A Study - Potential E-crime Threats on e-Government of Maldives

ABSTRACT

E-Government initiative of Maldives has undoubtedly invited new forms of crimes against the government agencies. The legal system which does not cover electronic crimes is a major bottleneck in circumventing these crimes. This paper would discuss current and future potential e-crimes on the e-government of Maldives, and highlight on technical and legislative countermeasures.

1- Introduction

Maldives, as any other Nation, has been working hard to close gaps in emerging technology and to engage Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in providing fast, reliable, and resilient government services. The rapid growth of ICT was boosted by the government’s commitment to achieve the targets of United National Millennium Declaration (United Nations Resident Coordinator, 2006).

In the UN Global E-Government Survey 2003, Maldives scored highest in the South-central Asian countries, with an E-Government readiness index of 0.410, taking 79^th place worldwide (United Nations, 2003). In the following years, this development has taken fast pace and some E-Government services have been further improved.

Although, advancement of ICT in the country is moving forward, this change is not seen in the legal system yet. There are no legislations for computer crime or electronic data protection. The current level of e-crime in the country is significantly low. However, it could be a bottleneck in the legal system, if such crimes are to emerge heavily and increase unexpectedly.

The following sections in this paper would highlight on the E-Government initiative in Maldives, including its structure, current and future potential e-crime threats, and would recommend technical and legislative measures to reduce and circumvent the discussed problems.

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Awards & Recognition for the poem 'Caught in Loneliness'

How long has it been since my last post. Hehe. I'm lagging behind. Don't worry about that, as I am here with some good news today.

Some of you might have read a poem I wrote last year titled 'Caught in Loneliness'. Well, a few days after posting it here, I submitted it to a contest on poetry.com. I did not anticipate anything. I didn't get any feedback for that for a long time.

They took their time and surprised me last week. I got few impressive e-mails, and to add on to that, few mails waiting at my previous address which I didn't care to pick up till last week. Yeah! Keep in mind that I'm careless. I still haven't given my new address to the phone company and some other places... Hehe..

Anyway, I got a few awards and some more recognitions for that poem.

Editor's Choice Award - Presented by Poetry.com and International Library of Poets.

Immortal Verses - It's to be featured on this anthology, deluxe hardbound edition, coming out soon! You could order it online at poetry.com Hehe..

The Sound of Poetry - It has been selected to be recorded in this 33 track, three-CD set, with 1 track for each poem. These 33 poems are selected from all the poems that had won Editor's Choice Award.

Noble House Poet Fellowship Award 2007 - Not only a certificate; includes a gold pin (24-karat) wow!

The best poems and poets of 2007 - It's a new book, to be published soon, with 1 page for each of the selected 200 poets. I've been asked to write a new poem for that ;)

Distinguished Member - Nominated by the Board of directors and advisory committee of the International Society of Poets.


By the way, that poem is in 'Poets Choice - Rate my Poem' contest now. You could go and vote here.

I don't find that poem so great and it's been a while since I lost interest in writing poems. What the heck! Maybe I should give another try.

Cheers!
Hammett

P.S. Hope you wouldn't mind typos and grammatical errors. I'm in a rush :)

Reincarnation - possible?

Hello guys........

I apoligise for disappearing from my e-life. I know it's been a while. Battling through an arcade of stress and puzzles about life, I landed in Male' about a month back. As much as I wanted to surprise friends and family, some how to 'my surprise' most of them were expecting me. Information disclosure; that won't happen next time... Hehe..

I had a great time there. It was so good to be back home though it wasn't after that long. You know how it feels like, don't you? I was on vacation and didn't get much time to get to work (updating blog and all). You know what! Actually, my timing was great as if I was planning to attend Rockstorm Chapter 2, which I wasn't. Hehe... It was an amazing show performed by selected few bands from last year and the stunning Malaysian band, not to mention Fasylive.

After 2 weeks of homely food, coffee hopping and teasing close friends (;P) I'm back here again and got busy and then got busy with other things. Now that I've figured out most part of the 'Puzzle of Life', I'm reconstructing it wisely. I have been through reincarnation. Is that scary?

