Karen Hækkerup, the justice minister, told parliament that the newly-established internet crime unit, the National Cyber Crime Centre (NC3), will be fighting hackers, investigating internet fraud and busting up paedophile rings. She also said, in written answers to parliament’s legal committee, that the group will be keeping a close eye on what she called “extremist” social media groups.
“NC3 will, beginning in autumn of 2014, further strengthen efforts to monitor the different types of crime on the net,” she wrote in response to the committee’s questions. “As part of those efforts, NC3 will be present in some of the forums on the internet which are known to be used for criminal acts.”
NC3 will be monitoring Facebook groups with names like ‘No to criminal immigrants’ and ‘Shoot them’ to make sure that the threats and insults that regularly appear in such forums do not cross legal boundaries.
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What the new unit’s role may be is still unclear, as police have earlier stated that they do not usually press internet cases unless a party notifies them of a specific threat.
Hækkerup said that the new unit would only investigate crimes where there was a specific suspect or suspects, and only for crimes that can be prosecuted by public courts. Cases of libel, for example, are subject to private prosecution and cannot be investigated or prosecuted under the criminal code.
