The Hindu Business Line : Lessons from the UK

Three developments reported recently from the UK should give food for thought to Indian law enforcement authorities handling conventional crime as well as cyber crime.

In the first case, on April 3, 2007, Gary McKinnon (41), a former computer systems administrator, lost a court battle in the UK against his extradition to the US for facing trial in a serious hacking charge.

Obsession

McKinnon has an interesting profile. A dropout from school when he was 17, he took to hair-dressing as a profession.

Thereafter he was persuaded by some friends to learn a little of computers so as to make a living.

He therefore underwent a course that equipped him to take up minor contracts in the area. Interestingly, he soon acquired remarkable hacking skills, which he employed for what he termed purely "research" purposes.

Being convinced that the American Government was covering up all facts regarding UFOs, he thought it was his divine duty to work on clues available on the subject in government information systems.

This soon became an obsession, much to the alarm of all those around him. Unmindful of the criminal nature of his forays into cyber space and the havoc that his strange pursuits was causing to his personal life - his girlfriend abandoned him - he carried on with his adventure zealously.

It was a question of time before the Hi-Tech Crime Unit of the UK Police descended on him and arrested him in 2002 after some software used by him was traced to the mail-ID of his girl friend.

The charge: Between February 2001 and March 2002, he hacked about 100 US military and NASA computer systems and caused damage worth $700,000.

His defence: He was only in search of evidence to prove that the US was suppressing the presence of UFOs, and this was a "humanitarian" cause that could brook no delay!

Stern stand, a pointer

Ever since the arrest, McKinnon had been resisting his extradition to the US, where he was required to face trial. Having lost in a lower court, he took the matter to the UK High Court, which recently turned down his plea against being extradited. The only solace to him was that the High Court judges were appalled that the US authorities were threatening to keep him in their country to serve out the full sentence that could run into several decades, because they believed that he was a dangerous cyber terrorist and had to be dealt with severely.

McKinnon was, on the other hand, expecting, that if convicted, he would be allowed to stay in a UK prison, particularly because his attacks on the US systems were not vengeful and were also not actuated by a profit motive.

The stern stand taken by the US should drive home the point to our law enforcement authorities, that in cases of intrusion into the computer systems of government, there were no extenuating circumstances and the offenders could in no way be treated with kid gloves. I firmly believe that it is this philosophy that should guide our lawmakers when they vote shortly on some crucial amendments to the IT Act 2000 which would give teeth to enforcement.

Widening NCRB database

The other two significant happenings in the UK relate to the enhancement of the capacity of the police computer systems that play a major role in investigations, such as those against hacker McKinnon.

The Police National Computers (PNC), an organisation established in 1974, which facilitates quick data retrieval and exchange of information among agencies, had till recently been under the control of the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO). In reaction to the criticism that it was too bureaucratic - especially in the acquisition of required hardware — for it to be effective, it has now been brought under the newly-formed National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) headquartered in London.

But before this happened a few weeks ago, the processing power of the system's computers was boosted with the installation of new hardware. The database held by the system relates to crimes, people, vehicles and other property and is available for access by officers round the clock. It also has an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) capability. The high volume of traffic it handles would be indicated by the fact, that last year alone, there were 142 million enquiries addressed to it, excluding ANPR-related searches.

The nearest we have in India to the UK's PNC is the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) of the Union Home Ministry in New Delhi. Its database generally relates to stolen motor vehicles and those coming to notice for terrorist activities. The NCRB also advises State police forces in the areas of hardware purchase and supplies to them its own software packages, which are of use in police personnel administration. There is a definite case for widening the NCRB database - of course with the cooperation of State police forces — so that it is a real aid to major investigations.

HOLMES 2

Another happening in the UK is the recent improvement to the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System 2 (HOLMES 2). It was in 1986 that HOLMES came into being for the first time under the aegis of the Home Office, the equivalent of our Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in New Delhi. This was to serve as an aid to solving important and complicated murder and fraud cases.

In course of time, this tool became inadequate to the task of retrieving facts on apparently unconnected incidents, which, properly linked to a case on hand, could throw up valuable clues for taking an investigation forward. This was how HOLMES 2 was born in 1994 with the support of new technology used by UNISYS.

It has now been further upgraded to incorporate a search tool that is capable of understanding the context of a particular enquiry and can effortlessly move across various databases.

In essence, it fulfils a long-felt need for any police force struggling with an investigation (say of the Bob Woolmer variety) to draw and analyse relevant data stored in all the other forces in the country.

Readers may recall the Soham case of August 2002 in which two young girls were murdered by a school caretaker Ian Huntley with a known record of child abuse. He got a clean chit from one police force (Humberside), when another (Cambridgeshire) wanted to check on Huntley before clearing his appointment by a local school.

Apart from a poor intelligence collecting and sharing system, the lack of capacity of one police computer system to look into the databases of other police forces was squarely condemned by all observers in the country following the gruesome murders.

This led to a major national enquiry under former Education Secretary, Sir Michael Bischard who recommended an effective intelligence sharing system for all the police forces in the UK. Work is now on to install such a state-of-the-art system. If one had been in position in 2002, it is possible that the tragedy may have been averted.

The UK experiments in fortifying police information systems are of great relevance to us in India. Police forces - both State and Central - have mind-boggling volumes of information which, when shared, could be of great aid to investigations of a wide spectrum.

Like in many other countries, our agencies too jealously guard what they have, even when they know that their possessive instinct is ruinous to others who are stuck in a blind alley during a major investigation. This is unfortunate because we have now advanced technology that can seamlessly integrate a number of data bases, an exercise that was considered hardly possible until a few years ago.

(The writer is a former CBI Director who is currently Adviser (Security) to TCS Ltd.)

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