Kuwaiti official urges double effort against cybercrimes
KUWAIT: Considered one of the most serious crimes of the modern era, cybercrimes require a double effort to be addressed, Deputy Director of Kuwait Institute for Judicial and Legal Studies Dr Fahad Abu Sulaib said. This came in a speech delivered by Abu Sulaib yesterday at the opening of the institute’s four-day workshop entitled ‘Investigations and Trials of Internet Crimes,’ in cooperation with the Public Prosecution and the US Embassy in the country. This workshop is important specially from the international point of view, which is witnessing a profound transformation in various regions of the world, mainly in international concern
about increasing cyber security and the changes imposed on daily life of citizens and their repercussions, he said.
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Kuwait Lawrence Silverman said in his speech, “enhancing cyber security cooperation is not only a priority of your government, but of the US Embassy. We see cooperation in cyber security to be a real growth area for our bilateral collaboration to make our peoples more secure.
“The cyber world is one that consistently creates investigative challenges, both by virtue of its rapid development and because it is expansive field, upon which malign influences can operate, he added. “Social media platforms provide unprecedented opportunities for the free exchange of ideas,” he said, but many users do not understand that the platforms allow malicious actors to deceive them by launching vast influence operations, and this no doubt, creates many crimes and victims.
“Your role is critical because malicious use of technology cannot be deterred without having a credible capacity to impose punishment for committing fraud, hacking into information systems, stealing data, and disabling computer systems,” Silverman confirmed. It is impossible to employ criminal enforcement tools without first identifying the perpetrators, whether they are ordinary criminals, transnational organized criminal organizations, or those acting on behalf and at the direction of hostile governments who choose to engage in criminal activity, he said.
This phenomenon is not anecdotal. Recently the US Department of Justice prosecuted an individual who had been radicalized online and used social media to recruit and train others to plan and carry out attacks against the United States in the name of IS. This workshop provides an opportunity to share experiences with these challenges and provide some insight into overcoming the impediments of complex cyber investigations, he added. “To defeat malicious actors we must collaborate, we must share information and we must educate ourselves to be better equipped to address the national security threats posed to each of our countries by these criminal elements,” he said.