Dedicated e-police would be welcome, but, asks Steve Guest, who will provide the money to finance them?


The House of Lords Internet security report makes for fascinating reading, not least because of the shock induced by their Lordships' familiarity with terms such as 'botnet', 'phishing' and 'silver surfer'.



The issues it addresses are crucial to the future of the Internet as a trusted medium. It starkly emphasises the woeful situation in which each of the 30 million or so adult Internet users find themselves, with potentially crippling attacks from 'cyber-criminals'.



The report calls for greater responsibility to be placed on ISPs to protect users. It also suggests that software-makers be responsible for foreseeable security vulnerabilities in products, and that banks be held liable for the losses incurred by online fraud.



The response of the CBI is, rather predictably, cautious about going this far. But there is an argument that, without appropriate legislation, companies have no incentive to provide further protection for end-users.



The report highlights the lack of resources within the police service for tackling e-crime. Unsurprisingly, the CBI response seizes upon this and suggests that the upgrading of capabilities would 'make a real difference'.



One wonders whether the projected £4.5 million budget of the mooted central e-crime unit would make such a difference - the original National High-Tech Crime Unit, now absorbed into the Serious Organised Crime Agency, had a budget of £25 million. Funding for local forces has expired and now we await yet another centralised, under-funded unit.



E-crime is pervasive and international. Local police forces are target-driven, forced by the Home Office into a tick-box method of prioritisation. I know of no force that lists hi-tech crime as a priority. In any event, the detection of such a crime has little value to performance targets if the offence has taken place outside the geographical boundaries of the force.



If the political will existed, a real difference could be made by establishing a dedicated national agency tasked with targeting e-crime. If industry were truly committed to increasing security (as they may become if they have to assume liability), it would be reasonable for them to share in the funding of such an agency.



I fear, however, that the eventual founding of such an agency may be motivated by a reaction to some devastating act of cyber-terrorism, rather than for the everyday protection of the individual.



Ex-high-tech crime unit chief Steve Guest runs computer forensic company Hitecc Data Services (www.hitecc.co.uk) and is chairman of the International Association of Computer Investigative Specialists