Initiative for cybercrime center in Belarus

The Investigation Committee of Belarus has put forward an initiative to set up a center to counteract cybercrimes in Belarus, BelTA learned from Alexander Sushko, Head of the Information Security and Intellectual Property Crimes Section of the Central Investigation Office of the Investigation Committee of Belarus, on 16 April.

The official said that plans have been made to set up a cutting-edge center at a Belarusian education institution for the sake of discussing the theory and practice of counteracting cybercrimes. The center will enroll both university professors and law enforcement officers, who specialize in cybercrime investigations. The center is supposed to enable research in the area of criminal law, criminal proceedings, and forensics. It will host regular meetings of scientists, representatives of law enforcement agencies and the private sector for the sake of sharing experience and finding solutions to existing problems, for working out strategic approaches to cybercrime control, for working out educational problems for this field.

“We are convinced that the establishment of the center will increase the quality of investigation into crimes against information security. It will allow taking additional measures to protect the property and rights of citizens and the state. It will bolster the trust of the nation in the work that government agencies do to ensure information security,” stressed Alexander Sushko.

He also said that on 15 April the Investigation Committee hosted a working meeting to discuss the creation of the cybercrime center in Belarus. The meeting gathered representatives of the Investigation Committee, including those involved in information security crime investigations, representatives of the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Interior Ministry, the State Security Committee, the Operations and Analysis Center under the President of the Republic of Belarus, the State Border Committee, the State Forensics Committee, and the State Customs Committee. The experts also discussed matters concerning investigations into information security crimes, the application of criminal law norms that envisage responsibility for information security crimes, and procedural peculiarities involved in such investigations.

Representatives of all the government agencies, who took part in the meeting, backed the Investigation Committee’s initiative to establish the cybercrime center. “Now we are going to think about the mechanism to set up and operate such a center. It is a bit difficult because technologies change virtually every year and the problems that we face today can radically change down the road. We should take into account all the moments, all the ways the situation can develop in order to ensure the maximum effectiveness of the future center,” said Alexander Sushko.

Since 1999 when information security crimes were first described by the Criminal Code of Belarus the advance of information technologies has changed old crimes and has brought about new forms of crimes involving computer data and various computer systems. The statistics indicates that the number of such crimes is on the rise. In 2012 over 2,000 high-tech crimes were recorded. In 2013 the number exceeded 2,500. “Cybercrimes represent an international problem because, as a rule, such crimes are committed by transnational organized criminal groups, which members use the Internet, easily cross virtual borders between nations, and exploit the imperfect legislation of various countries. In Belarus the legislation allows fighting such crimes effectively. We understand that only domestic and interstate cooperation adequate to these challenges can help law enforcement agencies counteract cybercrimes,” summarized the Head of the Information Security and Intellectual Property Crimes Section of the Central Investigation Office of the Investigation Committee of Belarus.