Strengthening e-crime legislation in the UAE: learning lessons from the UK and the EU

The electronic revolution brought with it technological innovations that are now integral to communication, business, commerce and the workings of governments all over the world. It also significantly changed the criminal landscape. Globally it has been estimated that crime conducted via the internet (e-crime) costs more than €290 billion annually. Formulating a robust response to cybercrime in law is a top priority for many countries that presents ongoing challenges. New cybercrime trends and behaviours are constantly emerging, and debates surrounding legal provisions to deal with them by increasing online tracking and surveillance are frequently accompanied by concerns of the rights of citizens to freedom, privacy and confidentiality. This research compares the ways that three different legislative frameworks have been navigating these challenges. Specifically, it examines the legal strategies of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU). The UAE is comparatively inexperienced in this area, its first law to address e-crime was adopted in 2006, sixteen years after the UK, and so the express purpose of this study is to investigate how e-crime legislation in the UAE can be strengthened. Drawing on a range of theoretical resources supplemented with empirical data, this research seeks to provide a comprehensive account of how key e-crime legislation has evolved in the UAE, the UK and the EU, and to evaluate how effective it has been in tackling cybercrime. Integral to this project is an analysis of some of the past and present controversies related to surveillance, data retention, data protection, privacy, non-disclosure and the public interest. An important corollary of this research is how e-crime legislation is not only aligned with political and economic aims, but when looking at the UAE, the discrete ways that legislation can be circumscribed by cultural, social and religious norms comes into focus.