Abstract

 With the on-going Anglophone crisis in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon, individuals, businesses and the government are increasingly becoming at risk of being targeted by cyber criminals. Amid this challenge, Cameroon has enacted a law relating to Cyber Security and Cyber Criminality (hereinafter referred to as the Cyber law) and trained personels to fight cybercrime. In spite of these measures, cybercrime is still rampant and the question is why? This contribution therefore examines the measures put in place to combat cybercrime with the aim of showing that the measures are inadequate. Also, the contribution explains why cybercrime is prevalent in Cameroon and concludes with measures to prevent and minimise the impacts of cybercrime (recommendations). This work aims to raise awareness and improve knowledge of data protection rules, especially among investigating officers, students, specialists and non-specialist legal practitioners who have to deal with data protection issues in their work.  

         CHAPTER 1

                            GENERAL INTRODUCTION

• BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Prior to the arrival of Information and Communication Technology in Sub Sahara Africa, Africa was seen as a dark continent. The development of Information and Communication Technology was expected to connect Africa with the rest of the world. The rapid diffusion of the internet and its trajectory strongly brings out the importance and influence the internet and other forms of Information and Communication Technologies have on all world sectors. Blind, Wartalia and Jenning[1] indicated that the information and communication technologies especially the internet has not only affected the world economies as a whole, but have also impacted the society at large including political systems worldwide.

Furthermore, Collins and Halverson[2]  viewed that his exposure leapfrogged several technologically backward regions of the world like Africa, which was regarded as backwards, into the world of Information and Communication Technology. These new technologies increased opportunities for several marginalized groups, also allowing them to share in a knowledge base that was once reserved for a selected few in developed countries.[3] All around us people are learning with the aid of new technologies: children are playing complex video games, workers are interacting with simulations that put them in challenging situations, students are taking courses online in high schools and colleges, and adults are consulting Wikipedia. New technologies create learning.[4]

Opportunities that challenge traditional schools and colleges. These new learning techniques enable people of all ages to pursue learning on their own terms. People around the world are taking their education out of school into homes, libraries, Internet cafes, and workplaces, where they can decide what they want to learn, when they want to learn, and how they want to learn.[5]

This leap by the supposed ‘‘backward regions’’ has not come without a heavy price to the world at large. As Akuta et al put it, while the world enjoys the benefits of Information and Communication Technologies especially the internet, it has also been confronted with this heavy price which has been referred to as the unintended consequences of Information and Communication Technologies that is cybercrime.[6]

It is realized that the dollar amount lost to cybercrime annually is significantly more than the annual global market for marijuana, cocaine, and heroin combined, thus the need for concern.[7]  In Cameroon, illegal activities propagated through negative exploitation of the Information Communication Technologies have several characteristics (with new types emerging every day) depending on who and where the target is located on the globe. For example the Embassy of the United States, Yaoundé, Cameroon, describe some of the versions of scamming originating from Cameroon as child adoption scams; wildlife scams (including parrots, dogs and monkeys); and business scams (involving vegetable oils wishing to supply raw materials for bio-fuels industries) with never-ending strings requesting money.[8]

Furthermore, other common place versions of scams originating elsewhere targeting Cameroonians and others include conference, job, business proposal and lottery letter scams in addition to websites mimicking official authentic websites of institutions (mainly financial) requesting personal information.  The end point of scamming is to extort money from victims either directly (face-to-face) or through bank transfers. Cameroon is ranked as the riskiest nation in the world for online trade. Because of this surge in cybercrime perpetration, like several countries, Cameroon is executing efforts to solve this problem. New laws and policies are being passed, software is being developed and cyber security equipment is being purchased to enhance the fight against cybercrime.[9]

To do this, the study was limited to Cameroon because of its uniqueness in the cybercrime surge, and was designed to provide policy makers both at local and international levels with an in-depth knowledge on how the use of a good understanding of cybercrime perpetrators’ perceptions in combating cybercrime can be of importance to craft and implement cybercrime laws and policies that will reduce the rate of cybercrime perpetration in Cameroon.

Cybercrime, or computer-oriented crime, is a crime that involves a computer and a network.[10] The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target.[11] Cybercrime may threaten a person, company or a nation’s security and financial health.[12]

There are many privacy concerns surrounding cybercrime when confidential information is intercepted or disclosed, lawfully or otherwise. Internationally, both governmental and non-state actors engage in cybercrimes, including espionage, financial theft, and other cross-border crimes. Cybercrimes crossing international borders and involving the actions of at least one nation-state is sometimes referred to as cyber warfare.

A report (sponsored by McAfee), published in 2014, estimated that the annual damage to the global economy was $445 billion.[13] Approximately $1.5 billion was lost in 2012 to online credit and debit card fraud in the US.[14] In 2018, a study by Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in partnership with McAfee, concludes that close to $600 billion, nearly one percent of global GDP is lost to cybercrime each year.[15]