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The e-crime epidemic

Posted on 23 Nov 2009 at 05:57

Meanwhile, CIFAS estimates the police investigate only about 1% of cases and that, in some cases, they've been unwilling or unable to devote time to the investigation or prosecution of identity fraud cases, even when given evidence relating to the fraudster's address.

Much of the current debate harks back to the 2006 decision to axe the National Hi Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) and make it part of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). SOCA isn't a police force - describing itself as an intelligence-led crime-detection agency - and its priorities are on heavyweight issues such as counter-terrorism, smashing drugs rings and people smuggling: £500 frauds on Ebay are off its radar.

According to written evidence from private company Secure Trade, since the demise of the NHTCU the public face of cybercrime fighting has been deeper undercover than a student on a wet winter's morning. "More resources need to be applied locally, nationally and internationally to cope with the growth in e-crime. SOCA's e-crime division is equipped only to tackle level three criminality (national and internationally perpetrated serious organised criminality)," says Secure Trade. "This leaves a significant gap in the law-enforcement response at a national, regional and local level."

SOCA claims the NHTCU's inclusion gives its 60 staff access to more resources, but admits that resource allocation remains tight and focused on high-level crimes. "There's always an issue of resources given by government, and these do have to be changed and allocated differently as trends in crime become apparent," says a spokesperson for SOCA. "There was little focus on drugs during the 1960s because people ignored the problem, and in the 1970s things changed and resources were allocated differently. To say e-crime is similarly in the ascendancy in importance and a growing problem would be the understatement of the year."

Bobbies on the virtual beat

With SOCA's gaze firmly fixed on organised crime, the public must rely on officers at their local police station, and the majority are untrained in dealing with e-crime. "If you go to a police station to report your crime, the situation is very patchy - there are few dedicated officers," says Sommer. "But it's a matter of luck as to what response you'll get, and you've probably less than a 5% chance of finding someone who understands the problem, and even then whether it's followed up depends on whether or not they think it's possible to make a conviction."

As ever, the problem of target-based policing is that funding decisions are based on checkbox results, good clear-up figures and value for money. If you can train someone to use a speed gun in an hour and they come back with a stack of driving offences and a healthy haul of fines, that's a good result. By contrast, there's little incentive to invest in e-crime forensics when the offences are extremely complicated to investigate and the chances of a successful prosecution are limited, especially as offenders are often based abroad.

Sommer also claims that many of the crimes reported aren't even logged in official figures. "You can go into a station to report it, but they might well say there's nothing they can do, they can't investigate - there's a suggestion that the police follow an unwritten rule that if there isn't a chance of solving a crime then it's best not to write it down, as that creates a data trail that would show up and spoil clear-up figures."

The heavyweight names signed up to the petition for a centre for e-crime tracking suggest the government should treat this as a priority, but there are other fundamental changes needed, and the UK could do worse than look overseas for solutions. The US Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, was recently praised by former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, as being "specifically designed to accept reports of people who've been defrauded over the internet, a problem that's particularly difficult to solve with geographical reporting arrangements. IC3 provides an analytical function and informs FBI work, and is linked to the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, which tackles internet and hi-tech crime." Connected thinking? What a revelation.