UK police chiefs mull regional cybercrime squads British police chiefs are drawing up plans to set up regional "cybercrime" squads along the lines of existing teams tasked to handle anti-terror operations. The idea - still in its formative stages - is the brainchild of the Association of Chief Police Officers, and reflects concern that existing efforts are not enough to keep …
That's all well and good, but the people/victims you'll be dealing with will feel like they are getting a better more caring service if they know the person in investigating the crime is a hundred miles away and knows nothing of the local area.
Policing of this short should be regional it makes a big difference to the efficiency and resources available.
1. As ACPO Ltd is composed of fully politicised left wing fast tracked officers who don't understand what their response officers actually do, of course they don't get it.
2. ACPO Ltd are proud, on their website, of being in "EQUAL AND ACTIVE PARTNERSHIP" with our elected government. They formulate policy so that the Home Office minister has an escape clause (apart from "I don't understand my brief"). [www.acpo.police.uk/]
3. This is all part of delivering the Brussels agenda - regional everything, reporting directly to Brussels. Once the Irish have been bludgeoned into voting for the same treaty as they rejected last time, then England is abolished.
Beer because there isn't a bread and circuses icon.
I don't get it - what good would would having numerous regional 'cybercrime' (ugh!) units serve? Online crime is not a regional phenomenon and should not be treated as such. I'd love to hear ACPO's justification for this - no doubt they'll cite the need to have such crimes tackled at 'a grass roots level' , etc, but you know this is just another unelected quango rattling the tin and trying to massage the news agenda...
Bear in mind the police appear to avoid co-operation when a crime is in two different areas, for example the recent fraud of Robert White suppliers of photographic equipment they have been deemed to be 'less than helpful'
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/Nikon_DSLR_fraud_involved_false_BBC_purchase_order_update_news_284480.html
Whilst it appears on this occasion they 'could do better' their actions, or lack of them dosnt instill much confidence that they have the right approach.
"whose modest £7.4m three-year budget has been criticised by some observers as insufficient." Not to the right man for High Profile Spending to Raise the Level of Perception into the Realms of Virtualised Control of Binary Operating System Streams.
Or is that A.N.Other with Advanced CyberIntelAIgent ProgramMing to be so insufficiently funded/budgeted for.
But then such is/was always the enigmatic initial fate of future realised destinies.
When the Future appears, is IT easily surely funded, with Novel Innovative Imagination Showing the Ways IT has Taken and Followed.
"The strategy of establishing regional e-crime squads and nationwide training of front-line officers is seen as a way of plugging gaps in a national strategy to combat cybercrime, which is still in the process of being implemented." .... by the very nature of the cyber environment, is regional e-crime merely a servering tentacle to a Grand Master Hub and Past Masterly Hubris, for any such crime would be by InterNetional Syndicate ..... and One would be Prosecuting Thoughts when Launching/Piloting Virtual Investigations.
Normal Rules of Engagement do not exist in CyberSpace .... and neither do Laws for Policing. To Proceed any further will XXXXtraOrdinarily Render a Virtual State of Decidedly and Designedly Ambiguous Origin....... and a Blank Canvas for Painting with the Future.
Surely Creating a Beta Policed State with Total Information Awareness Facilities and Guiding Instruction, would be an Attractive Destination to Visit and Enjoy Discovering the Power of Dreams with their Transparent Subliminal Sharing of Mutually Insatiable Desire for Naked Passions ....... although that might be more for Beta Directional Control in e-vice squads. :-)
When Sinful Vice MetaDataMorphs into Glorious Pleasures are its Practices to be Criminalised rather than Lauded and Shared?
"We are trying to develop a more consistent approach to handling cybercrime as part of the development of an e-crime strategy,"
like the consistent approach they have to responding to day to day incidents, too busy, probably your fault you got robbed/conned, and theres nothing they can do about it anyway.
Can't decide on this one - the internet is not regionalised, but if you expect to engage with victims/circumstances on the ground, then you would need to be regional.
The perpetrator and the victim are *highly* unlikely to be in the same region, so how would that cross-territory interaction happen?