I would try to keep updating this space as much as I could and would be back soon with more stuff. Actually, I got a lot of things to write here. However, I don't want to write too much today and bore you guys. Keep coming back for more. :)

Cheers!

LIFE is a PUZZLE

I went shopping day before yesterday, and ended up in a bookshop for several hours, reading almost every book there. Yep, I did it,;just the cover though. ;) . I bought a few novels. One of that is 24 Declassified – Vanishing Point by Marc Cerasini. I didn’t know about the novel before, but it’s a series of books based on the TV show 24; the hit FOX series. It's the fourth book in the series, the first one is Operation Hell Gate. Eight books already in the stores and the author is still busy writing more.

I came home with something else, that I haven’t bought in a very long time; a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. Actually, I wanted to buy a 1000 piece puzzle, but the finished-size of that is so big that it won’t fit on my table. I started working on it that night, and finished in 30 minutes. Wow, can I really do that! No, I cannot!. I sat at my table constructing this interesting and colourful thing and it took me almost 3 hours to just complete the outline alone. The pieces are very small and the picture itself is complicated. I still haven’t finished it because I got busy with some personal stuff today and I won’t be able to touch it for the next 2 days. Now that I’m here talking to you guys, that’s alright. :). I really like this one, you know, because it represents re-creating that past to me (reconstructing something you already know). No wonder why it intrigued me to write this article.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that life itself is not different from a jigsaw puzzle, except that we don’t see the clear picture of how the finished-piece would look like. Every day we move several pieces of this enormous puzzle consciously or subconsciously; every thought, every decision and we breath we take is all about solving it. It’s sovery intricate and obscure. Things we do, that may seem insignificant to us, would have an effect on this jigsaw.

When you are constructing a puzzle, you would misplace pieces and it might seem perfect there then. But, as you go along, you’d realize the mistakes and you definitely have the chance to change it accordingly. Is it the same in life? Why not? You misplaced a piece today, yesterday, or 10 years back. You could always change it (If not all the time, most of the time) and move it to where it belongs. Some of your actions in the past that you believed as the right thing then, might not be worth that much now. As time goes, you’d get a better understanding of it and you would figure out things that need to be changed. Even if it is a piece that seemed right for a decade, isn’t it? Then why should we regret some things, if not all, in the past.

Embrace and appreciate everything you have done, everything that has happened in your life. Most of the time, we live it up so fast, without taking time to appreciate little things that shaped the life we live today, and the person we are today. Some of us are too busy with work or studies, jumping on the staircase of life. Stand still, just for a moment, turn around and grasp the picture you created. Acknowledge it and don’t ever forget to criticise. You would see a lot of boo-boos; nobody is perfect. You gotta be more worried if it's "perfect". In such a case, I might hire a private investigator :)

Don’t sit back and cry, put an effort to reconstruct it. You picture doesn’t have to look beautiful to others, though yours, mine and everyone else's pictures are connected somehow. It doesn’t mean that you have to totally sacrifice the happiness and beauty of your life for others. It's just me thinking out loud. Maybe it'll be good for you to think about this as well and I do welcome criticism. 

Good luck with your zillion piece puzzle. :)

I would be unavailable for about a day or two at the most. You guys have a great time here; I’d be back soon... Cheers!!

Hammett

Image taken from here.

Mind Tortures the Innocent Body

Laying there lost in sensation,

Heart following music’s pulsation;

Locked in thoughts of uncertainty,

Will it be the same for eternity?

Mind would not rest at all, ever,

The exhausted body sometimes quiver.

All it need is a few hours of sleep!

Does it hear the sensations deep?

Cheers!!

Hammett

Image taken from here.

Stressed is Desserts spelled backwards!!

Exam stress huh! Why am I talking about it here? It’s crystal clear; that’s exactly what I’m going through right now. I hope I’ll be alright. I always tend to show too much stress when it comes to exams. Oh man, there’s a lot to talk if you want to listen to that! Maybe this is not the right time though.

