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Data Sovereignty Laws Hamper International Crime Investigations: AFP |
| Source: |
news.idg.no |
| Source Date: |
Friday, May 09, 2014 |
| Focus: |
Electronic and Mobile Government, Citizen Engagement, Internet Governance
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| Created: |
May 12, 2014 |
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International cyber crime police work is being hampered by data sovereignty laws, according to Australian Federal Police's national manager of high tech crime operations, Tim Morris.
Speaking at CeBIT in Sydney this week, assistant commissioner Morris said the old idea of where soil is attached to a server "is not going to serve us well into the future", as it slows down the process of obtaining information during investigations.
For example, he said that because a cloud server, which could contain data from overseas countries, is "attached to a bit of soil in California" this officially means that the data is held in the United States.
"For law enforcers, this means a long and convoluted process of what we call mutual legal assistance requests. These take months to process and there is no way they can keep up with a contemporary investigation that we face today," said Morris.
Another challenge facing the AFP is what Morris called attribution. Without attribution back to an online source, he said that cyber crime investigations can't be successful because the AFP and other agencies need to prove the source of the crime to build a successful prosecution case.
"That's why [police] agencies talk about the importance of metadata," he said. Metadata is 'data about data' such as the non-image-related information stored when people snap a photo on a digital camera.
"Without metadata, successful investigations can never be conducted. In our inter-connected world, if it is a rape, kidnapping or online child exploitation, without attribution back to a source it is almost impossible to get a conviction," he said.
Morris conceded that this is a "controversial area" because of people's concerns about privacy. "All I can offer is the policeman's realistic perspective and that is that many investigations won't be worth taking on."
(By Hamish Barwick)
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Data Sovereignty Laws Hamper International Crime Investigations: AFP International cyber crime police work is being hampered by data sovereignty laws according to Australian Federal Police's national manager of high tech crime operations Tim Morris
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