Geisha Kow­lessar

More and more cas­es of re­venge porn are gain­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice, but law­men still have lit­tle pow­er un­less nec­es­sary ad­just­ments are made to leg­is­la­tion which can deal with the is­sue.

Sgt Dale Joseph of the Po­lice Ser­vice's Cy­ber Crime Unit said such in­ci­dents were be­com­ing more and more preva­lent on so­cial me­dia es­pe­cial­ly when re­la­tion­ships turn sour and urged peo­ple to be cau­tious when shar­ing nude pho­tos or videos.

He was speak­ing at the week­ly po­lice press brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day.

"Our cul­ture in Trinidad...we are see­ing a lot of bac­cha­nal...in the sense that peo­ple get in­to re­la­tion­ships and they share sen­si­tive da­ta on­line and when the re­la­tion­ship ends the ag­griev­ed par­ty wants to take re­venge.

"So sen­si­tive videos and pho­tos and oth­er con­tent would be shared on­line so you are see­ing a lot of those types of re­ports com­ing to us un­for­tu­nate­ly," Joseph said.

He called on peo­ple to be cau­tious when shar­ing such in­ti­mate in­for­ma­tion as one of the dan­gers of so­cial me­dia was once some­thing was post­ed on it was vir­tu­al­ly there for­ev­er.

On whether such "re­venge meth­ods" by adults were in fact brand­ed as a crime Joseph said: "The present leg­is­la­tion does not see it as a crim­i­nal of­fence just yet but hope­ful­ly leg­is­la­tion would evolve to the point where we could treat it as a crim­i­nal of­fence."

Prece­dent case

In Oc­to­ber last year West In­dies crick­eter Lendl Sim­mons was or­dered to pay $150,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for leak­ing sex­u­al­ly ex­plic­it pho­tographs of Therese Ho, an ac­count ex­ec­u­tive with whom he had an ex­tra-mar­i­tal af­fair.

Dur­ing the sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween Sim­mons and Ho, sev­er­al pho­tographs were tak­en by them. Some of these pho­tographs de­pict­ed Ho nude and two of the pho­tographs de­pict­ed her en­gaged in fel­la­tio with Sim­mons. Af­ter their re­la­tion­ship end­ed some of the pho­tos were al­leged­ly shown to oth­er peo­ple, and as a re­sult, Therese Ho filed ac­tion, seek­ing an in­junc­tion re­strain­ing Sim­mons from dis­sem­i­nat­ing the pho­tos.

But if per­pe­tra­tors were caught with child pornog­ra­phy im­ages and videos then they would face the con­se­quences, in­clud­ing be­ing jailed, Joseph said.

Be­ware of on­line scams

And while Christ­mas sea­son rep­re­sent­ed the pe­ri­od with the high­est lev­el of com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty it was al­so a sea­son where cit­i­zens were al­so most vul­ner­a­ble as there have been sev­er­al on­line scams, warned Joseph.

"A lot of per­sons get caught in a lot of on­line lot­tery scams as we are see­ing more and more so­cial me­dia plat­forms en­abling video chats and per­sons be­come in­volved in ques­tion­able be­hav­iour on­line, mean­ing that they have in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ships with per­sons on­line and they are ex­tort­ed for cash," Joseph said.

He said mem­bers of the unit have al­so been go­ing to sec­ondary schools in par­tic­u­lar to lec­ture to stu­dents re­gard­ing the dan­gers of so­cial me­dia as there have been some in­ci­dents in­volv­ing stu­dents who be­come in­volved in in­ti­mate be­hav­iour.

"Pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure and some­times it takes a very long time to find out who a sus­pect is, es­pe­cial­ly if you're deal­ing with a sus­pect in a dif­fer­ent ju­ris­dic­tion," Joseph said.

He added that cit­i­zens were now ac­cess­ing the in­ter­net in a va­ri­ety of ways to un­der­take in­creas­ing­ly com­plexed range of trans­ac­tions.

"As the num­ber of peo­ple us­ing mo­bile phones, Wi-Fi, com­put­er game con­soles and oth­er de­vices ac­cess the in­ter­net con­tin­ues to grow the need for bet­ter cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty across these de­vices be­comes in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant.

"The Po­lice Ser­vice has ob­served the fast rate of tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment, cou­pled with an in­crease in tech­nol­o­gy-based ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties," Joseph added.