Conference explores ways to fight international cybercrime

PARIS — Wanted: cyber-sleuths and cyber-laws. With attacks on the Internet spreading worldwide, government and business leaders worked yesterday on developing more powerful tools to fight cross-border cyber-criminals.

The three-day conference of the Group of Eight industrial nations was planned long before the "Love Bug'' virus, but that attack and other recent Internet incursions have focused G8 leaders on the urgency of protecting cyberspace.

"It's a worldwide challenge. No state can solve the problem itself,'' said Hubert Marty, a French police investigator who specializes in solving Internet crimes.

Pierre Charasse, a senior French diplomat who organized the conference, said he was struck by the similarities among the nations' cyber-fighting strategies.

Differences have also emerged, with the United States and Europe grappling with issues such as privacy and how long companies should be required to store data transmitted on the Internet.

Europe has urged storing data for up to a year, an expensive proposition they say is necessary to give investigators enough time to track cyber-criminals. The United States argues there's too much information on the Internet to store all of it.

Even how open the conference should be was a matter of debate. Yesterday's sessions, originally set to be open, were transformed into closed-door meetings after some G8 members objected to the open-door format.

Senior police, judicial and security officials from G8 governments, as well as officials from Interpol, Europol, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and private sector representatives were among the participants.