Top cop calls for 'data safety' ad blitz

One of the UK’s most senior police chiefs is calling for a drink driving-style marketing campaign to urge consumers to protect their data online after conceding the police are virtually powerless to prevent Internet fraud.
City of London police commissioner Adrian Leppard, who is also head of the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, has admitted that current investigative resources are “a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the problem we are facing”.
It is estimated that online crime including fraud and hacking cost the UK economy around £50bn a year. In April this year, a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), revealed only three out of the 43 police forces – and just 2% of officers – have the know-how to deal with cyber-crime. Meanwhile one leading lawyer recently claimed police “don’t give a stuff” about online fraud.
Leppard has been in the police force since joining as a bobby on the beat in 1984. He rose up the ranks through the Surrey and Kent forces and was appointed to his current role in January 2011.
He told The Times: “Economic crime is predominantly cyber-related. The reason we have problems in this area are two-fold: one, the scale of what is happening; it’s enormous. And secondly, the jurisdiction — the bulk of offending now is taking place overseas. Where you can reach the offenders in this nation and introduce legislation, you can have an impact. If the offending is overseas, where you don’t have legislation or powers to reach them, that becomes very difficult.
“The majority of the threat is coming in, on the internet, from countries all over the world, so it is going to be very hard. We can’t shut down that threat — no domestic country can.”
As far back as 2012, Leppard warned MPs that the UK was losing the war on cyber-crime. At the time he said: “We are not winning. I do not think we are winning globally, and I think this nature of crime is rising exponentially. The real worry is that, at a time when fraud and e-crime is going up, the capability of the country is going down.”