Police risk losing society’s trust in fight against cybercrime, warns Europol chief therecord.media/eurpol-ch…

Law enforcement agencies risk losing the trust of the societies they protect unless those societies understand why new powers are needed to tackle surging levels of cybercrime, Europol’s chief warned on Thursday.

Speaking at the Munich Cyber Security Conference, Catherine De Bolle — who took the reins at the agency in 2018 — defended law enforcement’s need to be able to lawfully access encrypted data amid controversy over one such attempt by the United Kingdom.

She said that digital criminality had not just been growing in volume year-on-year but also “in its complexity and the impact it has on the lives of millions of citizens,” and as the perpetrators of these crimes are increasingly able to abuse traditional telecoms infrastructure alongside “high-tech crime tools and darkweb marketplaces” there was also a need to improve the capabilities of the agencies tackling those criminals.

But “should law enforcement be enabled to address these cases at scale, there is a risk of losing society’s trust in law enforcement and in state institutions at large,” said De Bolle.