The House of Lords announced on Friday that it was launching an inquiry into the personal Internet security of UK citizens.
Triggered by the rise in broadband usage and online services, the inquiry "will provide the first in depth Parliamentary study of an issue that will be of ever increasing importance to the public, business and Government" says a House of Lords press release. The Lords' Science and Technology committee is looking for evidence from members of the public who have experience with net security woes.
Areas of consideration include the forms the security threats take and the scale of them, how well the masses appreciate the problem, what can be done to improve it, whether Internet services are regulated adequately and how good the legislation in UK law is for fighting cyber crime.
The biggest problems, as we see it, are user education and spam. The vast majority of net crime victims are fleeced by some sort of attack via spam e-mail, be it a phishing venture, virus or something else. Then of course there are exploits to unpatched Operating Systems and pieces of software.
There's likely to be a lot of debate over what could be done and what should be done to help, including what roles ISPs should play in protecting their customers from cyber crime.
Of course, while the study could lead to some useful changes (eventually), we do hope it doesn't lead to crazy ideas like forcing sysadmins to give up encryption keys they may not even posses. Oh, wait a minute.
