Lords likely to recommend cyber-crime legislation

Long term study due to report in July

Lord Broers, chairman of the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee, today gave an interim report on his long-term study into online crime.

The final report is due in July, but Lord Broers said that, based on early findings, the Lords were very likely to recommend additional legislation on computer crime.

The House of Commons will then have to reply to its recommendations within two months.

The year-long report process has seen the Lords meeting with EU commissioners and top US officials, companies and think-tanks to identify and combat online crime. The results were mixed, with Microsoft drawing particular criticism.

"Microsoft is using the technique of warning users every time they perform certain functions," said Lord Broers at the Infosecurity Europe 2007 conference in London.

"The end result is that people cannot understand them and just click OK anyway, and I think Microsoft knows this."

Lord Broers was very impressed with the FBI computer crime laboratories and had high praise for the Metropolitan Police.

But he warned that the latter is underfunded, so much so that there is just one person investigating phishing attacks.

He was less than impressed with some of the recommendations from think-tanks, however.

The Freedom Foundation suggested that the market would sort it all out, and that web-based crime would decrease as people got more internet savvy.

While Lord Broers thought this was a mistake, he did concede that users would have to take more responsibility for online activity.

He said that research had found that 80 per cent of children were internet users but that parents thought the figure was barely half that.