And while the Education Minister is urging the public to stop sharing other people's private content, the attorney General has to try to find ways to effectively criminalize it.
Today he discussed the challenges trying to police the electronic ether:
Hon. Michael Peyrefitte - Attorney General
"We have been working on it for some time. We have been working on it to ensure that not only can we capture when it happens, or capture when these videos - especially with minor - are put into the public or even made, but we have to make sure that we are able to tie it to a particular individual. Many times, when people get caught electronically, they claim they were hacked. They claim that someone stole their computer. They claim that that that's not their phone. We also have to make sure that the legislation is airtight, so that when we charge someone, they don't just get off simply because of a technicality in the real sense. So, we are working it. We're fine tuning it. We're focused mainly on the ones involving minors because if a child is underaged, not legally allowed to have sex, then that is extremely troubling for us. And we want to address that. In terms of adults, or consenting adults who may be willing to participate or accept videos of them engaging in that activity, if they don't consent for it to be released, then we also have to look at that piece of legislation. But, we are also working on with the Ministry of Human Development, the Special Envoy for Women and Children, the DPP, and CITO because we need to develop a computer and an internet cyber world policy to determine how do we track these people, how do we find them, how do we prosecute them, how do we get convictions for those people who have broken the law."
Reporter
"It would seem, however, that we're a bit slow in catching up with laws that have been put in place in other jurisdictions to either prevent or mitigate these kinds of activities."
Hon. Michael Peyrefitte
"And in those jurisdictions where they were quick to put in laws, they were found to be full of holes. We don't want that to happen to us. We don't want to have a law just to have a law, and then its weak, and then, perpetrators walk free, and then you hear that the judicial system is corrupt. We want to make sure that whatever laws we have in place, if a person is guilty, they're going to jail."
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