Cybercrime experts eyed

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The National Information and Communications Technology Authority (Nicta) will bring in experts to train police and other stakeholders to pinpoint a device that an offender used to commit a crime under the new cybercrime law.
On Wednesday, Nicta chief executive Charles Punaha, pictured, said experts had to be brought in due to the limited capacity available locally.
He said training will also introduce the latest programmes to law enforcers to help them find offenders.
“They will be able to pinpoint using computers where an offence has been committed and tracing back to the original device.”
Punaha said the training would help law enforcers track the IP (Internet Protocol) address of a device.
“We have already taken steps by establishing the IXP (Internet Exchange Point) which we launched last month,” he said.
“Discussions are underway with overseas content providers like Facebook and Google that they will all be hosting their cache on our local IXPs so it makes it easier for us to manage the abuse that is going on at the moment.
“Currently, if offences are committed and one has to lay a complaint with the police, they have to go and make an application in the United States court because that’s where all the service providers are located.”
Punaha said the courts in the US will then give an order to one of the service providers like Facebook to provide the IP address to identify who the offender is.
He said under the new cybercrime legislation, Nicta only assisted police in its investigations of offences with technical advice.