Legal Affairs Committee
Legislation key to securing e-activities
The Legal Affairs Committee held a meeting on March 14 with guest speaker Amr Abdel Motaal, attorney at law and senior managing partner at Abdel Motaal, Moharram & Heiza Law Firm, who addressed the topic of “The e-Signature Law and e-business in Egypt.”
Abdel Motaal stated that e-activities such as e-commerce and e-banking are gaining momentum in Egypt and that their reliability, trust, security, integrity, privacy and non-repudiation should not be jeopardized by their swiftness and intangibility. The enactment of e-legislation is one of the major ways and means to safeguard the rights of the parties involved in e-activities, he said.
Abdel Motaal evaluated the current status of the relevant legislation pointing out that over the past seven years corporate tax laws have become more lenient and e-government applications have appeared. He said three main pieces of legislation have been enacted to regulate major e-activities: Law 82/2002 promulgating the law on the protection of intellectual property rights, Law 10/2003 promulgating the law organizing and regulating telecommunications, and Law 15/2004 regulating electronic signature and establishing the information technology industry development authority.
In conclusion, Abdel Motaal cited that legal solutions for e-business are available according to present Egyptian law. Ideally, however, in the long term, these laws would be amended and improved in a careful and balanced manner to address specific e-commerce, data protection and cyber crime trends.
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The new challenge of cyber crime
On January 16, AmCham’s committees on information and communication technology (ICT) and legal affairs co-hosted Ehab El Sonbaty, a senior judge and professor of private international law and a specialist in e-commerce, for a seminar entitled: “Cyber crime: new suit or different cut?”
El Sonbaty stressed the importance of e-commerce, noting that most critical infrastructure today relies on computers and the Internet, including banks, government, electricity and even traffic control. He said there are two approaches regarding regulation. The common law approach suggests minimal regulation, arguing that the Internet should be self-regulating. Existing laws, therefore, are sufficient to combat cyber crime. The civil law approach takes a contrary view, urging greater regulation and a new set of laws.
El Sonbaty noted that the transnational nature of cyber crimes poses a unique challenge to law enforcement. He said that even traditional methods of cooperation across borders to solve crimes are no longer adequate. Several prominent entities, including the European Council, the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), the G8 and Interpol have already taken up the cause of fighting cyber crime. An international virtual forum against cyber crime has also been established.
There is no clear-cut definition of cyber crime, El Sonbaty says. But crimes can be classified into a few categories. The first type is “facilitated” crime, involving industrial espionage or prostitution. The second type is “content-related” crime, such as the violation of copyright laws, stalking, harassment and money laundering, which has been made more difficult to trace due to the anonymity the Internet provides. The third type is “sabotage” or “hacking,” defined as unauthorized access to a computer system, regardless of whether a separate crime is committed.
El Sonbaty argues that methods of investigating and prosecuting cyber crime need to be established and legitimized. These methods include scrutinizing Internet activity, recovering data from seized computers, and inferring a defendant’s actions and intent. Further, police officers, as well as lawyers and judges, need to be made aware of the problem of Internet crime and receive appropriate training.
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