Hutty claimed that Britain hasn't got enough qualified police officers to deal with the threat of electronic crime and cyberterrorism.
"It is surprising, to the uninitiated, just how few reports of online criminal activity actually result in a police investigation. It is surprising that so few police officers are trained and available to investigate the entire range of online fraud and attempted fraud. It is surprising that the few trained officers we do have do not have more support from, for example, computer forensics specialists," wrote Hutty on behalf of LINX, which represents more than 140 ISPs.
However, according to Hynds, every local police force has its own computer crime unit, which was not the case four years ago.
"These are staffed by specialist officers who are experienced in network investigation and computer forensics," Hynds said. Many of these officers have been heavily involved with child-pornography investigations such as Operation Ore, and it has been claimed that this work has taken up most of their time.
The British government is in the process of formulating a new e-crime strategy, which should be published this summer.
This strategy could include an increase in the resources available for fighting e-crime, in recognition that it is a growing problem.
"The growth in the use of technology is increasing the workload for high-tech police officers, as every crime can now have an Internet or computer-related component," said a source close to the e-crime strategy review.
Even something as low-tech as a burglary could involve hi-tech police officers. If a suspected criminal was arrested carrying a PDA, the device would need to be examined for evidence. This could take much more time than simply flicking through a diary for clues.
Talkback
Since Operation Ore has to date netted only 1 solitary actual child abuser out of 3500 arrests, cost about £35 million pounds to regional police forces, on top of tying the NCIS in knots, perhaps not the 'best' targetted police activity of recent times, especially since it is clear that a fair proprortion of these men had not actually signed up to a child porn site (Robert Del Naja is the prime example). The so-called 'evidence' that these men are or are likely to become child abusers is laughable. In Scotland the police did not even receive any allegations of abuse and have decided to scrap any future arrests.
Incidentally it has cost at least 11 men their lives as a result of suicide and with police estimates of a suicide rate of 5-7% per arrest, the actual figure may be closer to 200.
Bear in mind that we are only 50% of the way through the Op ore list and add to that the 12,000 names on the new 'Regpay' list that the Danes have started acting upon and we have a ticklish dilemma. Do we continue to expend vast amounts of valuable child protection time and money, chasing men who have an unpleasant but harmless fantasy (creating quite a few fatherless children in the process) or do we make rather better use of valluable forensics and protection staff in targetting actual abusers.
If there was a hi-tech offices at each station it would be represented in "The Bill" often aclaimed as an acurate mirror of the Police.
But e-crimes (credit card fraud etc) are already dealt with by NHTCU, NCIS ( National Criminal inteligence) SFO. As a new threat appears there is a new squad and no centralisation. Despiste the number of Squads and high levels of computing for each squad there is Very little sharing of information. Why? because it put's there cushy job at risk. less than half the staff at these squads do not have access to send or recieve external email. Why? because there is No business benifites
I have just been scammed for $21500 I live in the UK and the Police are a total waste of space, they are not interested in the slightest.
what the hell do you have to do in order for someone to take notice and try to help you in finding these lying cheating thieving scumbags.
I have IP addresses, IP providers. internet headers, all the stuff to trace this low life back to his house, but the police dont give a dam!!
It sucks big style