Actually, having exam stress to a certain extent is a good thing. They say it helps sharpen concentration and performance and help to create the additional energy and momentum required to keep studying when we would be doing something else. Indeed! It would make you drive the extra mile, rather than becoming complacent. Too much stress, however, can be overwhelming and stop us from being able to study and get on with life.

For the last 3 days, I was studying in the library with my friends. I get really stressed and find myself completely lost sometimes. The little-white-thing-that-I-puff-away didn’t seem to help much though ;). When I’m questioned on certain topics, I know that I’ve read it but I can’t recall it. I didn’t realize what really was going on till yesterday.

Library is not the perfect environment for me to study. It’s a huge place, and supposed to be silent. You see people talking and moving around. In the library, you’ll always get distracted. Since yesterday, I’ve being studying in my room. It’s remarkable how much I have crammed in a day. I shouldn't have gone to the library at all. Yes, actually I do. Remember, no REGRETS! That’s a new lesson for me.

To study, I need to be alone.

Things I do, I do better on my own.

It helps to have some music on.

And coffee turns the machine on.

Studying long hours at a stretch, doesn’t help at all. It’s important to do something else after about an hour of studying. I haven’t being around this place much, lately. Still, I find time to peep in once in a while. It helps, you know! Sometimes you have to find a way to totally forget about studies. Then when you get on back to it, your mind would be more fresh and you wouldn’t be in a place where you keep on thinking that you’re pushing yourself too hard and you know... Am I right?

I reckon you would be thinking why I’m writing about exam stress, since I want to forget about it and concentrate on studying. Talking about it helps. I’m feeling much better now. Thanks guys for reading my e-thoughts. I got to get back to more cramming. Wednesday is the bitter-sweet day. :)

Time for some desserts... chocolate chip cookies!!

Cheers!!

Hammett

Image taken from here.

Never Touch a Butterfly's Wing With Your finger!!!

This question came up while I was talking to a friend the other day, and out of my intense curiosity I ended up doing some research on it this subject. Thought I would to share my findings with you guys.

When you touch a butterfly, you get dust on your hands. Ever wondered what it really is? I did, but never thought much about it, before. Butterflies and moths belonging to the genus Lepidoptera, meaning scale-wing, are named referring to the scale cell structures on its wings.

Butterfly has four wings; a pair of forewings and a pair of hind-wings. These wings are composed of two very fine membrane layers (chitonous) which are supported and nourished by tubular veins (also functions in breathing). Tiny sockets in these membranes hold each individual scale, providing further support to the delicate wing. The scales are arranged in such a pattern, overlapping each other like shingles on a roof. Butterfly wings will not be structurally sound and strong if you remove a bunch of them, thus harming the small insect. Ridges of our fingerprint, or oil on our skin, is more than enough to pry these wing scales loose, even with the slightest (caring) touch. The dust that comes off, when you touch a butterfly is its wing scales. Be careful next time you wish to touch it! You could endanger it’s life without meaning to harm at all.

The hindwing contains scent scales, which are modified wing scales, that release pheromones. This chemical, called androconia, attract opposite sex of the "same species". There are often ultraviolet coloured patterns on the wings that are only visible to other butterflies.

Lovely patterns on butterfly wings are not only beautiful, but wonderful. Fluorescent patches on the wings functions similar to Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) which are found in everything from computer and television screens to traffic light. A LED developed at MIT uses two-dimensional photonic crystals with layered structures for controlling of emission direction. This was a huge step up in performance, compared to previous standards of LED. Researchers have shown that butterflies use an identical method for communicating to each other over long distance.

The beautifully coloured wings of butterflies manipulate light using engineering tricks similar to those found in digital displays. The wing scales which work like photonic crystals, absorb ultraviolet light and re-emit it. The re-emitted light interacts with fluorescent pigments to produce beautiful colours.

There's so much science behind the beauty of butterfly.

Dedicated to those of you who adore butterfly!!!

Cheers!!

@Hammettz

Image taken from here.

