ALOR STAR: Raja Muda of Kedah Tengku Sarafudin Badlishah Sultan Sallehuddin today decreed a specific law to be enacted to combat online crime and scams.
His Majesty said at the same time, existing laws should also be enhanced to better deal with new types of crimes that are emerging in tandem with technological advancement.
"Technology is growing very fast, and usually laws are unable to keep up since the process to amend them is time-consuming, while enacting new laws will also take time.
"It is imperative for laws to be able to catch up with the latest technology. For example, now there is artificial intelligence (AI), thus the laws must be up-to-date," Tengku Sarafudin told reporters after gracing the closing ceremony of state-level National Anti-Scam Tour 2024 in Wisma Darulaman here today.
Present were state Education, Religious, Communications and Information Committee chairman Mohd Azam Abd Samat, CyberSecurity Malaysia board of director chairman General (R) Tan Sri Zulkifeli Mohd Zin and Kedah State Secretary Datuk Seri Norizan Khazali.
Tengku Sarafudin stressed that enacting specific laws would provide more bites for effective enforcement in handling emerging issues from AI technology abuse, such as online crime and scam.
Earlier in his speech, Tengku Sarafudin said criminals are getting even slicker than ever by taking advantage of technological advances offered by AI technology.
While AI technology is generally meant to do good things, it could also be abused by criminals to pull all sorts of crimes, such as deep fakes, creating misinformation and disinformation.
"All parties must pay attention to cybersecurity, including consumers. Therefore, I wish to call on Kedahans to always be vigilant while carrying out financial transactions and uploading social media postings for their own safety while ensuring that their banking information is not being manipulated by cyber criminals or scammers," he said.
Meanwhile, CyberSecurity Malaysia, in a statement today, said the agency's Cyber Incident Response Center-Cyber999 has recorded 2,518 cybersecurity incidents.
It said of the total, online scams recorded the highest number of cases with 1,646 incidents between January and May this year.
The agency said the Federal police's Commercial Crime Investigation Department has recorded 13,134 online crime cases during the same period, with losses amounting to RM511 million.