Police warn cyber criminals
ANESU MASAMVU
Police have warned cyber criminals who have been spewing hate language on social media platforms saying they now have sophisticated technology to track down perpetrators.
National police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said cyberbullies have been on a warpath especially after the August 23 harmonised elections adding those involved will not go unpunished.
He fingered emerging media outlets and individuals who he said have been at the forefront of peddling falsehoods and were unprofessional in their conduct.
“The traditional media has played a part in terms of ensuring that people are fully aware of the various activities that are taking place in the country and informing the public in general, but we have a challenge with social media where everybody with a smartphone claims to be a journalist and it is giving us a challenge because some of the information being posted on social media is perpetuating hate language,” Nyathi said.
“The information being posted is causing alarm and despondency. It is bullying certain people. You find they are certain individuals who are being bullied through the social media, that is why we want to urge the public to be responsible when they use the social media platforms and also for the public to use these platforms for developmental purposes not to use social media to spite one another, to pull down certain individuals because you have certain agendas but it is something that the country should take a firm position.”
Asked if they were well equipped to track down cyber-crime offenders, Nyathi said: “We now have a fully-fledged cyber lab under the auspices of the ZRP through the Criminal Investigations Department and we work closely with telecommunications service providers and this also includes the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe in trying to track down these unruly elements who are using social media to commit crime and perpetuate cyber-crime.”
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Regional Director Dr Tabani Moyo however, said the move by the police was welcome but they should not abuse the surveillance tools for other purposes.
“In every republic, there is a need for security services including the police to engage in policing, but what is critical is to ensure that deployment of surveillance tools and mechanisms should be done within the confines of the law,” he said.
“What we cannot condone as MISA is a blanket surveillance without limits, without any definitions of how it is going to end and what would have triggered that intervention.”