Then there is the fact that this could represent a welcome slight change in career direction for a bit of variety, for which it would need to be regional (as I'm not moving to London).
@fremlins Quite agree about the distance thing but presumably they may need to physically impound kit, and being familiar with the local criminal scene may be useful occasionally. Also remember that each chief constable is very jealous of his powers.
As for ACPO - the membership is all the chief constables of the police forces, probably nobody is better placed to propose strategy for police forces... :-) the "private company" thing is only so they can sell expertise outside the UK and get tax breaks on expenses.
@Jeff - keep taking the pills.
I don't think a regional cybercrime squad is enough. We need local cybercrime squads as well. Then we can add in community neighbourhood watch cybercrime squads, policed by loyal state citizens.
Shhhsss... Its good to see they know how the Internet really works. All this remote access virtual world stuff is clearly for amateurs. Real professionals have a wifi enabled street corner bobby on the beat kind of in your face style 21st century community policing methodology. Real cutting edge stuff.
I know, why not have a centralised e crime centre, which sub-contracts arrests and other foot work to regional normal police teams. That way they only need one kind of local officer. But I guess that'll never happen as they are to busy playing their power games of who has the biggest most important team with the highest arrest records. Which goes a long way to also explaining why they now want to expand their team into e-crimes. Its business development for people who don't have a trade. More money for the heads of bigger policing departments, all played out to the sound of the team leaders jostling for power.
Meanwhile, "Janet Williams, head of intelligence and covert policing at the Metropolitan Police, is pushing ACPO's e-crime strategy."
Huh, what? ... say that again?!? ... ok, first off, "intelligence and covert policing" ... err ok, spying in other words. Then we have the spy department wanting to extend its department using an e-crime strategy. Ok I can understand international spies. They are the famous real James Bonds and been the subject of so many films for many decades. Them I understand, but local spying? ... using an e-crime strategy. That's moving into a very dodgy area. That's home land spying. Where does policing end and home land spying start?
We seem to be in this continuous growth phase of policing of the Internet as they continuously sell FUD about the Internet as an excuse to gain power over the Internet and therefore effectively power over all of what people say online. When are they planning to draw a line, or is it feature creep all the way until we have a total Big Brother world?
I'm inclined to echo the sentiments of the majority of other posters. (I can't even understand the comments from Amanfrommars, regrettably).
"It's hoped that regional cybercrime units could take some pressure off the new Police Central e-Crime Unit, whose modest £7.4m three-year budget has been criticised by some observers as insufficient."
My advice to them would be this: don't start regional e-crime centres - that's foolish as ecrime is not tied down to any one location. Instead, have some local officers who actually WORK for the Police Central e-Crime Unit. That way they can visit and interview people who have been victims of e-Crime but there will actually be communication between police in the various regions.
The Internet Fraud Reporting site has been delayed again until 2010 which frankly is unacceptable. I would expect the same delays, lack of focus and resources will plague this latest idea. Although, I would love to be proved wrong.
Goodness knows that victims simply do not get the help from enforcement agencies they deserve.
Because it HAS to be regional!
By having separate regional teams you make it quite easy: (a) to justify the big fooking database you need to 'facilitate co-operation and collaboration' between the regions, (b) to accumulate a bigger budget, and (c) to shuffle the blame when the wheels come off.
D'oh! Clearly an epic 'win-win-win'!!
A Cyber Squad of Police officers, who are contactable via email and website support tickets.
They don't really exist as humans, other than a X member of Geek Squad working away in a control room, filtering through all the various messages into categorys of Urgent, Non-Urgent and passed by date.
With a black and silver gradient coloured website, with the occasional blue flash to keep a visitor entertained, and whose jurisdiction will be limited to regions.
Web victim from Somerset: Help I've been robbed of £10.65, the geezer in China has sent me the digital camera he/she was selling on Ebay.
Cyber Squad reply: Please contact Ebay for assistance.
Web Victim from Surrey: Help, my 14yr old son is viewing porn on his new laptop we got him for xmas.
Cyber Squad reply: Please install the appropriate parental control software to prevent this from happening or take the damn thing off him.
