CHAPTER 3: THREATS
3.38.
(b)
facilitating the spread of others (terrorist propaganda, indecent images);
(c)
creating completely new opportunities for criminality and aggression (malware,
denial of service attacks); and
(d)
allowing almost infinitely various channels for worldwide communication, some
of them highly secure, to be used by criminals.
As the Director of Europol said to Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee in
January 2015:
“[I]t is quite clear that we have a pressing and, indeed, rising challenge to deal
with highly encrypted communications online that are managed through the
space of the darknet, which are effectively out of the reach of law enforcement
authorities – not in every case, but in an increasing proportion of those cases.
It is fair to say that the scope that the police have to monitor communications
in the offline world is greater than it is in the online world. Given that a majority
of those communications run by these networks are moving online, there is a
security gap there. To what extent it should be plugged by the right and
balanced legislation is for others to judge but I do think it is one of the most
pressing problems that police face across Europe.”27
3.39.
If such threats are to be effectively countered, no-go areas for law enforcement must
be kept to a minimum. As Sir Iain Lobban, Director of GCHQ, said of online criminals
in his valedictory address:
“We have to enter that labyrinth to find them.”28
I examine how that can best be achieved, and the necessary accompanying
safeguards, in later parts of this Report.
27
28
Rob Wainwright, oral evidence of 13 January 2015 (HC 933).
Valedictory speech at the Cabinet War Rooms, (Oct 2014).
48