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Businesses may be forced to pay for e-crime police
But bosses say public money needs to be at the heart of it

By Nick Heath

Published: Monday 17 March 2008

Businesses would be forced to contribute to the funding of a national police e-crime unit under the current proposal being considered by the Home Office.

But the private sector has hit back saying the core funding for a dedicated police unit to combat e-crime must come from the government.

silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign is calling for a national UK e-crime police unit.

The unit would provide leadership and expertise to co-ordinate investigations nationwide and collate reports from forces across the country, as well as offering a central point of contact for reporting cyber crime.

We want to hear your views about this campaign and your experiences of being a victim of cyber crime. Were you happy with the way your case was handled? Make your voice heard by leaving a Reader Comment below or emailing us in confidence at editorial@silicon.com.

This follows the launch of silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign calling for a dedicated UK cyber crime police unit to co-ordinate investigation and recording of e-crime nationwide.

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), blue chip UK Plc IT user group the Corporate IT Forum (Tif) and tech industry body Intellect are all backing silicon.com's campaign.

But they say any national police e-crime unit needs the long-term stability offered by regular public funding and should not be overly reliant on contributions from industry.

It follows a suggestion that the Policing Central E-crime Unit, proposed by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and the Metropolitan Police Service, would be jointly funded by the Home Office, Acpo and businesses.

Jeremy Beale, head of e-business at the CBI, said: "As regards funding, e-crime is a problem for everyone and often impacts more than one party. Businesses would probably be prepared to pay for services of particular sectoral interest to them. But in general it should be funded out of general taxation."

Catherine Bowen, head of crime policy at the BRC, said that businesses would expect to have input on the running of the unit if they were supporting its costs.

She said: "We would expect there to be consultation with our members to ensure their concerns were being properly addressed by the unit."

Influence of big business over the unit concerned the FSB, which represents SMEs, with a spokeswoman saying larger companies may be rewarded with more say over its running in return for bigger contributions.

She said: "We need to get away from seeing cyber crime as being synonymous with big business – it affects small businesses just as much. SMEs funding an e-crime unit is not feasible. In short – normal policing is paid for out of the public purse, therefore e-crime too."

Ollie Ross, director of research at Tif, said: "A centralised e-crime unit has to be funded on a sound, secure and long-term basis – any such organisation cannot be impacted by market fluctuations. We have to ensure that the next e-crime unit is placed on a firm footing from the start."

A spokesman for Intellect said it is a complicated situation: "There are a lot of stakeholders who have an interest in tackling e-crime, you have the consumers, the retailers, the Financial Services Authority, the government and police.

"There would need to be some very careful consultation over how it would be supported to ensure that it remained independent and representative of these stakeholders."