Article 5: “If the governmental officials, who are responsible for protecting secret data (as determined by Article 3 of these laws) or the related systems and have received appropriate training for this and the data or computer systems have been left in their control, may provide the access to the data for some unauthorized individuals as a result of their carelessness, recklessness or failure to observe the security measures , they will be sentenced to prison terms of between 91 days and two years ,or to paying a fine of between five million rials and 40 million rials; or both punishments. They could also be suspended from their government sector jobs for a period of six months to two years.”
The crime discussed in this Article of law is about governmental officials who are the protectors of the secret and confidential data.
Question: Which criteria determine whether or not this crime has actually taken place?
Answer: A) When unauthorized and incompetent individuals (persons who are not entitled to access the secret data) can access the secret data.
B) When these secret data were protected.
C) When governmental officials were responsible for protecting the secret data.
D) When these governmental officials had received special training for doing this job.
E) When the governmental officials had been careless or improvident, or perfunctory, and had not observed the security rules.
Imprudence means that the official did not do his duty.
Carelessness means the official did not do the actions that he supposed to so.
F) Failure to observe the security measures means that the official did not carry out the action which is necessary to ensure the secret data is secure.
The presence of all these conditions together will point to the actual occurrence of the crime mentioned in Article5. There is no intent for committing the crime in none of these three cases: improvident, perfunctory or the failure to observes the secure measures.
The punishment for the offender is at least 91 days and the maximum of two years imprisonment or paying fine of five million rials up to four million rials, in addition to suspension from their jobs for at least six months and a maximum of two years.
Article 6: “Anyone who commits the following acts is considered as a forger and will be sentenced to one to five years imprisonment or payment of a fine from 20 million rials up to 100 million rials, or both of the punishments.”
A- Modifying or creating reliable data and documents, or adding fraudulent data to them.
B- Altering data or symbols on memory cards and processing systems in the computer or telecommunication terminals, or adding fraudulent data to them
The subject matter of Article6 of the Cyber Crime Law is the computer forgery, which has been discussed in the debate about crimes against the veracity and validity of the computer and telecommunication systems and terminals.
Computer forgery means:
*Modifying the data in memory cards.
* creating new icons and signals in memory cards
*changing the processing cards in computer or telecommunications systems or chips.
* creating new icons and signals in computer or telecommunications systems or chips.
*Entering data fraudulently into memory cards.
* Entering icons fraudulently into memory cards
*Entering fraudulent data on processing cards into the computer or telecommunications systems, or chips.
* Entering fraudulent icons and signals on processing cards into the computer and or telecommunications systems or chips.
*doing the above action without legal permission (unauthorized).
Significant point No.1:
The law has not clarified: First- what does the legislator mean by saying that “some actions such as entering data and icons fraudulently is illegal”?
Secondly, who is the authority to issue permission for changing or creating data or signals and icons? Moreover, where is that authority?
It is obvious that issuing authorization for forgery or falsifying data or signals in memory cards or … and committing a criminal act do not have any legal justification.
Significant point No.2:
Two situations have been foreseen for the computer forgery crime by this Article:
A- In the first part, the legislator emphasizes on forgery of data which can be used as valid documents.
B- In the second part, the legislator has focused on forgery of all of data or Icons and signals that exist in memory cards or the processing data and of the computer or telecommunications systems or chips. .
Question: What is the meaning of data that can be used document?
Answer: The data that can be used as documents means those which have legal validity, and they are named as electronic documents in the law. These documents are valuable as proof. These documents and data can be used by judicial authorities, registry offices and … in order to provide a proof for a legal event, such as trade transactions, or contract signing, etc…
