The Bank of Tanzania (BoT) revealed that, in conjunction with government and other stakeholders, it is in the final stages of preparing new legislation against cyber-crimes in the country. To date, Tanzania has no laws governing cyber-crimes.
The bank is co-operating with government officials and stakeholders to drive forward three bills of legislation that will provide Tanzania with legal backing for electronic financial transactions, and thereby create new cybercrime laws and legislation.
“It is difficult to prosecute cyber-crimes because there is no law for that. We have no statutes to address the problems of criminal activities that take place over the Internet. The envisaged laws would also help to address legal issue in electronic financial transactions in Tanzania as currently there were no cyber-crime laws,” said George Sije from BoT Legal Counsel.
In creating the Tanzanian cyber-crime laws, the Data Protection and Piracy Act will become the main piece of legislation, with the Computer and System Act, and Electronic Transaction Act to follow.
“This will be the main piece of legislation to govern personal data protection. Whenever you open a bank account, use ATMs, join a social networking website or book a flight online, you hand over vital personal information. Some crooks get unauthorised access to this kind of data, but we do not have the statutes to deal with them,” he said.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