Addressing the damages of COFFEE

I wrote an article on Sunday about how we benefit from coffee, mostly emphasizing on health. For you guys, who haven’t read it, here’s the link. My dear friend, Sarey, after reading that article, sensed bias in it. That’s true actually. I was totally ignoring the bad effects of that. He wrote an article highlighting on how caffeine could kill you, with reference to past cases as well. Here’s the link for his article. Sarey, I’m honoured to have a friend like you, and thank you for taking time to address it. I would highlight on some other bad effects of coffee, not mentioned in his article.

Everyone knows that coffee is a stimulator. It gives adrenals a kick, causing in production of more adrenalin (handles stress) and more cortisol (which is also known as the stress hormone) resulting in a short-term benefit of heightened awareness. The quantity required to boost this get higher and higher making you want to drink more and more to get the required effect. It could get very addictive and ultimately could result in adrenalin exhaustion. The raised level of cortisol results in constriction of blood vessels, harder pumping of the heart and higher blood pressure.

Caffeine and some other substances produced by high heat of roasting (creosote, pymdine, tars and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). These substances are acknowledged carcinogens (cancer-causing substance or agent). However, coffee has never been conclusively linked to cancer. At least, not yet.

Coffee contributes to dental caries which is an infectious disease damaging the structure of teeth, and causes tooth decay or cavities. It causes more frequent urination and subsequent loss of various vitamins and minerals such as B, C, calcium, iron and zinc. It also hampers the absorption of essential minerals and vitamins such as magnesium, zinc, iron and B’s.

Caffeine in coffee may aggravate osteoporosis by leaching calcium from bones, may also increase intraocular pressure in people with glaucoma, and aggravates stress in people who drink it every day. Many of the chemicals in coffee (including decaf) irritate the lining of stomach causing an increase of stomach acid leading to digestive disorders.

Coffee been the most heavily pesticide sprayed crop, also affects quality of sleep. It’s not an exhaustive list of bad things, but quite a bit huh! Still, it’s widely believed and proved that it is far healthier than the damages.

DO NOT drink coffee if you’re pregnant, if you have high blood pressure, heart disease, gall stone, high cholesterol, or a tendency for blood clots or stroke. Try to avoid coffee at all, if you have mental illness, insomnia, or anxiety.

For those of you who doesn’t have any of those problems and drink coffee daily, you could consider taking a good vitamin or mineral supplement to replace lost electrolytes, minerals and vitamins due to diuretic effects. Don’t forget to drink PLENTY of WATER.

After reading about benefits of coffee, most of you guys felt good that you drink coffee. There were some good comments. You’ve the right to know the damages it causes as well. Hope this was informative although coffee drinkers certainly wouldn’t enjoy reading it.

Cheers!!

Hammett

Image taken from here.

FACEBOOK – Application Requests – Could it be considered spam?

I’ve being away from Facebook for about 2 days or less. Not because I got fed up with that, I’m a bit busy with assignments and exams these days, so trying to disallow it from distracting me. I’m very distraction-prone. :-S.

Anyway, I logged-in to Facebook to see what’s going on there. To my surprise, I had more than 80 invitations for different applications built on Facebook, of course, from my friends, and more than 100 notifications. That’s all within 36 hours or less. I’m mostly have Facebook open, and do whatever I do with requests as soon as I get it.

I don’t add or join most of these applications. There are several thousand applications on Facebook platform. How can one person possibly have all those applications? I don’t want to keep these requests unattended and have to go through the hassle of clicking ‘ignore... ignore... ignore...’ every time. For a single application, there could be requests from 10, 20 or more friends and each would be separate. Couldn’t Facebook, group all requests for each application, so that it would be convenient for the user to either add or ignore the requests with one click. How much time could we save?

Recently, they have grouped the application requests shown on the home page; 5 facelift request, 100 kick-my-a** requests, 1000 other requests. It’s a good improvement. Prior to that, there’d be a long list of requests on the right- sidebar of your home page.

