The U.S. Department of Justice (USDoJ) and the Council of Europe (CoE) organized on 16 June 2020 a webinar on the challenges of international cooperation on cybercrime and electronic evidence in the Africa region.
Some 60 participants from twelve countries attended: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia. The participants represented law enforcement authorities specialising in cybercrime and/or cybersecurity, as well as officials working in the Ministries of Information and Communication Technologies and related regulatory authorities.
The webinar is part of a training programme initiated in 2019 and carried out by USDoJ and CoE with the aim to foster the optimal use of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime by countries that are already parties, and to encourage those who are not to join.
The webinar focused on:
- practical aspects and technical challenges of international investigations on dark web markets and relevant case studies;
- a review of INTERPOL’s work in international cooperation, resources for investigations and COVID-19 related case studies;
- key lessons learned from representatives of Ghana and Nigeria, who showcased the approach adopted in the respective national contexts to facilitate international cooperation and streamline the use of the Budapest Convention;
- the tools that the Budapest Convention offers for international cooperation, including relevant references to the Second Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime, currently under negotiation.
A number of questions were addressed in the Q&A session that followed the presentations, such as available training resources, channels of communication and how to improve collaboration with ISPs, the interplay with national data protection legislations, how to carry out successful investigations on the dark web, and consolidated procedures to handle electronic evidence cross-border.
A follow-up event is expected in September 2020.
This activity was organized joining resources with Cybercrime@Octopus project.
