Senior Superintendent of Police in charge of the Kingston and St Andrew Central division, Fitz Bailey, has called for legislation to be implemented to help protect residents from identity theft.

Bailey pointed out that with the increase in cybercrimes being committed in Jamaica, there was urgent need for policies to be implemented.

"One of the challenges we have as a country is that there is not adequate legislation to deal with the issue of identity theft. What we are using today as law enforcement is the antiquated Larceny Act, and I believe it is time we have a review of our laws," he said.

Emergency response team

"For a person who compromises, for example an ATM (automated teller machine), the process involved in bringing that matter to court is a lot of complication and we need laws that will prevent us from going through all those processes to identify a crime," he added.

He also called for a cyber emergency-response team to help fight cybercrime in Jamaica.

"If Jamaica is attacked right now, I'm not sure we have the capacity and the capability to respond and I believe what we need is a response team to mitigate any attack that might be brought on us by identity thieves," Bailey said.

"Our current cybercrime legislation is totally inadequate to deal with identity theft and a number of our institutions are exposed to cyber attack, and so we need an urgent establishment of laws and policies to assist in protecting our country," he said.