Law enforcement agencies globally are struggling to keep up with increasingly sophisticated criminals in the battle against cybercrime, a leading academic from Kent has said.
International experts in computer crime gathered at Canterbury Christ Church University on Monday for a two-day conference on the growing problem.
Denis Edgar-Nevill (crr), who chaired the event and is head of the computing department at the university, spoke of the huge scale of the problem from spam and junk email to scams and child sex abuse on the internet.
“People should not believe cybercrime is being dealt with well or that it is something law enforcement agencies are on top of,” he said.
He said there were certain areas where police forces were doing “exceptionally well” but that the sheer scale of the problem was enormous.
Globally there are more than a billion internet users, a number which is growing fast.
The internet opens up endless possibilities such as enabling people to send and receive emails at the click of a button, chatting ‘live’ online and sharing and transferring files.
Tackling paedophiles who use the internet to groom children through chat rooms and create and share child pornography on the web was discussed at the conference and has been the subject of many high-profile cases.
This time last year a paedophile ring involving a woman, who used to work at a pharmaceutical company in Kent, were jailed as part of a Kent Police investigation called Operation Starlight, which traced the criminals’ activity using the internet.
Officers discovered extensive abuse of children under 13.
Mr Edgar-Nevill explained the kind of technology used by detectives, saying sophisticated processes were waiting not only to discover material but also set traps for people who accessed it.
“Paedophiles log onto a website and they cannot be sure they are talking to another paedophile or a police officer,” he said.
“But there is an enormous amount out there - it is a much bigger problem than many people will realise.
“The problem is mind-blowing in terms of the scale… It is a consequence of the technology becoming cheaper and more accessible.”
The aim of the conference was to discuss the provision of education and training courses to equip police officers and security companies to fight cybercrime.
“There’s a degree of catch-up all going on who becomes more sophisticated – law enforcement agencies or the criminals.
“There is a battle to keep up to date and track things around the internet and make sure people are prosecuted. It is a much bigger enterprise that most people realise.
“Cybercrime can touch everybody, all the way from receiving software viruses, which is a crime because it has done damage to your computer, to crimes against children and large-scale financial crimes.”
He added: “One of the concerns I have is that police forces at the moment have to be concerned with the more serious crimes.
“Very large financial crimes are a big problem but there are smaller level crimes which are not being addressed because there are not the resources.
“Law enforcement agencies are being swamped and there are not sufficient resources to cope with it.”
POSTED: 08/09/2008 08:30:00
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