Home Office announces £25million for cybercops
The Home Secretary has announced that more high tech crime investigators are to be recruited as part of a £25 million strategy to tackle crime on the Internet and 'make the UK one of the best and safest places in the world to conduct and engage in e-commerce'.
Up to 80 dedicated "cybercops" will be deployed both nationally and locally to fight crime on the Internet. The announcement follows endorsements by the Prime Minister to improve the technical capability of law enforcement to investigate Internet crime and establish the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, which will begin work in April 2001.
The Home Office said that it will also place the UK at the forefront of the international fight against cybercrime and, in line with the Government's G8 commitments, help fund a 24-hour international hot line to trade information on potential attacks on the national infrastructure and promote closer cross border working.
Additionally, the Home Secretary also announced a £37 million investment in a National Management Information System (NMIS) for police forces in England and Wales. NMIS will provide the police with a comprehensive information management and analysis tool, 'joining-up' data held on the various information technology systems from every force and area of police work. The system will present this data in a consistent format so the whole range of police business can be easily and reliably compared and analysed across the country.' NMIS will be rolled out to forces by the Police Information Technology Organisation with their commercial partner Hays Redfern.
The Home Secretary Jack Straw said: "The Government is committed to action against high-tech crime in line with our objective of making the UK the best and safest place in the world to conduct and engage in e-commerce.
"Modern technologies such as the Internet offer up huge legitimate benefits, but also powerful opportunities for criminals, from those involved in financial fraud to the unlawful activities of paedophiles. The significant cash injection I am announcing today will boost the police service's capability to investigate crime committed through computers, including paedophilia, fraud, extortion and hacking.
"It will also enable each force in the country to have at least one dedicated high-tech crime investigator whose expert knowledge on
Internet technology will prove vital in our ongoing fight against the sophisticated, 20th century criminal."
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Susie Hughes