NEWS
Businesses would be forced to contribute to the funding of a national police e-crime unit under the current proposal being considered by the Home Office.
But the private sector has hit back saying the core funding for a dedicated police unit to combat e-crime must come from the government.
silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign is calling for a national UK e-crime police unit.
The unit would provide leadership and expertise to co-ordinate investigations nationwide and collate reports from forces across the country, as well as offering a central point of contact for reporting cyber crime.
We want to hear your views about this campaign and your experiences of being a victim of cyber crime. Were you happy with the way your case was handled? Make your voice heard by leaving a Reader Comment below or emailing us in confidence at editorial@silicon.com.
This follows the launch of silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign calling for a dedicated UK cyber crime police unit to co-ordinate investigation and recording of e-crime nationwide.
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), blue chip UK Plc IT user group the Corporate IT Forum (Tif) and tech industry body Intellect are all backing silicon.com's campaign.
But they say any national police e-crime unit needs the long-term stability offered by regular public funding and should not be overly reliant on contributions from industry.
It follows a suggestion that the Policing Central E-crime Unit, proposed by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and the Metropolitan Police Service, would be jointly funded by the Home Office, Acpo and businesses.
Jeremy Beale, head of e-business at the CBI, said: "As regards funding, e-crime is a problem for everyone and often impacts more than one party. Businesses would probably be prepared to pay for services of particular sectoral interest to them. But in general it should be funded out of general taxation."
Catherine Bowen, head of crime policy at the BRC, said that businesses would expect to have input on the running of the unit if they were supporting its costs.
She said: "We would expect there to be consultation with our members to ensure their concerns were being properly addressed by the unit."
Influence of big business over the unit concerned the FSB, which represents SMEs, with a spokeswoman saying larger companies may be rewarded with more say over its running in return for bigger contributions.
She said: "We need to get away from seeing cyber crime as being synonymous with big business – it affects small businesses just as much. SMEs funding an e-crime unit is not feasible. In short – normal policing is paid for out of the public purse, therefore e-crime too."
Ollie Ross, director of research at Tif, said: "A centralised e-crime unit has to be funded on a sound, secure and long-term basis – any such organisation cannot be impacted by market fluctuations. We have to ensure that the next e-crime unit is placed on a firm footing from the start."
A spokesman for Intellect said it is a complicated situation: "There are a lot of stakeholders who have an interest in tackling e-crime, you have the consumers, the retailers, the Financial Services Authority, the government and police.
"There would need to be some very careful consultation over how it would be supported to ensure that it remained independent and representative of these stakeholders."
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. Calum Brannan
Small businesses and web startups will simply not be able to afford proposed costs, giving cyber criminals the the knowledge of who to attack, who will most likely be the most vulnerable.
2. James Selby
Why not, this should of been done already 10 years ago.....I am sorry we are as a country lead/managed by people that have no realistic understanding of our electronic information and most valuable asset and as UK government is concerned, their own! I think there should be budget available from the public purse as this affects all UK residents not just businesses, it is usually business' that maybe UK, foreign or otherwise that try and infringe on what should be data protection processes.
3. anonymous
With most e-crime targeting UK business coming from servers in foreign countries, how does the UK police feel it is able to do this?
I don't want to fund an expensive leaflet drop telling businesses and consumers how to avoid phishing scams.
Clamping down on international e-crime needs an international effort and unfortunately I don't think the world is quite ready for that.
4. Guy Reynolds
Businesses and individuals already pay for our police forces via existing taxation, this bacially double taxation.
What next?
All car owners forced a car crime police, home owners forced to pay for burglary police ...
5. Haydn Rees
1) Don't make this a fixed cost (tax), make it a variable cost (outgoing - possibly a tax deductible one).
2) Government will pay to create a training and certification system.
3) Government passes much stronger law for security due diligence.
4) Companies are compelled to have people who secure their electronic systems.
5) Private Sector SC or DV cleared Security Specialists fill in the gap.
It is going to be much much easier to train geeks to fight e-crime effectively, than to teach police to geek effectively.
Bish-bosh. Job's a good'un.
Small government input and running cost. Commerce shoulders running cost (scalable and tax deductible). Police have good intelligence, and get to do Policing. UK IT professionals doing un-outsourcable high value security work.
For my next trick...
6. Richard
Highest taxes in World, but everything is "extra"?
Where have our taxes gone? UK businesses and individuals pay amongst the highest rates of tax in the World, but many public services have been cut to be replace by costly private services.
Perhaps the answer is to cut the UK's expensive self-serving bloated bureaucracy; let the government concentrate on doing (well) those few things which actually need government involvement; and leave us with sufficient money to pay for the rest?
In this particular case, the "International" aspects of combating Internet crime may well need some government involvement.
7. Haydn Rees
Richard suggests:
"Where have our taxes gone? UK businesses and individuals pay amongst the highest rates of tax in the World, but many public services have been cut to be replace by costly private services.
Perhaps the answer is to cut the UK's expensive self-serving bloated bureaucracy; let the government concentrate on doing (well) those few things which actually need government involvement; and leave us with sufficient money to pay for the rest?"
What does this have to do with e-crime policy?
Companies will pay for mandatory security due diligence they say they need, then write the expense off against tax.
How uncomfortable for civil servants to have been simultaneously cut and bloated.