Could it be considered SPAM? Some of the applications wouldn’t allow you to use it unless you invite at least 20 of your friends. “You did not invite enough friends. You must invite 17 more friends”. What the heck!! They are forcing you to invite. They are pushing you to send spam. Some of the applications have a ‘skip’ button in the invitations page, that’s a good thing. I don’t know. Maybe I’m exaggerating. I was clearing up the requests and maybe the irritating ‘right-clicks’ made me write about this.

Is there a better way Facebook could handle this? There are quite lot privacy settings for most of the applications, and the default settings would allow these applications to access your data. These settings can be restricted, but average user won’t be aware of it. Is this a concern? I have got too many questions today, isn’t it? Seriously, we should be aware of Facebook and what's really going on behind it. It's growing rapidly, with hundreds of thousand of new users daily. A lot could happen there. Consider this one of the few warnings!!

Well I’m so busy these days. I’ve being working on an assignment lately; due this week. And got 2 exams coming up next week and I haven’t started reading for that yet. So, doesn’t get much time to do anything else. I might be a little less frequent in updating this, and visiting all of your blogs. Sorry about that! I would be hosting a BIG party here on this blog after my exams... :P

Cheers!

Hammett

Image taken from here.

Coffee Is More Beneficial Than The Damages It Cause

Don’t disagree with me yet!! First have a look at what I have to say. I drink a lot of coffee every day. So does most of you. It’s hard to start the day without a coffee. Coffee is both healthy and unhealthy at the same time and we know it. It has been proved that coffee keeps you healthier than the damages it cause. So why not drink 6 cups a day?

I’m not going to elaborate on the unhealthy part. ;). University of Scranton revealed that coffee is America’s no.1 source of antioxidants, an important compound that protects your body from many diseases; mostly chronic diseases. Antioxidants help stave off cancer, heart diseases, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, and also lessen premature aging. This study ranked black tea as the second source of antioxidant and banana as third. Their advice for coffee drinkers is to spread coffee throughout the day. :)

Caffeine, the main ingredient of coffee, is used to for the treatment of Somnolence (drowsiness), migraine, and fatigue. It is also used to boost the action of pain relievers. It lowers your risk of Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and colon cancer. Having 3 cups a day reduces diabetes by a single digit, while 6 cups a day reduce it by 54%. Research has shown that men who take 4 to 5 cups of coffee (caffeinated) cuts the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease nearly in half compared to men who takes little or no caffeine daily. Caffeine enhances physical endurance, and protects against cirrhosis of liver (a disease causing damage and scarring of liver tissue and progressive decrease of liver functions). People who smoke tend to drink coffee more, and are at less risk to heart disease and liver damage than people who drink less. The more you drink the better it is. What’s that look? You don’t believe me? Google it!!! It’s not me who’s saying all this. More than 19,000 studies have been done on coffee and there’s lot of information available out there.

Coffee also contains substances responsible for giving anti-adhesive and anti-bacterial properties which help prevent dental cavities from forming. I wish it could make my teeth whiter :). It also helps in treating asthma and headaches. If you are an asthma patient, and you run out of medicine maybe at midnight, try drinking some coffee. One or two cups, maybe. They say it helps.

Coffee drinking kids perform better at school and it has been proved. It’s not because their mental ability gets better than others, but they stay more focused and awake in classes and exams. And no research has shown that coffee is harmful to children. A recent study from Brazil shows that children who drink coffee with milk each day are less likely to have depression than other kids.

Coffee could be very harmful to pregnant women. It is harmful to the central nervous system stimulation of the baby inside the womb and also affects birth weight. Heart patients are advised not to drink caffeinated coffee. Doesn’t mean they can’t drink coffee. Decaf is everywhere!!! But, if you are pregnant it’s wise to totally avoid coffee.

Bottom-line is if you drink coffee a lot, don’t feel guilty about it. Keep drinking more. Coffee is far more beneficial than it is harmful. We drink it to stay awake, to be more active and not to feel the fatigue of overworking; and it does a lot more than that. Go and have a Lavazza, Melitta, Boncafe’ or whatever you prefer. Let’s go for a coffee!!!

Cheers!

Hammett

Image taken from here.