Combating Cyber Crime in the United Arab Emirates - Research Proposal Example

About Cyber Crime Law 2012 (UAE), it can be noticed, when compared to Police and Justice Act 2006 in the United Kingdom that it fails to provide for a range of new offenses related to cyber victimization. Of particular concern, Cyber Crime Law 2012 (UAE) does not address cyber victimization offenses that are intended to address the United Arab Emirate’s obligations under international treaties. In addition to this, while the law fails to set clear strategies on how to deal with emerging issues in cyber victimization, it sets out higher penalties compared to those in the United Kingdom and even those in the 2006 laws.

As recently noted in the case involving Shezanne Casim, both the 2006 and the recently ratified Cyber Crime Law 2012 (UAE) lack certain provisions that relate to IT security. UK laws during the case involving Christopher Pile, well known as ‘the Black Baron’ dealt with a specific aspect of cyber victimization and that was ‘Accessing an IT System’ which prohibits any party from unauthorized access and a severe penalty is given when the accessed data was personal. Contrariwise, in UAE such unauthorized access is limited to IT systems when someone tries to obtain government information.

While this is a glimpse of events in both countries, the turning point for cybercrime-related laws in the United Kingdom was realized when the Government published the “Cyber Security Strategy” which introduced an integrated approach to tackling threats associated with the internet. In United Arabs Emirates, it was the introduction of the 2006 cybercrime laws but as noted earlier, there have been challenges to the law that led to the introduction of the Cyber Crime Law 2012 which compared to that of the United Kingdom is not effective in the sense that does not prosecute offenses committed across jurisdictional and geographical boundaries.

Of course, the UK had Computer Misuse Act 1990 as the first piece of legislation introduced to tackle computer misuse but compared to what is present in UAE, the United Kingdom has moved quickly to amend fences especially after its lawyers failed to convict Robert Schifreen and Stephen Gold after gaining unauthorized access to BT’s Prestel service on 23rd May 1984. Due to loopholes in the law, the offenders were ultimately charged under Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981. Even Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 was not enough since they were acquitted by the Court of Appeal and the decision was upheld by the House of Lords (Lusthaus, 2013). This has been the problem with laws in UAE---lack of comprehensive sections of the law to address a particular issue of cybercrime. For instance, when the country expelled Gallup--- US-based National Democracy Institute based in Abu Dhabi due to what the government termed as ‘contraventions to religion’ could not further be defended based on Article No.4 of the 2006 law.