THE joint select committee (JSC) reviewing the Cybercrimes Act, 2015 has decided against introducing a provision to prosecute people who share motor vehicle crash scene images, instead deciding on a public education campaign to dissuade persons from engaging in the practice.

During their meeting on Wednesday, members of the JSC continued their discussions on Section 9 of the Bill, which addresses malicious communication, with a view to see whether legal action could be taken against people who share gruesome images from crash scenes.

Chairman of the committee Minister of Science, Energy and Technology Daryl Vaz had given instructions to the Legal Reform Department to determine if this aspect could be captured, whether in the existing Act or to make a provision for it.

Based on the department’s report after examining other jurisdictions, the committee agreed that it would be difficult to prosecute individuals due to the nature of social media and that it would be best not to criminalise the action but pursue civil remedies where malicious intent can be proven.

The department also suggested that such provisions in law could be unconstitutional or challengeable.

Government member Sherene Golding Campbell argued that every time an offence is created in a piece of legislation, this simultaneously places a duty on the police in relation to that offence.

“I’m trying to grapple with how law enforcement would police this, because we’re particularly talking about social media and the ability to transmit images through social media.

“My little observation on, let’s say Twitter, for example, a lot of the names and handles on Twitter don’t come with the proper name of the person. People tweet and their tweets are retweeted. How do you police that? How many rungs down the transmitting of images like this, will the law be applied?” queried Golding Campbell.

She further argued that it appears that a raft of processes are being created for law enforcement to engage in and charged that she finds this problematic.

“Because it would seem to me that the resources to follow all the transmissions of these messages would tie them up. This is not to negate the harm that may be caused to someone from the transmission of these messages, or these images, but I just feel like maybe this is one of those that ought to lie in the realm of the civil remedies as opposed to the criminal remedies…and then, of course, there’s the discussion of intent and no intent,” added Golding Campbell.

Committee member Opposition’s Julian Robinson — who had first raised the issue — however, argued that law enforcement personnel can intervene in cases where people use pseudonyms, as many people do on social media.

“It’s not very hard to get behind the pseudonyms and find out who the real individuals are, but the important point for me here is the issue of intent.

“I think the provisions cover it under Section 9 with the guidelines that are there. The issue…is the intent, and if intent is there, then you can prosecute, if intent isn’t there, it doesn’t rise to a prosecutable offence, but it’s probably something that you may have to address through a non-legislative means such as public education or something else,” said Robinson.

In the meantime, chief technical director in the Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology, Wahkeen Murray, said the committee has encouraged the ministry to engage in a public education and awareness campaign around the Cybercrimes Act, following amends to the legislation and that is something that the ministry commits to doing once the process is complete.

She noted that a public education campaign will also be embarked on pertaining to the the Data Protection Act which addresses how personal data is transmitted.

“In the context of the Data Protection Act, there are issues that arise with the processing which includes dissemination and communication or translating data that is a personal nature and that is an area as well that the ministry along with the Office of the Information Commissioner… will shortly embark on,” said Murray.