I go to see one of our Congress keynote speakers. She is also, as it happens, speaking at the
AGM next week. She is a Detective
Superintendent with the City of London Police.
And she is in charge of Economic Crime.
I am guessing this is a seriously large remit, what with everything the
banks have been doing in recent years and everything the Government is planning
to do next.
The Detective Superintendent is not at all like the
detectives in the TV programmes, rushing around in the rain being ill-lit and
moody. She is relaxed and friendly. She brings me a glass of water and turns a
big light on for us and asks me a few gentle questions about Congress. I feel a little self-conscious with the tape
recorder on, but I get over my initial nerves.
The DS used to be in charge of catching burglars and
murderers but now she has to catch cyber criminals. I get the impression she preferred the
burglars and murderers, because on the whole they were nowhere near as clever
and they kept leaving DNA and fingerprints lying around.
She tells me some fascinating stories about what the cyber
fraudsters get up to these days. Part of
the problem, it seems, is that the British psyche makes us ideal victims. If a stranger asks a Brit for £2,000 towards
a new Gucci® handbag, the Brit’s response is typically to hand over the money
and apologise for not offering before.
And probably add a tip. The only
exception to this might be a patent attorney, who would want to know the
dimensions of the handbag before paying up.
This means that when a scam email arrives, the average Brit
instinctively tries to find a helpful way to reply.
Some victims are difficult to convince that they are victims
at all. Just like the inventor who
insists on re-mortgaging his home to fund a massive PCT nationalisation
programme, despite a search report full of Xs and a distinct lack of either a business
plan or indeed a business, they maintain that they have not been scammed at all
and continue to transfer funds to the poor out-of-luck Nigerian prince. Plus his bank charges, his travel expenses,
his “medical” bills and a donation to the local Small Arms Appreciation Society.
After all this, IP piracy seems a little on the tame
side. But apparently the City of London
Police are onto it. Big time. Only first they have to convince the new
generation of internet users that it is not a fundamental human right to be
able to download, copy and distribute anything you like, especially if someone
else made it. And the problem here, as
with all cyber crime, is that it is just too easy. How can it be a crime to take something that
is so readily available, like blackberries at the side of the road? In culinary circles, “foraging” has become
quite trendy. So why should you not
forage the internet and take home a movie or two to serve with your chips?
I confess I do not know the answers any more than the
Detective Superintendent does. She says that’s alright but anything I do say may be taken down in
evidence and used against me. So I say,
Can you not get Doctor Who to sort out the Cybermen for you, he usually
does? But I don’t think that was the
answer she wanted.
Anyway, I am glad they did not search me before I went
inside the City of London Police headquarters.
It may or may not be a crime to carry straw around these days, but it
sure looks suspicious in the middle of London.
Who’s to say I don’t also have a couple of incendiary crab-apples in my
rucksack?
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