Privacy: the cost of protecting it

Avis d’expert : Données personnelles : une dictature de la transparence sans les moyens de l’assurer ? par Patrick Deleau – Tribune Solutions (08 June 2009)

An analysis of the CNIL's 2008 report on its work to protect privacy. There seems to be a shift in liability from Government to private firms which, in French law, are responsible to protect access to private data and to ultimately destroy it. The liability is actually of a criminal nature with heavy fines, up to 1.5 millions of euros and 5 years emprisonment. Considering that most firms do not know what the law is about and do not have the capacity to comply with the legislation, this is quite scary. The CNIL also notes that it does not have the means to continue its role in the field as the audits, which would help the firms to understand what they need to do, cannot be financed.

House of COmmons' control on Government's policy and EU

The House of COmmons' European Scrutiny Committee delivered its 8th report (may 2009) and analyse, in particular, the UK Government's implementation of EU policy on cyber attacks. Pages 19 to 21, after having summarised the EU policy, the Committee analyses the Government's responses and note the lack of clarity of the Minister's reply.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmeuleg/19-xvi/19-xvi.pdf

Costs of cybercrime

self-explanatory Apparently, Cybercrime Isn't Actually A Trillion-Dollar Business (TechDirt, 31 March 2009)

Fight against cybercrime - Costs of

Financial crisis helping, some warn that firms may not invest as much as they should in cyber-security, with the negative consequences this could have. See the interview of Régis Fohrer, French Lieutenant Colonel (Home office): "La crise a un impact négatif sur la lutte contre la cybercriminalité"(JDN, 30 March 2009).

Maybe to palliate this pronostic, the French Home Secretary announced a series of measures to fight cybercrime. Filtering for child porn, and linking the Complaint website of Internet-signalement.gouv.fr to a European website managed by Europol. The last is good news; not sure the first is feasible...
"Michèle Alliot-Marie durcit la lutte contre la cybercriminalité" (JDN 25 March 2009)

Fraud occurences: classics, SEC, and selling mis-behaviours

Nothing really new, just reinforcing the obvious: can't be too careful on the net when buying or installing softwares.
"Report: Fake antivirus scams pulling in profits" (ZDNet.co.uk, March 2009)

or cameras for that matter:

"Office Depot Employees Blowing The Whistle On Outright Scams" (TechDirt, 18 March 2009)

The article shows the difficult line between aggressive selling and just fraud. Probably more appropriate to use contract law to deal with the issue.


For another classic fraud, this time applied to the Stock Exchange, and dealt in the US by the SEC: fraud, manipulation of shares...
"Two Texas men settle charges in spam scam case" (Investment.News, 19 March 2009)


For the "Cost of online-banking fraud doubled in 2008" (ZDNet.co.uk, 23 March 2009)

Cost of cybercrime - another study

"Global cost of cybercrime hit $1tn, study finds" by McAfee, (ZDnet.co.uk, 29 January 2009)

Police e-crime unit calls for industry aid (11 December 2008)

Underground economy - the 'benefits' of fraud

self-explanatory: "Symantec takes cybercrime snapshot with 'Underground Economy' report " (24 November 2008)

Russia and China: shamed as worst offenders

Should not come as a surprise that China and Russia represent major threats for the online world; the amount of money at stake, and also the political stance, makes it to attractive to avoid spying, hacking, 'zombying' and the like. The only difference between the two countries: Chinese cybercrime remains state-orientated and controlled; Russian cybercrime seemed more privately "owned" although the complacency of the Russia state can be argued to amount to complicity...
But is the West really that big fat cow that needs to be milked? (see the article on the guardian about the RBN) Maybe, but cybercrime here is not about redistributing wealth to the masses, rather redistributing it to a very small number of people using crime to increase their own personal profits. In this respect, I strongly opposed the Guardian's line stating that the "RBN was founded and is run by techies, not career criminals." A career in crime is no longer about being a thief in the physical world: actually, it brings more money to go online than to stay offline...

On Russia
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/15/news.crime
and http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39290683,00.htm

On China
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39290843,00.htm

and more generally, although... http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39291200,00.htm (3rd December 2007)
"Cracking open the cybercrime economy (14 December 2007) http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39291463,00.htm