-
by pltm
(PLTM) - The Bill that seeks to amend the Computer Misuse and Cybercrime Act to address the recurrent issue of leaked videos, featuring known persons in compromising positions, is heading to the House of Assembly for its first reading.
The Bill entitled Computer Misuse and Cybercrime (Amendment) Act, 2019 was considered by Cabinet during the meeting that was held on July 2, and the Ministers of Government decided that it be would be introduced in the House of Assembly for its first reading at the next convenient sitting.
The fact that the Bill was headed to Cabinet then the House of Assembly was announced by Premier Hon Andrew Fahie in May this year, as he lamented the situation of unsavory videos being circulated from person to person via social media platforms such as Whatsapp, causing great embarrassment to the persons involved.
The Premier, who was at the time a guest on the Honestly Speaking with Claude Skelton-Cline radio programme, announced that he is keen on seeing the amendment advance and the matter dealt with via legislation.
The Territory already has the Computer Misuse & Cybercrime Act on the books and Hon. Fahie announced during the Honestly Speaking broadcast, “We are looking at cybercrime legislation, how to tighten that.”
Hon. Fahie in stressing that the amendment is needed, noted that some of the leaked videos feature minors and young adults, and this he said is of particular concern to Government.
“We heard the Minister for Education stated clearly about the number of videos going around with fights and all sorts of other sexual misconduct by our young people.”
The Premier said, "Some of the videos that are going around are ones which are staged, but all of them do the same thing--they don’t paint our young people in a good light. We’ve been condemning them [young persons], but that won’t be right because all of us did some kind of mischief when were younger, it’s just that we didn’t have a cellphone taping it and sending it all over the world that it would remain there forever.”
“What we want to do now is to prevent this omen from being there and put in legislation that would start to deter and discourage persons from sharing those kinds of videos with our young people. So that people would become more accountable for their actions and know to leave certain things alone. Also to beef it [Computer Misuse & Cybercrime Act] up so that certain crimes that are being committed cybercrime wise can be detected much faster,” Hon. Fahie stated.
-----
Copyright 2023 by Virgin Islands Platinum News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
