Thursday, July 05, 2007

Cybercrime pays... in the UK


I think we could all agree that cybercrime is a growing threat. Online fraud, phishing, viruses, hacking, DDoS, and spam, consumer are increasingly at risk from online security vulnerabilities that could translate in financial loss. What is the UK's response to the threat? "Call your bank".

The Guardian carries a story today on the UK's enforcement reply to cybercrime. Back in April the Association of Chief Police Officers announced that it would not be dealing with financial fraud conducted online, and that enforcement and reporting would have to go to the financial institution directly. The argument behind such move is that apparently, the banking industry is responsible by having credit cards in the first place. Yes, and the copyright industries are responsible for infringement by having music and movies. Lamest excuse for failure to regulate evah!

I'm literally loss for words. It seems like the Luddites have taken over and have decided that there is a vast section of criminal behaviour not worth pursuing. Let the private enterprises handle it! I guess that the only way in which some of these people will notice the Interweb is if they hear that there is cannabis being sold somewhere, or simply utter the word "pedofile" (misspelt on purpose because the correct spelling seems to attract some strange people to the comments section). While online fraud goes unpunished, the only hacker who has seen the sharp end of the law is Mr Gary McKinnon, guilty of hacking into NASA servers looking for aliens. You can get away with stealing credit card numbers, but Buddha forbid you are into aliens. Off to jail for 80 years you go.

2nd rant in two days, must need a holiday.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is utterly non-sensical, not to mention unjust and bad policy. As always is the final user the one who is burdened with dealing with Cyber-Crime related issues. Situational Crime Prevention or self-help are just one of the tools needed to combat cyber-deviance, but IMHO they must be part of a perfectly intervowen tapestry of measures (including Law, obviously)whatever happened to SOCA, then?

what about non-savvy users? Elderly people?

Let's see what happens when we hear the mega-corporations outcry!