By Valentina Pop
The EU’s joint policy body, Europol, is angling to host a new European cyber crime centre, with the European Commission due next year to decide where to put its new defence against the threat.
With Europol already dealing with forensics and investigation of online crimes, placing an EU cyber crime centre on its premises would be ‚the natural choice‘, says its deputy director of operations.
„We are in the business anyway, so this would be the natural choice. It’s also more cost-efficient, because you wouldn’t need to set up from scratch another EU agency,“ Troels Oerting, Europol’s deputy chief in charge of operations and international co-operation told this website.
In cases ranging from online scams to child pornography videos, Europol experts can assist national police from one or several member states, but they cannot investigate on their own. From 2014 on, when new rules kick in, its staff may be given more powers to gather evidence in the virtual world. (more on euobserver.com)
