Dave Neal reports:
Troels Oerting, assistant director at Europol and head of the European Cybercrime Centre, has said that the Edward Snowden revelations and the rise of encryption and anonymity are making cybercrime investigations more challenging.
Oerting told the BBC in an interview that Europol believes there is a hardcore of some 100 cyber criminals out there and that it would be easier to take them down if there was a reasonable distinction between a right to privacy and the unacceptable use of anonymity tools.
Read more on V3.
“You have a right to privacy, but that does not mean you have the right to be anonymous,” he says in the interview. Boy do I disagree with that! I do have a right to be anonymous, but that right can be trumped in some cases – such as if I engage in unlawful conduct, etc. That doesn’t mean you can turn around and say I have no right to be anonymous. I do.
And blaming Edward Snowden? Didn’t governments try that already and then have to back away from claims that he would be responsible for all kinds of terribles?