Overall, yet more wastage of Taxpayers money. The police already have powers to confiscate PC equipment where applicable and to view emails etc. Or is this a case of the Regional Cyber Squads being set up to entrap people on the net, because they are pretty much useless are preventing and solving crime in real time?
The Regional Idea goes back a long way, and I want to see A.I. implementations of Barlow and Watt.
More seriously, while Regional Crime Squads have gone badly wrong in some cases, there would be a fear that a National CyberCrime Squad would be dominated by the Met. And, while this would depend on data sharing, you also might have some systems diversity rather than a technical and intellectual monoculture,
Accounts of some several Arabistan holders not mentionedere may be "frozen" during some, say ten days somewhere in SWZ & LXB under the organised pressure of some several Muslim, Christian and Jewish families. Some stocks may fall simultaneously. KimCo is nearly about to get some of the same warning from he US non-officials to prevent doubled expenditures on international flights, hotels, security and another sh*t which nobody don't really much needere.*
*Plain Text, no discs, no reflector.
"Syndicate" - what a coincidence, as usual, generally; does one can see the two digits of the number of the syndicate, at last?
73
that if I reported for example, the fact that someone tried to:
- access my wifi without permission
- broke whatever spam law we currently have in place
- has a uk based website that doesn't meet the business regulations
- has a uk based website with fraudulent claims on it regarding a product
- signs my credit card up to a premium website i;ve never heard of
etc
the plod will actually *do* something?
or is this going to be focussed on trying to find out who hacked an MP/Celeb/Local politico's email and sold the results...
if its the latter why should we care where its based, after all a call centre the other side of the world can spout "its a civil matter" or "its a grey area"
given the way plod react to crimes against the general public, and the fact they won't even accept reports of credit card fraud from the public I can;t see this making a huge difference to my every day life
And here is part of a much bigger picture which has one rightly asking of the Blighty Effort for Virtual Control. Does it exist at all, or is it to be a Private Venture bought in to plug up Real National Security Vulnerabilities with no Practical Defence ....... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/technology/24cyber.html?_r=1
Quite what bright spark thought to think that CyberSpace would benefit from Military Input, is a Novelty requiring some Heavy Duty Innovative XSScripting, with more than just a Normal Intelligence Leading Strategy and Critical Infrastructure Protection, for it to be Successful.
What the heck do the police know about attempting to secure cyberspace. They in all probably are forced to use Windows XP or Windows Vista, that is not an endearing comment, but coming from a old cyber-space hound, I would pause to question there knowledge of cyber security! Plod in Space... OmG.. Funny!
NHS hospitals get computers hacked, pwned and whatever, ... UK schools, college (and Uni's? (with apologies for the theoretically superfluous apostrophe but it sort of looks nicer if the apo is there) provide botnets, ...
How much does the IT industry generate in UK, how dependent are organisations on those IT services and kit?
So why oh why is it taking so long for policing action to kick in?
Every bobby knows that if something is left to fester then fester it will?
Right! Firstly, I am plod. Secondly, I am a forensic analyst.
For too long now HMG have had their heads in the sand (I could have put that more indelicately) with regard to what now seems to be called eCrime. That is, crimes committed by, to, for or with a computer or other digital device. They refuse to even count it, they know that if they do, they will be forced to do something about it, and once Pandora's box is open the lid will never go down again.
My main concern about the whole regional debate is that it will introduce another layer of bureaucracy into an already fragmented structure. We already have a regional structure - every one of the 40+ UK Police Forces has a High Tech Crime Unit, if Mrs Miggins wants to report a Crime, 'e' or otherwise, she has a police officer 'just down the road'.
How much will it cost to set up something in the area of 8 to 10 new regional units? Surely that money would be better spent properly resourcing the existing 'regional solution'. It could also be put towards a suitable replacement for the NHTCU (I was never their biggest fan but they served a useful purpose as a national reporting centre).
Still, I ought to be happy that at least someone is thinking about the problem, but, until HMG decide that eCrime actually exists and represents a real and current threat to both the private individual and the corporate entity in this country we won't get anywhere.
Oh well, this isn't getting the backlog dealt with!!
Not getting my coat, going through the pockets looking for some spare change!!
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