Governments and e-Crime

I just read an interesting article BBC News. There seems to be a study by the UK government about e-crime and the fears of the citizens. The report cited a government survey that suggested more Britons feared internet crime than burglary.

Times changed. Five years ago – being helpless and not really understanding the problem – everybody blamed anybody. And to be fair, five years ago we fought vandalism. Today the economy of crime has changed and the organized crime is making a huge amount of money on the internet by fraud. What I do not get in these kind of articles: They always leave the feeling with me that everybody is trying to argue that the others have to act upon e-crime: There are calls for new legislation, for more responsibility with the user, for liability calls, for better law enforcement, for …, for …, for …, for……

I stated it several times: In my opinion, the only way to having a significant impact on e-crime is to work closely together in completely new ways. We have to share information where we never did before between consumers, enterprises, vendors, providers, law enforcement, and policy makers. There have to be new coalitions that trust each other to use the legal framework we have in place and add upon it. There are excellent approaches like the Council of Europe where steps are made to harmonize legislation – but we have to act much faster and we have to act together without looking into how to move responsibility over to other parties as the only winner of this is the organized crime.

If you want to read the article above: Government 'must act on e-crime'

Roger