Cybersecurity guide for developing countries Another category of swindle involves the sale of imaginary services (university diplomas, diplomatic passports for non-existent countries, auctions of non-existent products, etc.). Espionage and intelligence work are also facilitated by the web, which makes it easy to illegally intercept information being transferred on the internet. It should also be noted that the systematic use of secure means of communication, such as encryption, by professional terrorists can help them to operate with greater security, by reducing the amount of information that is vulnerable to interception by law-enforcement authorities. The internet is a powerful medium that lends itself to the dissemination of ways of committing crimes and illegal acts, encouraging potential criminals. II.1.9.2 Crimes against persons The internet makes it possible for clandestine virtual communities to form around practices that are subject to severe legal sanction. This may involve pornography, paedophilia or so-called snuff movies (films showing scenes of violence and torture on real-life victims that can sometimes result in their death). This type of crime is commonly linked to human trafficking, which most often involves women and children. Films and photos can be shared, with greatly reduced risk of police detection. As the servers are frequently located in countries where law enforcement is absent or ineffectual, and with the use of private internet relay chat (IRC) services for very limited periods of time, peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges greatly increase the freedom of action of criminals. All of these illegal activities come within the province of common law. The question may be raised as to whether their industrialized, large-scale practice, made possible by the internet and by the freedom of movement of goods and persons, has transformed them into crimes against a part of humanity. Among the crimes against persons, other examples include infractions touching on privacy, personal image, professional confidentiality, and data privacy rights. Crimes specifically against minors include the dissemination of pornographic messages that may be seen by minors. II.1.9.3 Piracy The ease with which digital information can be reproduced has spawned a market for illegal copies. It accounts for many tens of billions of US dollars in losses for publishers of software, music and video films. It has also been observed that there has been a great increase in the number of scholarly and academic works resorting to plagiarism simply by copying existing documents from the web. There is a great variety of possible intellectual property infractions: forgery of an author’s work (including software), design, model, trademark, etc. II.1.9.4 Information manipulation Manipulation can take many forms, for example the leaking of internal documents in order to destabilize a company, sending e-mail requests for charity donations via false sites, etc. The internet lends itself to spreading rumours and disinformation. It also facilitates infractions against the media law, criminal incitement, apology of crimes against humanity, apology of and incitement to terrorism, incitement to racial hatred, historical revisionism (negationism), character assassination, insults, etc. 40 Cybercrime