JEDDAH, 13 August 2006 — Saudi Arabia is expected to enact and enforce stringent laws designed to prevent electronic crimes which have been on the increase with the growing use of the information superhighway.
A draft law to be debated by the Shoura Council within a few weeks provides for people charged with electronic crimes to be sentenced to 10 years in prison or fined SR5 million or both.
The law has 16 articles and aims at preventing use of the Internet to defame or harm individuals, companies and organizations, said Abdul Rahman Al-Yami, head of the Shoura’s Communications and Information Technology Committee.
The committee has already prepared the law in the light of the existing rules on criminal procedures, the anti-money laundering law, the Arab law to combat cyber crimes and the European Agreement on Computer Crimes.
Al-Yami said the law would apply to hackers as well as those who use Bluetooth for sending immoral and ugly pictures. “We decided to introduce this law after observing a substantial increase in cyber crimes in recent years,” he said.
The new law has been designed to provide information security, protect the rights of Internet and computer users, preserve the public interest and morality and safeguard the national economy.
According to Article 3 of the law, people eavesdropping on private e-mail messages without any right or misusing mobile cameras will be sentenced to jail and fine. “Those who try to disrupt Internet service or remove information on the network will also face punishment,” Al-Yami said.
Other punishable cyber crimes include setting up websites for trading in porno pictures and videos or facilitating drug trafficking and sales. The law will punish those who establish websites for terrorist organizations and facilitate contacts with their leaders and members or promote their ideologies or publish information on how to make bombs and explosives as well as those who try to obtain secret information related to national security.
Article 8 warns those who contact organized criminal gangs as well as those who entice women and small children to exploit them, saying they will face punishment. The law, however, acquits those who help security authorities to foil criminal plots before they happen by providing them with information on people involved in the crime and the equipment used for it.
The government has already instructed Internet users in the Kingdom to refrain from publishing or accessing data containing information that contravenes a fundamental principle or legislation, or infringes the sanctity of Islam or breaches public decency or news and reports damaging to armed forces or anything damaging to the dignity of heads of states or heads of foreign diplomatic missions in the country.
