Europol plan against cyber-crime would enable remote searches

In the EU's long-running front against cyber-crime, the Council of Ministers has proposed a five-year plan to tackle the problem, including collaboration with regional law enforcement branches and the implementation of remote searches.

Citing problems such as information and identity theft, spam, and child pornography as growing threats to society, the Council's new plan involves setting up a single communications network to allow EU member nations and Europol to pool information on offenses and their perpetrators.

The idea behind this is to create common practices for tracing, acquiring, recording, and seizing offending data and centralize the information from each national platform. The European Police Office (Europol) will act as the hub for this information. As such, the Commission earmarked €300,000 for Europol to implement the system.

The Council's mention of remote searches raised the ire of the security-conscious, as EU member nation Germany has been frequently criticized for favoring Trojan horse-style surveillance as a form of remote search for terror suspects. An anti-terror law that would give the German Federal Criminal Police force (BKA) right to use "Remote Forensic Software" is scheduled to come before the Bundesrat before Christmas. The Council, however has not yet outlined any similar plans for Europol.