July 1, 2008
Q-CERT staff attended the first international conference on Security, Privacy and Confidentiality Issues in Cyberlaw (SPCI 2008), which took place in early June in Cairo. The conference was jointly organized by the International Association of Cybercrime Prevention, the French government, and the Egyptian Association of Cybercrime Prevention. It featured many luminaries from around the world to discuss the important topic of cybercrime legislation. Starting with an introduction from Dr. Ahmed Fathy Sorour, the President of the Egyptian People's Assembly, the conference featured more than sixty leading professors and researchers in this field. They covered all aspects of IT law, including intellectual property rights, child pornography, internet domain naming, cyber terrorism, e-government, cybercrime, privacy, and data protection.
Overall, the conference emphasized that existing 'legacy' approaches to tackling issues related to IT were quickly becoming replaced by international, harmonized frameworks, allowing the ubiquitous nature of the internet to be tackled cohesively. It is clear that leading governments are taking these issues on board and tackling them in an open, transparent, and collaborative manner. In Qatar, ictQATAR has launched the National Information Assurance Framework (NAIF) project to do exactly this. For the region, it was an important first step in stewarding this type of conference, which lies at the heart of modern internet-dependent economies. A coherent message emerged from the conference: by working together, we can make the internet a better place.