It is typical of the government to think that more law reduces crime, the same flawed logic that would suggest taking  cops off the beat and promoting them to chief inspector will solve crime (Too many cooks will spoil ID fraud broth).

What is needed is fewer people pontificating about what we should do about IT crime and more people actually tackling it.

From the few comments I have read on the subject of "low level" IT crime, such as not paying for something on eBay, it is not taken seriously by the police and in this particular example eBay itself would be expected to chase down the villain. Similarly, if you walk into a local police, station the response that you get will tend to be better if the sergeant at the desk happens to be a computer hobbyist, as far as I can deduce.

Until the police are properly resourced and trained to take IT crime as seriously as "normal" crime then not much progress will be made. This probably means at least one properly IT-trained computer crime officer in every major station and a management structure to co-ordinate them.

Robert McCord