EXAMINING THE CHALLENGES OF POLICING ECONOMIC CYBERCRIME IN THE UK
Güvenlik Bilimleri Dergisi, Şubat 2020,UGK Özel Sayısı, 113-134
DOI:10.28956/ gbd.695956
Introduction:
The advent of the Internet and its commercial applications have significantly changed the way the authors socialise, shop or communicate.- It is argued that the commercial application of the Internet has provided new opportunities for the commission of the traditional crime, but it has given rise to new forms of crimes (Wall, 2007b; Lee, Holt, Burruss, and Bossler, 2019).
- Action Fraud reported that Internet users lost £34.6m as a result of cybercrime between April and September 2018, which indicates a %24 rise when compared to the previous 6 months (BBC, 2019)
Objectives:
The aims of this research were two-fold: documenting the problems experienced by police officers working in cybercrime departments and discerning police officers’ perceptions related to the role of police in the wider policing assemblage.Methods:
In order to address this knowledge gap in the literature, ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with police officers working in cybercrime departments in the UK and three semi-structured interviews were done with experts working on IT departments of the local governments.- The research was conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association, 2001).
- Interviewees were provided participant information sheets explaining interview and transcription processes prior to interviews.
- Participants were asked to sign consent forms before the interviews.
- Interviews were conducted face-to-face at police departments.
- Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim by authors after the interviews
Results:
Analysis of interviews conducted with police officers and cybercrime experts suggests that policing economic cybercrime is a multidimensional complex issue involving both national and international actors together with police forces.- Interviews with police officers revealed the lack of international cooperation as the key challenge to policing economic cybercrime.
- Participants acknowledged that non-European countries were reluctant to share information related to online perpetrators.
- “The companies sit in Luxemburg, Panama or Gibraltar are reluctant to share information.
- It is difficult to catch them and bring to the jurisdiction crime happened.” (Participant 4)
Conclusion:
Despite the growing cyber threat and cybersecurity concerns among the public, there is a lack of empirical research on discerning the challenges of policing economic cybercrime.- This result which confirms the previous studies indicates that governments or international and transnational actors have failed to collaborate to combat cybercrime globally.National and international initiatives such as UK Cybercrime Strategy 2016/2021 place emphasis upon reducing disparities among national jurisdictions and creating strong coordination between policing bodies and other private and governmental actors of cybersecurity to alleviate policing problems of cybercrime (Ellis and Mohan, 2019)
- Despite these efforts, there is lack of empirical studies on this issue.
- ENISA or another agency should actively seek to collaborate with non-EU countries
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