The Europe Roundup: Cybercrime in the UK, Ushahidi in Serbia, Big Data in Norway
BY Antonella Napolitano | Friday, February 10 2012
- UK | Three Regional Hubs to Fight Cybercrime Nationally
The UK Metropolitan Police has launched three regional teams to work on cybercrime with the the Metropolitan Police Centre e-crime Unit. The effort is aimed at improving the police work on cybercrime prevention, reports BBC:
A training period is required before the hubs will be fully operational, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Janet Williams, who heads ACPO's e-crime efforts, said.
[...] "It is anticipated the hubs will make a significant contribution to the 'national harm reduction' target of £504m."
Harm reduction is calculated using a "harm matrix" - a system which factors in costs such as how much the criminal stood to gain, how much money was invested in the crime, and the potential cost to the victim.
The news comes a week after the hack of a call between Scotland Yard and FBI officers, leaked by hackers collective Anonymous.
- Serbia | A Ushahidi Platform to Track Reports from Areas Hit by Snowfalls
In the past few days the Adriatic area suffered from unusual freezing conditions: temperatures fell low and massive snow storms have hit Italy, Greece and Serbia.
Global Voices reports that in Serbia Al Jazeera Balkans and Ushahidi joined forces to create an online map to track problems and disservices in the areas that were hit by snow storms. A similar platform was used in the area after an earthquake back in 2010.
Global Voices also writes that other actions have been organized by the online community in Serbia by using the hashtag #lopataup (#shovelup).
- Norway | Deluge: Finding Patterns in Public Data
Norwegian developer Even Westwang created a fascinating animation called "Deluge" showing how 300,000 of his compatriots move every year in the country.
Westvang used data that were publicly available on tax records, birth date, income and address, in order to be able to trace the move and find patterns.
Deluge from even westvang on Vimeo.Westvang (also a speaker at Nordic Techpolitcs, an event in cooperation with PdF) has also created skoleporten, an interactive map that visualizes data from Norwegian school test results. In that occasion, datasets were obtained by Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet.no using the Norwegian FOIA, noted PdF friend and speaker Bente Kalsnes.
Plus
- The UK Supreme Court will accept freedom of information requests via Twitter
- Actor, director and Twitter-star Stephen Fry declared his public (and, possibly, economical) support to Paul Chambers through his ordeal. Chambers was arrested on terrorism charges after posting a joke tweet on Twitter, two years ago.
- The Open Knowledge Foundation is bringing Open Government Data Camp (OGDCamp) and Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) together next September in Helsinki, Finland. Save the date!