Legal Cooperation Newsletter

INVESTIGATORS AND PROSECUTORS RECEIVE TRAINING AT WORKSHOP IN MEXICO TO STRENGTHEN THE FIGHT AGAINST CYBERCRIME

From June 23 to 25, 2010, Mexico City hosted a regional training workshop for the investigation of large scale crimes committed via the internet, jointly organized by the United States Department of Justice, the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Mexico, and the General Secretariat of the OAS, through its Department of Legal Cooperation of the Secretariat for Legal Affairs.

This event, which had participation of investigators and prosecutors from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic, was developed in fulfillment of one of the recommendations adopted during the VI Meeting of the Working Group on Cyber-Crime, within the process of the Meetings of Ministers of Justice or other Ministers or Attorneys General of the Americas (REMJA).

In addition, the facilitators for the event, who were from the United States Department of Justice and Secret Service, the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Mexico, and the OAS General Secretariat, principally focused their presentations as well as the training provided to the participants, on the uses, tendencies and new forms of crime committed via the internet; new investigative techniques based on computer forensics; and on legal aspects related to the gathering of electronic evidence and the importance of technical cooperation and reciprocal international assistance, including a presentation on the new developments, components and information contained on the Inter-American Cooperation Portal on Cyber-Crime, as a useful tool for cooperation and the exchange of information between member States in the fight against this type of crime.

This Mexico workshop is part of a broader cooperation program, sponsored by the Government of the United States, through its Department of Justice, and the OAS General Secretariat. In furtherance of this program, during the last two years, workshops have been held at the sub-regional level, in Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Chile, Panama and Paraguay, with the next event scheduled to take place in Peru later this year.

For more information on these workshops or on other OAS activities to support the fight against cybercrime, consult the “Inter-American Cooperation Portal on Cyber-Crime”.