Botswana Gets Cybercrime Law

Botswana finally has a cybercrime law. Passed by Parliament in December 2007 and signed into law by President Festus Mogae later in the same month, the law goes a considerable distance towards updating the legal framework required to facilitate effective use of computers and computer networks in private, commmercial, and public spheres. The Attorney-General’s Chambers defines the purpose of the law as “to combat cybercrime and computer related crime, to repress criminal activities perpetrated through computer systems and to facilitate the collection of electronic evidence.” Officially the law is referred to as the Cybercrime and computer related crimes act, 2007.

In addition to activities carried out fully or partly in Botswana, the law is also applicable to Botswana nationals outside the country, and to infringements committed outside of Botswana if they have an effect in the country.

Among other areas, the law addresses unauthorized access to computers and the consequences of such access, unlawful interception of data, unlawful disclosures by service providers, and defines direct cybercrimes in the area of extortion, fraud, and trafficking in obscene material. And it creates special protections for computer devices and networks that are used as part of the national infrastructure security, defense, banking, public utilities  and financial and communication networks. It defines a variety of sanctions including jail term and fines whose magnitudes depend on the severity of the infraction.

The law empowers the national Police service to issue preservation and production orders, and engage in access, search and seizure operations (upon the approval of the relevant judicial official). While this is only part of the legislation required for Botswana to fully embrace the global information society — the other high priority area is electronic records, evidence, and digital signatures which is critical to enabling consumer and commercial electronic transactions more fully – it is a good start. Clearly, the next challenge will be to ensure adequate capacity buildup in the country’s law enforcement.

Unfortunately, Botswana’s laws are not publicly available online. The Attorney-General’s Chambers’ Website is available here. For further related information visit this link.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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