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MEMORANDUM OF THE COMPUTER FORENSICS INSTITUTE, NIGERIA (CFIN) TO THE CHAIRMAN, HOUSE COMMITTEE ON NARCOTICS & FINANCIAL CRIMES IN RESPECT OF THE CYBERCRIME AND INFORMATION PROTECTION AGENCY (ESTABLISHMENT, ETC) BILL 2008
1. The Computer Forensics Institute Nigeria (CFIN) commend the House Committee on Narcotics & Financial Crimes and the entire honorable members of the House of Representatives for coming up with the Cybercrime and Information Protection Agency (the Agency) Bill at this critical time in our country’s development. 2. As practitioners in the field of Computer Security and Digital Forensics, the Computer Forensics Institute, Nigeria (CFIN) wishes to contribute to this epoch-making Bill, which is aimed at, inter alia, fighting the scourge of Cyber Criminality and abuse of digital assets in Nigeria. 3. After a careful study of the proposed Bill, we have the following observations and recommendations: CLAUSE 2: 1 b : QUALIFICATIONS OF THE EXECUTIVE VICE CHAIRMAN (EVC) OF THE AGENCY The Draft bill proposes that the EVC to be appointed by the President shall be a retired or serving member in any security agency of the Federation not below the rank of deputy commissioner of police or its equivalent, with cybersecurity experience, in addition to being a lawyer with not less than 10years post-call experience. This provision has effectively shut out other qualified (civilian) Nigerian Cybersecurity and Computer Forensics experts from being appointed the EVC of the Agency. The fields of Cybercrime, Computer Security, Digital and Computer Forensics and Law (which this Agency shall dwell on) are highly technical, vast, complex, dynamic, and of global dimension that the enabling law must not seek to keep the President (the appointing authority) hamstrung when it comes to the appointment of the EVC to head such a critical Agency. We should be guided by international best practices, where the appointing authority is given the flexibility to cast his net wide in order to get the best experts, either from the security agencies or the professional community of Digital Forensics experts and lawyers, to effectively run the agency. As a high-tech national security apparatus, the Agency does not necessarily have to be run by a retired or serving police / military personnel, who were trained on traditional or conventional security methodologies. This is a field that is highly technical and requires sound knowledge and skills of computer security and forensics, inter-networking, high-tech intelligence gathering, international cooperation, law and management. Therefore, it should not be headed exclusively by personnel of the traditional security agencies such as the police, military, SSS, etc. Again, the 10 years post-call experience required for the lawyer candidate is, in our opinion, unnecessary in this circumstance because the candidate for the EVC post must have acquired his/her Law degrees as an addition to other technical or professional qualifications such as B.Sc. in Computer Science, Computer Security and Forensics, etc. What should be considered important is that the EVC is a qualified lawyer AND qualified Cyber security / Computer Forensics expert and has acquired high level technical, management and leadership experience in these fields. Therefore, we suggest that the Clause 2: 1 (b) be amended to read as follows: (b) Executive Vice chairman to be appointed by the president, who shall be: 2. Constitution of the Agency's Board: We are of the opinion that the Computer Forensics Institute, Nigeria (CFIN) be given a position on the Board of the Agency. With the approval of the Federal Government of Nigeria, the Computer Forensics Institute, Nigeria (CFIN) was established to:
CFIN administers the Chartered Computer Forensics Examiner certification which is available to both law enforcement and non-law enforcement digital and computer forensics examiners. As you may know, the field of Computer Forensics arose out of the need to give digital evidence in litigation and to combat internet, digital, computer and cyber crimes including ATM fraud, money laundering, internet fraud, identity theft, fraudulent websites, mitigation against computer hackers and other cyber crimes. Therefore, Computer Forensics is the science of detection and investigation of crime committed on computers, computer networks, the internet and other digital devices with the intent of giving digital and electronic evidence in litigation. In our opinion, it would be a proper application of legislative wisdom and in the interest of our joint efforts in the fight against Cyber crimes, if the CFIN is offered two seats on the board of the Agency. We, therefore, recommend that: The board of the Agency should include at least two (2) Chartered Computer Forensics Examiners/Experts who are full members of CFIN. 4. We urge the Legislators to ensure that the various penalties prescribed are proportionate to the crimes as contained in the Bill. While focusing on our local circumstances, we should be guided by International practices because Cyber crime is of global dimension. 5. The term "spamming" was not defined in the Bill. This term should be properly defined in order to aid interpretation. Once again we thank the Honorable Chairman and Honorable members of the House Committee on Narcotics and Financial Crimes for giving us the opportunity to present this Memorandum. Signed for and on behalf of Computer Forensics Institute, Nigeria (CFIN) Dr. Peter O. Olayiwola, BBA, MBA, Ph.D., MNIM, ACIA, MCPN, FNCS, CPA, CFE, MCFI, JP For further clarifications or enquiries regarding this memorandum, please email: info@cfinonline.org DATE: July 8 2009 |
