The dignitaries at the seminar on anti-cybercrime law held at the Department of Criminal Investigation, yesterday. Pic: Baher Amin / The Peninsula
Doha: The Ministry of Interior has warned against sending work-related information through social media by government employees.
It is risky to send work related information through social media, especially “WhatsApp” by staff and employees in government departments, said Brigadier Jamal Al Kaabi, Director of the Criminal Investigation Department.
Al Kaabi was speaking in a conference on law of combating cybercrime organised by the Ministry of Interior yesterday.
He urged media and social media influencers to spread awareness about the dangers of using social networks at work, and to raise awareness among public about the dangers of these networks. He advised public not to send or disseminate any personal information, photos or films through social media and to monitor children dealing with these media networks.
Al Kaabi said that although it is easy to reach criminals in most cases, many of these crimes are perpetrated outside the country which creates difficulty in tracking them.
Al Kaabi added that these crimes can be checked by raising awareness of the dangers, impact of these crimes and regulations about cyber crimes.
This conference comes within the Ministry of Interior’s keenness to maintain the security and safety of the community and to ensure the safe use of the Internet.
He pointed out that traditional crimes were easy to deal with, but electronic crime, that also includes extortion, is one of the most serious crimes in modern times that requires a more efforts to curb them. He added that conventional crime has declined comparing to cyber crime, describing cyber crimes as dangerous because of its psychological repercussions on the victim.
Captain Engineer Medawi Saeed Al Qahtani, head of the Department of Economic and Electronic Crimes Department at Criminal Investigation Department, stressed on the need to educate the public and encourage them not to publish their personal information and not to over-portray their daily life events or to use social media networks at work.
The Assistant professor of law at Ahmed bin Mohammed Military College Dr Anwar Sidqi Al Moussada, called on all sectors of the society to get aware about the law on combating cyber crimes, so that everyone is fully aware of the nature of these crimes and the types and penalties of these acts, pointing out that ignorance of law does not exempt from punishment.
Dr Al Moussada explained that the penalties in the electronic crimes act are very strict. He said that the penalties stipulated in law may reach up to three years imprisonment and a fine of QR 500,000 stressing that there are cases where the penalty has been increased.
Mohammed Abu Zeid from Criminal Investigation Department alerted about frauds and their types on social networking sites.
He added cyber criminals use many methods to perpetrate crimes and phishing is one of the most serious way of stealing private information.
