New policy needed to tackle cybercriminals
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The total anonymity of online servers makes it very difficult to track down cybercriminals. Femke Halsema is calling for changes. University lecturer Jan-Jaap Oerlemans and Professor of Law and Data Science Bart Custers commented in Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’.
Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema says stricter laws are needed to tackle cybercrime. She wrote to Minister of Justice and Security, David van Weel, Minister of Economic Affairs, Dirk Beljaarts, and State Secretary for Digitalisation, Zsolt Szabó, to express her concerns. The biggest problem, according to the mayor, is that many providers of online storage offer total anonymity to their customers. This often makes it impossible for investigative services to uncover who is trading in criminal material.
Oerlemans understands these concerns and the new policy proposed by Halsema. He says it is important for communication services, such as hosting providers, to know who they are doing business with. The university lecturer says this is already quite normal in the case of banks, for instance. Custers, however, warns of the additional privacy dilemmas such policy would entail: ‘We don't know how many users are actual criminals. That needs to be investigated first, and that information can be used to better consider whether it is reasonable that these online services should be required to collect personal data.'
More information?
Read the full article in de Volkskrant (€, in Dutch)