U.S. Secret Service Partners With European Agencies To Form Electronic Crimes Task Force Headquartered In Rome
In what is bad news for cyber criminals and online financial hucksters, the U.S. Secret Service has announced a partnership with European law-enforcement agencies to form the first European Electronic Crimes Task Force.
Officials signed a “memorandum of understanding,” with the Secret Service, Italian Police and the Italian Postal Service taking the lead roles. The Task Force will be based in Rome, and the principal Italian officials are Antonio Manganelli, chief of Italian Police, and Massimo Sarmi, chief executive officer of the Italian Postal Service.
The goals are to “provide a forum through which U.S. and European law enforcement agencies, the private sector and academia can collaborate to investigate, suppress and prevent computer- related crimes” and to “share relevant insight, expertise and resources between the international law enforcement community to combat the transnational cyber crimes which threaten the financial security of businesses and individuals worldwide,” the Secret Service said.
“Cybercrime knows no borders,†said Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan. “We believe
that partnerships at the international level are essential in combating the ever-changing
landscape of cybercrimes.â€
The Task Force will combine European and U.S. expertise in investigating network intrusions, hacking cases, identity theft and other computer related crimes affecting financial and other critical infrastructures, the Secret Service said.
Its about time!
Patrick,
I bet that Andy now has to call Rosetta Stone and change the language course he ordered from Italian to a different language. Perhaps French or Latvian?
Yep, that is exactly what we all need, more government watching our every move.You people won’t quit with wanting more government control in every aspect of our lives until we have guys on every corner with a gun and you have to have their permission on how to spend every penny you earn.
Actually, we are tired of child molesters with their hands in inappropriate places telling everyone who is not a victim to mind their own business.
Personally, I prefer as little government as possible but it seems more than a few people have no conscience and will take advantage of whomever they can fool.
All I can say is w00t!, it’s about time. Let’s put these scumbags in jail.
Aggie,
Did you hear about the cyber attack (largely) on the U.S. government over the July 4 holiday weekend? An unfriendly party wanted to let us know it was out there, ready and willing to to disrupt the government, the news business and financial markets.
One can argue, rationally, that it was an attack on free enterprise itself.
But what if that attack hadn’t largely been targeted at government? What if it had been focused on the company or companies that provide your paycheck or reconcile your financial accounts or keep the juice flowing to power your computer?
I didn’t see anything “political” in the Secret Service news release upon which the story above is based. I saw a story about international cooperation in the age of the committed hacker or fraudster. I got no sense at all that the Secret Service and Italian Police sought to destroy free enterprise as we know it and put the shackles on Mom and Pop.
In fact, most Moms and Pops I know generally support the police in efforts to fight crime. Moms and Pops want the trains to run on time and employers to issue checks and the banks to provide statements and the newspaper website to freshen with each bit of breaking news and the customers at the Mom and Pop website to make purchases that power the free market.
And they expect the government to catch the crooks.
A few years ago, around the 4th of July, I was pouring a cup of coffee early in the morning when I glanced outside and saw a state trooper pulling into the driveway.
“They got your mailbox last night,” he said.
I walked down to the mailbox and saw where it had been blown up with a cherry bomb (or equivalent) and knocked from its moorings. A melted plastic bottle of Coca Cola was inside. If the cherry bomb alone had not been enough to do the trick, the exploded container of Coke at least would make for a syrupy, inconvenient mess.
“They got the people up the road, too,” the trooper said.
All in all, it was a pretty impressive display of government service. The trooper reported the crime to me before I’d had a chance even to take a sip of my morning coffee. I didn’t feel “controlled”; I felt served, and I was pleased that the pranksters very well might have seen the police cruiser driving up and down the road slowly. The pranksters might have gotten the idea that a trooper might be hiding in the trees if they decided to come back for a new round of nighttime Coca Cola bombings.
The pranksters didn’t blow up any of my mail. But Moms and Pops, including Moms and Pops in their 80s, live a relatively short distance away, and they might have lost their Social Security checks to the blast. I’m sure they welcomed the trooper into their home and offered him a cup of coffee as he was taking their report and listening to their story on how they’d have to venture to the Social Security office, fight traffic and find a parking space in the hope of getting a replacement check to pay the bills.
And it’s a safe bet the Moms and Pops wished the trooper a good day before they returned to worries that had been foisted upon them by a nighttime Coca Cola bomber.
But let’s wrest presumptive over-enforcement and tree paranoia from the discussion, and look at it as a matter of pure economics.
Even the best conservative thinkers and free-market economists from the school of “a rising tide lifts all boats” recognize that not all rising tides are created equally. Unrestrained free trade creates human bondage.
Bernard Madoff, for example, captained a boat and specialized in piloting people out to sea on a sugary-looking tide that concealed arsenic. He didn’t disclose the arsenic, rather like a Halloween madman who hands out a candy apple doesn’t disclose the razor blade.
In my view, the story about the European Task Force is not about less government or more; it’s about government cooperation in the Age of Global Arsenic Sugar Tides, and it’s about finding the razor blades in the candy apples before kids from nine to 90 start showing up at the Emergency Room coughing blood and wondering if their lives ever will be the same or if they’ll even survive.
Patrick
Super writing Patrick.
Excellent news!!! (and this is worth at least 3 exclamation marks) The number of people who get ripped off each year on the internet by scammers is enormous and growing. Anything that will help decrease the number of victims of these white collar cyber criminals has my vote.
This has nothing to do with governments interfering in our lives, Aggie – it has to do with stopping crooks! Or would you like a life without any policemen znd no legislators around when something bad happens?