14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers are worried that Europol's plans to involve citizens in cyber crime fighting might lead to risky cyber vigilantism.
Yesterday, Europol's Director Rob Wainwright revealed plans to create an European cyber crime centre which will centralize reports about illegal online activities gathered by national law enforcement agencies.
Mr. Wainwright told an UK House of Lords sub-committee that, "for the first time the EU will have a comprehensive overview of reported cyber crime from within its own borders and this could even include, in the future, a component of direct engagement with the public."
BBC quotes Europol strategic analyst Victoria Baines as saying that in the long term, the center will become a crowdsourcing effort where users will report the cyber criminal activity they encounter online.
However, security experts are not so convinced that this is a good idea. Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos, says that while greater cooperation between European law enforcement agencies on matters of cyber crime is certainly desirable, encouraging users to go and look into illegal acts carries significant risks.
"Let's not forget that internet crime is often a more serious business than the graffiti, littering and dog fouling crimes that many neighbourhood watch schemes can deal with on a regular basis.
"Surfing from website to internet forum, piecing together clues to send to the police, may expose your computer to threats - such as malware infection or identity theft - unnecessarily," the security expert notes.
Mr. Cluley also points out that many online scams and attacks are the work of dangerous organized criminal gangs that might harm people ratting out on them.
The researcher doesn't entirely dismiss this crowdsourcing concept, but asks authorities to approach it carefully and weigh in all the aspects before proceeding down this path.