Features

Political pain

So why does the government remain stubbornly opposed to a central e-crime unit? One answer could be funding. The Association of Chief Police Officers, for example, says there are plans to form a central e-crime co-ordination unit. However, the purpose of that division wouldn't be to collate reported incidents, but to help co-ordinate resources to provide each force with access to technical expertise.

"It isn't intended that the unit should routinely accept e-crime reports," writes DCI Charlie McMurdie in a report to the Metropolitan Police Authority. "The perceived need for a national e-crime reporting centre is often publicly voiced, but the strategy for this unit will concentrate on 'mainstreaming' e-crime across all police business.

"The prevalence of technology and internet use in the commission and facilitation of both new and conventional crime types is increasing exponentially, and to provide a bespoke response to any but the most specialist crimes, such as tackling botnets, would be counter-productive."

Yet even this scaled back idea of e-crime policing was well beyond budget the last time the officers explored the possible structure for the unit. "The total cost for the Police e-crime co-ordination unit is estimated at £4,482,550 per annum, including salaries, related pension and expenses, training, accommodation and equipment for the proposed unit," McMurdie claims. "At present, the Specialist

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Crime Directorate Computer Crime Unit consists of 12 members of staff, at a cost of £1.3m a year. The funding gap, therefore, amounts to £3.1m."

Lord Erroll, for one, is astounded that the government can't find such a paltry sum, especially when compared with the multibillion-pound spending on private sector-run projects, such as the NHS IT system. "When you consider how much is being paid to the top consultants on various projects, it's amazing there isn't enough funding to spare for projects such as this," he says. "Resources are being poorly allocated."

Part of the problem is that amid the "war on terror" and escalating street and gun crime, e-crime has slipped off the political radar - and police resources are governed by the Home Office. "E-crime was very fashionable with this government in the late 1990s, but now it's concentrating on ASBOs and terror and nothing else gets a look in," claims the LSE's Sommer. "The various bodies are all short of funding, but if you take, for example, the idea of a central reporting centre, they're only asking for a couple of million, which is peanuts in terms of the threat not having that information poses."

At the same time, minister Hazel Blears recently announced £70 million funding would be spent on funding websites to target Muslims in a bid to counter the threat of web-based extremism. "How can that sort of money be justified when there are areas of e-crime crying out for cash, but not getting a penny? It's outrageous," adds Sommer.

In the light of this penny-pinching, the UK consumer has little hope of getting e-crime resolved easily. The figures, such as they are, should be worrying enough, but the police are so underfunded and unprepared to tackle e-crime that only a tiny fraction of the offences reported are actually investigated. For example, the City of London Police recently told the Lords Science and Technology Committee: "We have to accept that law enforcement and the prison system aren't sufficiently resourced to deal with the volume of identity fraud in the UK."