back to article UK cops set up new £30m bases to nail cybercrooks

The UK is to establish three regional policing e-crime hubs as part of efforts to boost the capability of British police to tackle the growing problem of cybercrime. The new hubs, in Yorkshire and the Humber, the Northwest and in East Midlands, will each get their own three-officer team. Each will work alongside the …

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  1. Arrrggghh-otron

    But no geeks?

    A few bobbies with a couple of weeks training is all it takes? No on staff techies? Just gonna pump what's left of the budget out to external consultants?

    1. Mondo the Magnificent
      Holmes

      Yes, geeks... but not as we know them

      I have been dealing with various police High Tech Crime Units for over a decade since Operation Ore opened the floodgates of digital investigations and gave birth to the true HTCU/Cyber Crime units and the {then} National High Tech Crime Unit.

      Most of these "bobbies" happen to be well educated, many hold BScs, MScs as well as other accreditations, as in qualifications in EnCase and Forensic Toolkit (FTK) to name a few.

      These guys are exceptional and rest assured many of them will give a "geek" much more than a good run for his money when discussing technicalities of file systems, kernels and IP networking.

      The Met probably have the best unit on our island, but the synergy, collaboration and cooperation between forces has always been amazing.

      So, the new regional hubs' collaborating with the Met ensures that they will have some of the best investigators in the industry in this new joint venture

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        re: a decade since Operation Ore

        <i>"I have been dealing with various police High Tech Crime Units for over a decade since Operation Ore opened the floodgates of digital investigations</i>, Mondo the Magnificent<br><br>

        Operation Ore would have been sucessfull if they could guarantee that the people registering for the 'service` were the actual owners of the Credit Cards. But since Credit Card fraud over the Internet is so trivial, that renders legal proof most difficult. Not to mention that a lot of the names trawled up were too close to the establishment ...

  2. despairing citizen
    Joke

    the thin blue dotted line (with extra wide spacing)

    "will each get their own three-officer team."

    so a conservative £1.8bn of UK cyber-crime heading for terrorist funding, org.crime, et al. and we are going to get a whole 9 extra officers!

    so all the have to do is prevent or clear up £200m/pa of crime each, fighting every crook and terrorist on the planet with an internet connection.

    I am sure the officers will try their best, but the forlorn hope had a better chance

    Joke, because it is, and a very sick one at that.

  3. Mike Hunt 1
    Holmes

    Back in the day....

    Back in 2001/2002 the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit was set up with much flag waving and trumpet blowing. As part of their remit they funded posts in the then miniscule "Computer Crime" units of most of the UK police forces. These posts were funded on a rolling yearly basis, with the hope that the forces would then absorb these posts and take over the funding.......eventually the NHTCU was dissolved into the newly formed Serious and Organised Crime Agency.....then suddenly the wheel is re-invented and PeCU is then formed in another flag waving and trumpet blowing ceremony, and suddenly they are throwing public money all over the place like confetti. Hope they don't have the same really tight remits that NHTCU and SOCA had, which meant most jobs were, to quote Police parlance, "hutched" down to local force Hi-Tech / eCrime Units to sort out.....the saying "what goes around, comes around" certainly fits here....

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    given these "cyber" (erck vomit) police seem not to know what Steam is~~~~ well need I say more?

    1. Arrrggghh-otron

      Of course they do... it's what comes out of the kettle the WPC uses to make them all tea with!

  5. Crisp
    Flame

    Tough on Copyright Theft

    And tough on the causes of copyright theft.

    Who seriously thinks that these new cybercrime units are going to be used to catch actual criminals, like ones that rob peoples bank accounts?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      and dont forget that everybody is a pedo

      until proven innocent.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I feel like a career change

    With only 9 cyber-bobbies around, seems like a career in being a cyber-crook is a fairly safe option!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bank levy anyone?

    Why don't they fund the eCrime unit by charging the banks? They will be the main benificiaries anyway.

    They could apply it to any organisation with online financial transaction capability operating from UK offices or with UK customers (this would include the main retail banks). The banks might even prefer this since it would replace some aspects of their own operations.

    1. despairing citizen
      Big Brother

      Re "Why don't they fund the eCrime unit"

      they already do, it is called their security team, and it has more staff combatting online crime than the UK Police have.

      they also pay better than the police, so if any of our 9 new officers are really good at their job, you know where they will end up, especially as they will get given better tools and resources to do the job with

      One could also point to the vast amounts of corporation tax the UK Financial Services industry pays to HMG every year, which is in theory suppose to be used to protect the UK citizens and commerce from "bad people", such as crooks, terrorists, hostile governments, etc.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How to thwart cyber-crime

    Install Ubuntu ... www.ubuntu.com/

  9. irish donkey
    FAIL

    what the article doesn't mention is

    that crimes will be prioritised by the amount of damage they do so. i.e £££££'s

    So they will spend all their time chasing the high rollers meanwhile joe public will continue getting ripped off by crooks for a few £100 each time without fear of the police taking even a passing interest.

    So really no help to people like us then

  10. Graham Wilson
    Stop

    Will IT be more secure as a result? I doubt it.

    Shame the money isn't going into making IT systems more secure.

    After all, we've seen all too often that if IT security were compared with physical safes then much of it'd be made of tinplate.

    1. Graham Wilson
      Facepalm

      @Graham Wilson

      After reading "Google Wallet falls open after casual hack. Crack the PIN? No, just hit reset"

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/10/google_wallet_again/

      Reckon I'd change the above 'tinplate' to 'tissue paper'.

      (Seems we've learned precious little in IT security in past 30 years or so.)

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