20 June, 2007 - Even as more and more Bhutanese were becoming computer savvy by the day awareness on cybercrime was very low, according to Bhutan Information and Communications Media Authority officials (BICMA).

Last week media authority officials in collaboration with the department of human resources, labour ministry arranged a presentation on how to detect, prevent and deal with cybercrime.

But what is cybercrime? There is no definite definition to cybercrime. The penal code of Bhutan does not even use the term cybercrime anywhere in section 31 on computer offences but it does list some cyber related issues as penal offences.

Corrupting computer materials and destroying computer datas of another person, gaining access to a computer file or network without authorisation, planting virus in a computer, publishing and distributing an obscene photograph or picture on the computer or over the internet were some of the computer offences under the penal code.

Bhutantimes.com site blocked

The bhutantimes.com site (not related to Bhutantimes newspaper) which was popular for several reasons among most Bhutanese internet users has been blocked recently. One of the reasons for its popularity was that the private website provided quick links to almost all news related to Bhutan and contained a militancy watch. The website also had a forum for discussion where anybody could write just about anything. Frequent visitors of the website also enjoyed the jokes that were posted on the site and few well-written articles. It was an unregulated outlet where a person could do anything and that could have been one of the reasons to block the website. However, some office goers who were curious about the block have already found a way to access the website. “Gaining access to a blocked website was not a difficult thing to do since there are so many ways posted on the internet itself to access a blocked website,” said one of them.

The Thimphu City Police had received only one cybercrime case so far where a Thimphu based tour operator had lodged a complaint against his former partner for hacking into his email account and deleting tourist enquiries. “The first case is still under investigation because the suspect is currently in the United States,” said the police spokesperson.

Raju, a manager of the E-world internet café in Thimphu had experienced damage done to his computer datas but he did not bother to register a case with the police. The government departments and corporations whose websites have been hacked have not bothered to register a case either.

“It is because we know there is a provision for computer offences in the law (Chapter 31 of the penal code and chapter 7 of the Bhutan Information and communications media act) but the law does not help in solving cybercrimes,” said Raju. “It only prescribes punishments of various cybercrimes but we should know how to solve it first.”

One of the police officers said that he knew very little about computers and lacked the training to solve cybercrimes mainly because cybercrime cases were new to the country and the only case brought to the police was not that serious.

BICMA’s Wangay Dorji said that the best way to solve cybercrime was self regulation and protection. “The owner of the website or the computer, the moderator or the webmasters of the websites are responsible to increase security,” he said.

The Kuenselonline website, which gets about 3,000 visitors a day was hacked several times in the past two years. According to the webmaster, the security was tightened after these incidences. Some of the measures taken were monitoring of visitor IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and upgrading of the system.

Raju, the cyber cafe manager added that after his computers got seriously damaged, he reinstalled everything. “I installed a very strong anti-virus, a spyware and restricted on what the customers could do on the computer because it was my responsibility,” he said.

Madan Kumar, owner of another cyber cafe in Thimphu was also taking full responsibility to protect himself from cybercrimes and stopping his customers from committing any cybercrime through his outlet. “I have blocked most websites, for example, websites through which my customers can actually upload adult or obscene content,” he said. “My customers can only access the common websites such as yahoo and hotmail.”

Hacker - The negative sense of the term hacker is used to refer to individuals who use their programming skills to gain unauthorised access to computer systems for the purpose of stealing and corrupting data. (Internet definition: www.webopedia.com)

However, policing Internet is next to impossible, according to Jichen Thinley, the IP infrastructure manager of the internet service provider, Druknet. “But we as a service provider do everything possible to prevent hackers and to protect our clients,” he said. “We actually block hundreds of attempts made to hack our service everyday with increased security but anything can happen.”