President Goodluck Submits Cybercrime Bill, Seeks Powers To Intercept SMS, Emails, BBMs

As part of the provisions of the Cybercrime Bill 2013, President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria has initiated a draft law that empowers security agents to intercept and record electronic communications between individuals, and seize usage data from internet service providers and mobile networks.

If the Cybercrime Bill is enacted into law, authorities can intercept and record personal emails, text messages, instant messages, voice mails and multimedia messages, in order to facilitate a criminal investigation.

These are contained in the details of the bill that President Goodluck Jonathan submitted to the National Assembly last week.

It also proposed a death sentence for persons who hack into the Critical National Information Infrastructure or computer networks resulting in the loss of lives.

Where there is no loss of lives but the offender causes grievous bodily injury to another person, the bill recommends a prison term of not less than 15 years. Using any computer network for terrorism purposes also attracts life sentence.

A 10-year jail term or a fine of N20million or both is recommended for Child pornographers.

Read all about the bill here