal with increasing cyber crimes, the Centre has decided to set up a mechanism under which people can file a complaint online for such crimes, without having to physically go to a police station. The Centre in its affidavit said that ‘Centre citizen portal’ is being designed and any cyber crime complaint can be registered on the portal.
“The portal shall facilitate online reporting of any crime by the citizen. The complainant could be the affected person himself or a good samaritan who wants to inform an observed crime to the police. The service will be particularly beneficial to the women, senior citizens or other minorities by providing them a convenient way to report the crime from confines of their home or any cyber kiosk,” the affidavit said. “Each complaint shall trigger an alert to the Police Station / SP office or the state level office for police to take action on it. The police department in turn will be able to view and act on it and have the provision to update the complaint status as it progresses. The citizen will receive the status update alert on his shared mobile no,” it said.
Additionally, the Centre that it had decided to set up Cyber Crime Coordination Centre(NCCC) to exclusively handle cyber crimes and national security issues in co-ordination with other agencies.
As per a news article published in September 2016, in the three years up to 2013, registered cases of cyber crime were up 350%, from 966 to 4,356, according to statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). As cyber crime rises, there are indications that the criminal-justice system is unable to cope, with a minuscule percentage of convictions reported, although there is no reliable, nationwide data.
Cyber crime is a very serious issue, and the number of people affected negatively by cyber crime is increasing exponentially. At Centre for Social Research, we have been closely working with Facebook (via our project #SocialSurfing) and Twitter (via #TweeSurfing), in reaching out to the youth across our country, to promote counter speech, and make them aware of safe online behavior. We talk about privacy settings, cyber crimes, sharing information cautiously, counterspeech to tackle trolling and verbal abuse, and using social media for the benefit of oneself and society.
Starting 25th November, as part of United Nations’ 16 Days of Activism for womens’ rights, we at CSR have begun our own campaign #SochKeBol, aimed at creating awareness regarding cyber crimes and online safety. Thus, we are extremely excited about this new move of the government, as we believe that cyber crime is an issue which needs more attention, preventive and remedial action than is currently given.
You can participate in our #सोचकेबोल campaign here – attractive prizes to be won!
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