Posted: 04th Oct, 2010 By: MarkJ

The
Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, has warned that both the UK economy and cyber crime will benefit from a new generation of "
super-fast" fibre optic broadband internet (ISP) connections.
Sir Paul Stephenson told The Telegraph newspaper:"Next year, the UK economy will benefit from new high-speed fibre optic internet connections, which could boost online trade by nearly £20 billion. This is a huge opportunity for legitimate commerce – and for online fraudsters.
Of the 385 police officers in England and Wales dedicated to online work of all kinds, around 85% are tackling child exploitation and the internet trade in child abuse images.
The shows how little of our specialist cyber capacity is dedicated to the kind of online crime I’ve discussed. We do not have the equivalent of the US’s federal Cyber Command to combat this kind of crime."
Stephenson doesn't sight any specific research to support his claim, although faster internet access could certainly aid those whom are already abusing their internet access for truly illegal activity (e.g. faster sharing of child abuse images, more effective DDoS attacks etc.).
However we suspect that the improved reach of broadband internet access through the
2Mbps 2015 Universal Service Commitment (USC) would be a more likely culprit. People whom are already committing
serious crimes over existing broadband connections will just be able to do things faster, while the USC will reach more people and a few are always bound to be criminals.
It should be stressed that this is in no way the fault of the technology itself but rather a tiny minority of those who abuse it, much like motor cars or home phones. Stephenson correctly states that one of the best ways to disrupt e-crime is to secure your computer (firewall, anti-virus etc.) and keep it up to date.