Building a Global Cyber Police Force 155
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the i-recommend-team-america dept.
from the i-recommend-team-america dept.
dasButcher writes "One of the biggest obstacles to fighting hackers and cyber-criminals is that many operate in the safe harbors of their home countries, insulated from prosecution by authorities in foreign countries where their targets reside. As Larry Walsh writes in his blog, several security vendors and a growing number of countries are now beginning to consider the creation of a global police force that would have trans-border jurisdiction to investigate and arrest suspected hackers."
Once the arrests are made... (Score:4, Interesting)
Interpol? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This sounds like wishful thinking (Score:3, Interesting)
I predict the following:
> Funded almost entirely by the USA
> Staffed almost entirely by the USA
> Enforceable primarily in the USA, to a smaller degree in a few friendly countries, and with a handful of other countries agreeing to extradite suspects, maybe, if we ask them politely enough on days of the month evenly divisible by 13.
The U.S. has no problem doing this when they want (Score:4, Interesting)
Like the U.S. law in congress right now forcing foreign banks to provide all information related to American owning accounts internationally, close them, or have 30% of the bank's assets in the United States withheld.
How about the recent EU SWIFT information handover to the U.S.?
I could see the U.S. doing something similar with internet connections of ISPs that run through the U.S., or have buisness in the U.S. Perhaps they will withhold 30% of their bandwidth.
Cyber crime and corrupt governments (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem isn't being protected from remote governments, its the tacit approval and involvement of the local government.
Russia, anyone? Do you think that cybercrime there doesn't involve FSB?
Re:Do not want. (Score:1, Interesting)
But, there are real and serious problems with cross-jurisdictional crime (of many types ... forget hacking, try fraud, money laundering etc) that traditional forces find it very very hard to tackle due to jurisdiction. There's a balance to be had somewhere. You shouldn't be able to get away with things just by fleeing to a different place. It's like the old 'driving over the county line', on a larger scale.
It's not "getting away with things" if it isn't illegal where you're doing it. That's the whole point. Take money laundering: It's a made up crime. There is nothing inherently wrong with it except that making it illegal makes it easier for law enforcement to catch people who commit other crimes. There is a strong argument in favor of legalizing it as a prophylactic measure against government corruption, to make sure that dissidents can more easily fund "illegal" journalism, underground railroads, etc. This is what we want to force on the citizens of countries where those sort of measures are already necessary?
There are other ways to deal with this. One of the most obvious, and I can't imagine why they don't already do this, is to require banks in other countries to reverse funds transfers at the request of US law enforcement as a condition on accepting money from US banks in the future. Who wants to commit fraud if they don't get to keep the money? And if the country lets fraudsters get the money before the reversal and leaves their country's banks holding the bag, the local banks will put massive pressure on the local government to sort out the problem. Either way, problem solved from the perspective of the US, without any international law enforcement.