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The UK may be set for wholesale
changes in the way cybercrime is dealth with as the House of
Lords' Science and Technology select committee is looking at
different ideas it thinks may improve the current situation. The
final and comprehensive report based on evidence from many
experts in the technology field is due for publication in the
summer, but recent comments from Lord Broers, who heads the
Personal Internet Security sub-committee for the House of Lords,
indicate that new legislation may well be proposed.
Lord Broers made his comments at the 2007 InfoSec show in
London, where he delivered a keynote address. Apart from
mentioning the possibility of new anti-cybercrime legislation he
also told the public that one of the proposals would be the
establishment of a single cybercrime complaints centre that
would be based online and would function much as the US Internet
Crime Complaint Center. The UK website would probably be run by
the police, as Lord Broers believes they should be the first
port of call for victims of online crimes. However, he claimed
that currently police efforts to curb cybercrime are underfunded,
as the Metropolitan Police in London for instance only has one
person working on phishing cases.
In his address Lord Broers also criticised the current set-up in
which he feels too much responsibility for cybersecurity is laid
on the end-user. Speaking to members of the technology industry
he suggested that new laws could be introduced to redress that
balance, while he also criticised some companies such as
Microsoft for being too confusing when warning users of new
security threats. |
