Online hate crimes on the rise, but a cybersecurity expert says they're rarely reported

The pandemic-led shift to virtual meetings has given rise to a new platform for hate crimes — like the Zoom bombing Waterloo regional police are investigating. But it's rare these invasions of an online space are reported and prosecuted, a cybersecurity expert says. 

In June, the Coalition of Muslim Women Kitchener-Waterloo (CMW) organized an online vigil to honour the four members of the Afzaal family killed in an anti-Muslim attack in London, Ont.

Roughly 800 people from the Waterloo region took part in the call before being bombarded by several individuals allegedly posting racist and Islamophobic slurs in the chat — and police are now investigating it as a hate crime.

Mark Sangster, vice-president of Waterloo-based cybersecurity firm eSentire, said Zoom bombings, even those clearly motivated by hatred, often go unreported.

"I think that's the problem is a lot of people are suffering in silence here and we're never really going to know the full extent of it," he said. "Zoom bombing on the surface looks like sort of a petty nuisance, [but] the reality is it can be a lot more dangerous. 

"I think it can be a lot more destructive to the victims in the sort of invasiveness, the emotional pain that it can create."

Those sentiments echo the experiences that the Coalition of Muslim Women Kitchen-Waterloo has heard since staff kicked intruders out of the Zoom call. 

Participants were left traumatized, said the coalition's executive director, Fauzia Mazhar.

But she said the categorization of the attack as a hate crime investigation is encouraging and will hopefully encourage others to report these events to police.  

"This is a breakthrough moment," Mazhar said in a news release. "So often incidents like these go unaccounted or unreported. I am happy that it is being recognized for what it really is — an Islamophobic hate attack."

How perpetrators will get charged

Although the incident is being categorized as a hate crime by the WRPS, questions remain on what charges police will or can pursue once finding the perpetrators.

According to Statistics Canada, Canadians self-reported 223,000 hate-motivated incidents in 2019. But police investigated fewer than one per cent of them as hate crimes.

Canada's Criminal Code outlines two designated hate crimes under Sections 318 and 319, which include advocating genocide and the wilful promotion and inciting of hatred. Another, under Sec. 718.2, focuses on how hatred has affected or motivated a crime and can be used by the Crown for the purposes of sentencing. 

But Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said the public's perception of a hate crime does not often line up neatly with those legal definitions.

"Police often do not [do] the extra legwork to determine whether or not something was hate motivated," Balgord said.

"When they do, it's not always clear that the Crown attorney uses that in court to show the judge that there's extra sentences applied. We have no data whatsoever to track how often that happens."

Waterloo Regional Police's public information officer said he cannot speculate on the types of charges that may get laid in the Zoom bombing as the investigation progresses.

"Generally speaking, in hate-motivated crimes, investigators would need to establish that a criminal offence has occurred and that hate or bias towards the victim(s) must have motivated the criminal offence," Const. André Johnson said.

The role of cyber security

Sangster said organizations can follow cybersecurity practices to help protect themselves.

Using built-in corporate and security tools Zoom offers, like waiting rooms, disabling chats and disabling file sharing, can help keep intruders out, Sangster said.

"Any time you share information over the internet, there's an inherent risk that either unwanted parties can participate in your conversation or your posts, or that information can in some way be stolen and used. But on the flip side, I actually feel in a lot of ways, it can be more secure than say an in-person meeting."