BAKAS | Trendwatcher - Author - Speaker - TV-personality

Amsterdam, 25 May 2010. When the election campaigns mention security, they should also concentrate more on Internet crime, which now accounts for more than 50% of all crime,” says trendwatcher Adjiedj Bakas. “The risk of being robbed over the Internet is already greater than the risk of being robbed on the streets. And you can’t even report Internet crime to the police.
”Experts in the security sector realise that, over the past ten years, there has been an enormous rise in Internet crime. Plus an explosive growth is expected in the near future. However, citizens are hardly interested in that and neither are politicians. That results in there being an incorrect focus on security in the future. The government invests in combating yesterday’s crime instead of tomorrow’s crime”.

Security is playing an important role in the current election campaigns. Bakas welcomes this. “The future of economy and security are important subjects to citizens”. He is, however, surprised about the lack of interest shown by people in the country in Internet crime. “People are more likely to worry about street crime than about Internet crime, whilst the growth of Internet crime is much faster than street crime. Because citizens are not showing particular interest in Internet crime, this hasn’t been included on the agendas of the campaigning politicians”, Bakas believes. “Both citizens and politicians revert to the classic kneejerk response of more uniforms on the streets, but there should be more ‘uniforms’ on the Internet,” says Bakas, who wrote about this subject in his book World Megatrends.

Bakas says: “The investigation equipment of the police, the judicial authorities and the intelligence services still focus on physical crime. This is also where the majority of money is spent, plus the majority of manpower is deployed in this area. That must undergo a radical change if we want a future that is really safer.” Bakas advocates the new Cabinet radically redeploying the cash flows for security. ”If you want to see real progress, 50% of the current security budget has to be transferred from physical crime to cyber crime.”
Bakas anticipates that, ultimately, privacy will totally disappear on account of the further growth of Internet crime. “Citizens don’t realise that their privacy has already largely disappeared. Over a ten year period, privacy has completely disappeared, despite all the current protests against that. Combating Internet crime effectively will demand this; you won’t be able to prevent that.”

Bakas cites a topical example: “It is becoming increasingly common for social media to be hacked, your profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Hyves, etc. These hackers, who often originate from Nigeria, will then send messages to your friends to the effect of: I am on a trip and have been the victim of a pickpocket; could you urgently send me some money to bank account X? Unsuspecting friends then transfer money to a Western Union account and the money then vanishes. The owner of the hacked profile reports this to the police, but the police are unable to deal with this. After all, nothing is laid down in law about this type of crime. And this is how billions are lost. This will become more common in the future. It will take years before there is a reliable law and approach. People have to be very aware of this and use their social media with caution.” Is there another example? Bakas: “Fictitious authentic-looking invoices for relatively small amounts are sent to businesses, mostly electronically, because electronic invoicing is becoming more common in the business community. Approximately 1% of those invoices are subsequently paid. That amounts to billions”.

According to Bakas, citizens often don’t realise what the spam that they receive is intended for. “Through spam, the sender gains access to important information, meaning he is able to adopt your virtual identity. This also means he knows your bank account number, your login codes for your bank, passwords, etc. In a credible manner, he is then able to order things from web shops in your name. People have to realise that their identity can be compromised, and that this can result in them sustaining significant damage.” Another example. “Criminals are able to hack your electricity meter and see how much electricity you consume. If you only consume limited electricity during the evenings, you are evidently not at home, therefore they know that they are to break in without being disturbed”.

Bakas will talk about this subject today at the closed WCIT conference in the RAI, where 3,000 global IT specialists will be meeting. Bakas is the chairman of the WCIT sub-conference concerning Internet crime, contributors to which are IT and security experts from, amongst others, Schiphol Airport, the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI).