Interpol: ‘Law enforcement has to have a shift in its mindset’

INTERPOL executive director for police services Stephen Kavanagh has called on law enforcers “to stop thinking in linear way” to face the challenges posed by the online crime world.

During an In Conversation event with editor Mandy Rhodes at Holyrood’s International Law Enforcement in a Digital Age summit in Glasgow, Kavanagh, along with other senior policing leaders, called for more collaboration, urging law enforcers to work closer with the private sector.

“Interpol has got this gateway process where if something is going on in the dark web, our capabilities and the data processing rules don’t allow us to operate, but we can have private partners who will suddenly turn around and say, ‘we can provide you this source of data through the following rules and make sure that it's ethically done’. So, I think law enforcement has to have a shift in its mindset.

“We are no longer alone in the fight against crime. We do it with the tech providers. We do it with the NGOs… More than ever, senior police leadership is about convening skills, convening insights, and that's the way that we are becoming more effective. If we think we can do it on our own, we'll fall flat on our faces.”

Graeme Biggar, director of the National Crime Agency (NCA), acknowledged the need for more co-operation but added that the shift in power in the online world, called for authorities to put more “onus” on the tech firms.

He then added that legislation is not keeping up with the international threat posed by the online world, pointing out that Computer Misuse Act, passed in 1989, was “woefully out of date” and needed a “massive re-write”.

Biggar said: “Criminals are moving at the speed of the internet, and we are moving at the speed of international law… At the moment, we are still stuck, and forever will be I think in our sovereign state jurisdictions, and we’ve got to find a way to move away from this. Just to give an example, so often we come across crimes where the victim is in one jurisdiction, the suspect is another, the data is in a third, and it's then moved from a server in one country to a server in a fourth, and then the money that has been extracted is laundered through three different countries before ending up somewhere else. And that all happens at the touch of a button. And we actually go through bylaws and other mechanisms to tackle the matter and it just doesn't work.”

Former chief constable of Police Scotland, Sir Iain Livingstone, criticised how laws across UK jurisdictions remain “territorial”, suggesting they fail to recognise the globalised nature of modern crime: “Legislation is still very localised in its extent and there needs to be recognition that that's the democratic imperative.

“We know that a difference across the United Kingdom in a threat such as human slavery or human trafficking that is by definition pan-border, having nuances or differences simply for the sake of differences really doesn't protect victims and really doesn't protect the interests of communities. So that need for alignment and that need for consistency is crucial.”