Draft Cybercrime (Jersey) Law 201-

​The Draft Cybercrime (Jersey) Law 201- has been lodged by the Minister for Home Affairs for debate on Tuesday 15th January 2019. The draft law, if adopted, would bring Jersey up-to-date in its treatment of crime involving computers and data storage. The draft law is a series of amendments to other legislation that is intended to provide authorities with sufficient powers to deal with increasingly sophisticated online criminal activity, and will make Jersey compliant with the international treaties in this area.

If the draft law is adopted, then Jersey would be in a position to have the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime (the Budapest Convention) extended to it. The Convention is concerned with crimes committed over the Internet, particularly infringements of copyright, computer-related fraud, child pornography, hate crimes, and violations of network security.

The amendments to existing laws made by this draft law would be as follows:

• Computer Misuse (Jersey) Law 1995 - this amendment would update the definitions and penalties for unauthorised access to computer material (hacking), unauthorised modification of computer material (e.g. damaging a computer to hinder access to incriminating data) and also make it an offence to supply or obtain any software or hardware for the purposes of committing a crime online.

• Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) (Jersey) Law 2001 - this amendment would allow for a preservation order to be granted in the event that the Island was working with another jurisdiction to investigate a crime. This is in order to prevent a suspected party of deleting or destroying data when under investigation. It would also make it an offence to delete or destroy any data that was the subject of a preservation order.

• Police Procedures and Criminal Evidence (Jersey) Law 2003 - this amendment would allow police officers, subject to an application and permission from the Bailiff, to gain access to any material stored on a computer or on a "cloud based" storage programme.

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Jersey) Law 2005 - this amendment would make it an offence for a service provider (i.e. telecoms provider) to tip off a service user about any request from a public authority to investigate any information they may hold. It would also enable law enforcement to require a person to grant them access to a device which is otherwise locked (i.e. mobile phone, tablet etc.), subject to permission from the Bailiff. Such notice could only be given on the grounds of national security, for the prevention and detection of crime, in the economic interests of Jersey, or to perform a statutory power or duty.

Do you have any comments on the draft law? Do you think it will protect Jersey against cybercrime and related offences? Is what is being proposed right for Jersey? Tell us what you think by Friday 30th November at scrutiny@gov.je or write to us at Morier House, Halkett Place, St. Helier, JE1 1DD

The Panel has now published its Comments paper.

View the interactive report summary here.

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