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By Sally Watson, 12 October 2000 00:01

NEWS Speaking at a conference in central London on Wednesday, Raymond Kendall, secretary general of Interpol, explained how the growth in fraud and terrorism on the net has overwhelmed crime fighting organisations across the globe. He said: "Although Interpol set up a special group to look at this problem in 1990, we haven't developed it very much. We hadn't expected the explosion to happen as it did." Kendall said the rise in electronic crime has crippled government law enforcement agencies, significantly reducing their ability to respond to offences. He called on the police and the private sector to work together to tackle the problem. "Like many law enforcement agencies we are lacking in technological capabilities. Most of the real expertise in this area is in the private sector," Kendall added. "It's expensive if you want to recruit people. This is not an area where you can just take a policeman off the streets and train them in cyber-technology," he said. Jonathon Fornaci, CEO of consultancy AtomicTangerine, agreed that government agencies are ill equipped to fight net crime. "The issue crosses all borders so you can't have a UK initiative, a French initiative, a US initiative - it has to be all companies and government agencies working together," he said. AtomicTangerine and Interpol have been working together since June to increase dialogue between the industry and government about security issues. Fornaci emphasised that companies must be prepared to make potentially embarrassing disclosures to government agencies. "Historically, private industry didn't want to talk about things," he said. "If they had a security breach they didn't want to admit they had a problem." Kendall admitted that users could have legitimate privacy concerns about such a public-private partnership, but claimed law enforcement agencies would limit themselves to non-sensitive data. Kendall will step down later this month after 15 years at the head of the international policing organisation and take up a post in the EU's Fraud Commission.