Cyber-policing: the role of the police in fighting cybercrime

Abstract

One of the major new challenges in policing is cybercrime - a fast mutating phenomena of truly global character - particularly testing for international police cooperation. The author analyses the role of police in fighting cybercrime. The first part of the paper describes the role of police in fighting this field of crime highlighting the problems and challenges. In the second part the author deals with the unique challenges of cybercrime for policing cyberspace, which require a review of traditional approaches to the concept of policing, application of new tools, both legislative and technical, for investigation, development of skills of working with electronic evidence, and last but not least, the ability to cooperate with industry players. One of the critical issues is also capacity building (special training for police experts), because the mere possession of new technologies for the investigation and detection of crime does not mean the ability to utilise them. Conclusions are drawn to highlight the need for reviewing the concept of police activity in the real world to address the challenges emerging in cyberspace, as well as the necessity for capacity building and cooperation in a multi-stakeholder environment.