Better statistics and centralised recording of computer
crime are the two main aims of Britain's
e-crime strategyunveiled last week by the
Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).
Details of the strategy were first revealed in Computer Weekly
almost three years ago.
Despite
government delays, it reflects a growing concern with the use
of computers and the internet to commit crimes that
dates back at least five years.
The strategy document also includes a definition of computer
crime: "The use of networked computers or internet technology to
commit or facilitate the commission of crime."
Acpo said it was committed to developing more reliable and
consistent measures of e-crime. It proposed the new National Fraud
Reporting Centre capture e-crime reports as well as fraud details.
This was despite problems such as under-reporting and
duplication.
Acpo said the internet allowed criminals to target potential
victims from anywhere in the world, and enabled a single e-mail
infected with malware to be sent to millions of recipients.
"The internet provides the criminal with a high degree of
perceived anonymity, as well as creating jurisdictional issues that
may impede rapid pursuit and prosecution of offenders," it
said.
It said there was no clear distinction between issues that
needed better regulation and those that required law
enforcement.
The immediate priorities were:
- To upgrade computer forensics to target e-crime resources and
cut forces' forensic backlog
- To improve the accuracy of e-crime recording
- To raise police understanding of e-crime and improve frontline
officers' skills
- To improve police capacity to investigate e-crimes
- To co-ordinate police response across the country
- To build effective partnership relationships with industry,
government and academia
- To educate the public on how they can protect themselves and
prevent e-crime
This depended on getting government to set the fight against
e-crime as a funding priority. The Police National e-Crime Unit
currently has about £7.4m until 2011.
The other main task was to get buy-in from industry, the police
and the rest of the criminal justice sector, it said.
Acpo also released a more
detailed structure of the e-crime programme and a best practice
guide for
computer forensics.
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- The fight against computer criminals has been a stop-go affair.
The government's first co-ordinated response was the formation of
the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) in 2001, along with 43
local e-crime units at force level.
- The NHTCU was taken into the Serious Organised Crime Agency
(Soca) in 2006. This created a gap at national level within the
police service. This means even large scale e-crimes that fell
outside Soca's drugs, arms, people and terrorism jurisdiction were
largely ignored.
- The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) Sue Wilkinson and Charlie
McMurdie carried on a skeleton operation until April 2008, when
Acpo set up its e-crime portfolio under the Met's Assistant
Commissioner Janet Williams.
- More recently, the National Police e-Crime Unit has been
instrumental in
taking down hundreds of websites that sold fraudulent or
unlicensed tickets to British football matches, and in
breaking up gangs that used the internet to steal and sell
customers' bank account
details.
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