The National Cyber Stability Centre (NCSC) of the Communications Ministry in collaboration with the Prison Investigation Department (CID) has arrested the administrator of the infamous internet site, Empress Leak.
The Communications Minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful uncovered this in the course of a joint press briefing on Monday to announce the arrest of Anderson Ofosuhene Anim, the operator of the site.
Addressing the media, she noted that, an investigation to clamp down on the pursuits of Empress Leak was released just after a woman Senior High University college student, filed a report on January 6, 2020, with the Computer Crisis Reaction Crew (CERT-GH) of the NCSC.
The report by the victim who is beneath 18 several years, was to notify the CERT-GH workforce of an uploaded sexually specific video of her to the web site.
The Minister even further observed that preliminary investigations uncovered information and facts on the website’s registrant facts, associated domain names, email addresses, phone contacts as nicely as residential address of the administrator, Mr Ofosuhene Anim.
She mentioned “as element of government’s attempts to the protection of Ghana’s cyberspace, the Nationwide Cyber Protection Centre in 2019 released a Cybercrime/Cyber protection Incident Reporting Position of Speak to (PoC), to present an successful mechanism for citizens to report suspected and recognized cybercrime and cyber safety incidents.”
The minister said that because the operationalisation of the PoC, the NCSC has acquired many cybercrime/cyber security incidents studies from the community.
Important between these reports are the publication of non-consensual intimate visuals (sextortion), on the web impersonation, on the internet fraud, malware assaults, on the internet blackmail, web page defacement, among the others.
According to Owusu-Ekuful, sextortion and distributing sexual images of individuals are slowly getting a canker in the Ghanaian cyberspace, because of to the trusting mother nature of most Ghanaians.
“Out of a complete of 296 circumstances gained by the Nationwide CERT among January 1 to June 30, 2020, 27% of the scenarios, representing a full of 79 conditions, are relevant to either sextortion, non-consensual sharing of personal illustrations or photos or kid online abuse”, she extra.
She stressed that these legal functions are perpetuated by malicious persons who make acquaintance with unsuspecting victims on platforms this sort of as social media, relationship and grownup web page by the use of phony identities.
Describing how these criminals work, the Minister stated, victims are coaxed to possibly share nude photographs or video clips of on their own or perform sexual functions that are secretly recorded.
The criminals then capitalise on these recordings to extort monies from victims.
Touching on the provisions of the regulation, the minister explained that, “Child pornographic written content and the act of extortion constitutes prison actions underneath Section 136(1) of the Digital Transactions Act, 2008 (Act 772) – (c) possesses boy or girl pornography in a computer process or on a computer or electronic document storage medium, commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a wonderful of not far more than 25 penalty units or a term of imprisonment of not more than 10 yrs or to each, and Section 151 of Legal and Other Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29).”
She additional that, “government and its businesses are functioning assiduously to curtail the prevalence of cybercrimes, however, implored the typical general public, particularly little ones and youthful older people to be careful of the activities of destructive persons.”
The Director-Common of the CID of the Ghana Law enforcement Service, COP Isaac Ken Yeboah, in his deal with, pointed out that victims who attain out to the perpetrators of these criminal pursuits are compelled to shell out between GHS ¢500 to ¢1,000 by using cell dollars.
COP Ken Yeboah exposed that the suspect will be charged for obscenity, baby pornography and extortion.
Empress Leak is a website known for the publication of child pornographic and adult sexual written content.
The website data about 600,000 regular website visitors who are situated in Ghana, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
