The Australian Federal Police (AFP) yesterday finalised the restructuring of its high tech crimes division, with the announcement that the force's final two independent technical units have been amalgamated with High Tech Crimes Operations.
The national law enforcement agency had maintained two independent online crime departments: the Australian High Tech Crimes Centre (AHTCC) and the Online Child Sex Exploitation Team (OCSET) until June last year, when the two merged to become Australian Federal Police High Tech Crimes Operations, headed up by AFP chief of staff and assistant commissioner Andrew Colvin.
Both departments had operated autonomously from each other and were separately funded until last year's amalgamation was introduced in an attempt to streamline the forces' online investigative and technical capabilities.
An AFP spokesperson said the merger had been finalised yesterday as the last independent remnants of OCSET -- the child sex tourism and technical operations business areas -- moved into the headquarters of the consolidated High Tech Crimes Operations division.
While the AHTCC had investigated the bulk of online crimes including online fraud, identity theft, phishing and other scams, OCSET was a specialist unit designated to investigate child pornography and cyber predators.
Both units had also committed to overseas operations through the virtual global taskforce, and in the specific case of AHTCC through an enduring presence in India before the merger. AHTCC also intends to establish a permanent centre of operations there.
Today's report comes after claims earlier this year that the force's capacity to fight cybercrime at home was being drained by overseas deployments, along with the commandeering of High Tech Crimes staff to apply their skills in other AFP investigations.
Australian Federal Police Association CEO, Jim Toor, told ZDNet.com.au in January that the AHTCC "was unable to patch up the vacancies caused by the deployments overseas as quickly as they occurred".
I had a very telling experience last month.
A keylogger captured my account and password details - still have not determined how (another story).
A person then transferred a substantial sum from my account to another account.
Fortunately my institution watches transfers - and had identified this as suspicious and called me - I indicated it was not a transfer I had initiated - and they stopped it, reversed it and provided me with the target account number, name of the account holder and institution/branch that the account was located.
Off to the local police.
Well - as the institution was in NSW and I was in VIC the local police told me that they could not take a report and it had to be reported in NSW.
Call NSW police - they would not take a report over the phone and could not understand why Vic Police said it needed to be done by NSW.
Drop and email to the High Tech Crime Centre - no reply for 2 or 3 weeks, then a phone message left on my home phone - identifying first name only and she will call back - I am still waiting.
Drive 4 hours to Albury - nearest NSW police station - report electronic fraud - get incident number to provide back to my financial institution (so they have a record it has been reported) no feedback to date.
POINT: if my account had been in Uzbekistan - would I have had to travel there to report the theft???
Surely the plods have come to grips witrh the fact that computer crime can be committed by anyone anywhere on anyobne anywhere.
Surely a standardised report taking process used by all Police in Australia - feeding into their various systems is needed???
Perhaps fraud is not as sexy or newsworthy as catching an online sexual predator.