Cyber criminals use Trojans to steal information, but are the same techniques of electronic surveillance being used by the agencies set up to protect us?
Internet crime “is no longer the elephant in the room. It is the room,” Sir Ian Andrews, chairman of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), told this week’s London Conference on Cyberspace.
The rapid increase in the cost of cyber-crime means police and governments are having to protect themselves from a threat that is often nearly impossible to trace.
But the web has also become a vital space to gather evidence on suspects for traditional crimes.
The internet is an “intelligence source,” says Charlie McMurdie, Det Supt at the Police Central e-Crime Unit, Metropolitan Police Service.
“People now live, work, study, communicate online so even a traditional crime – a murder for example – we look at intelligence opportunities to investigate. That might be financial transactions, it might be CCTV, it might be phone call data, it might be their Facebook friends or what they’ve been doing online.”
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