Borderless crimes and digital forensic: Nigerian perspectives

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to determine the extent to which the myriad of cybercrimes is within the purview of extant Nigerian laws against the backdrop of the modicum of legal and institutional mechanisms available at international law for combating cybercrimes.Design/methodology/approachThis study is library based. It relies on secondary data generated by the variegated multilateral agencies, law reports of international and municipal tribunals, relevant books, journals, monographs policy papers and so forth as the basis of analysis.FindingsFindings suggest that cybercrimes are very difficult to unravel because their traces are imperceptible and require highly specialised skills and digital protocols to find, store and save them for evidential purposes. Such gathered evidence are in the form of digital data stored in variegated hardware and software media, such as storage peripherals, electronic components, working memory, hard discs and external discs. The difficulty is how to identify, weigh for evidential value and capture the multiplicity of evidence unearthed in a digital forensic investigation. The foregoing underscores the digital forensic problematic which is engendered by the difficulties of contriving a thoroughgoing concept of digital evidence given the malleable nature of the variegated storage media.Practical implicationsThis paper engenders considerable acquaintance of the entire sphere of digital crimes and cyber threats, which is contended with in the information epoch, and recommends both legal and institutional mechanisms to counter the clear, real and present danger, which digital crimes represent for the survival of human civilisation, sustainable economic growth and development.Originality/valueThis paper dwells on the infinite potentiality of deploying the instrumentality of national and international law to deter, control and prosecute the myriad of cybercrimes.