The commuting criminals: How London’s drug gangs turned to the Home Counties to beat the police

Displacement as usual. Been going on a while, according to my police sources. It's almost like twinning and not necessarily just a response to police tactics in London. Low risk high profit activity.

Woman takes on Yakuza godfather over protection racket

Let's hope this works!

Cybercrime hits more than 9 million UK web users

Its nice to have figures, but it would be much more helpful if we could dig a little deeper into the data. How many of these people use anti-virus software for example? Which banks ar hit most often? etc. etc.

Jailed Boston mobster's gang 'smuggled weapons to the IRA in coffins'

Sunday telegraph piece on an aspect of the terrorism/organised crime nexus. Usual cautions apply! Supergrasses tend to exaggerate their stories, but it would be an interesting link, if true.

Three arrested over ‘large scale’ burglary spree

this will be a case worth watching as it may tell us something of how burglary gangs are organised or reorganising. Police allege this is linked to burglaries all over the country. One thing we know about the Irish is that they travel, with important diasporas in the UK, USA and Australia. Increasingly also in continental Europe. Most other European gangs would be getting into fraud, drugs, people trafficking, sex crime or cybercrime.

How Colombian FARC Terrorists Mining Tungsten Are Linked to Your BMW Sedan

Fascinating story of conflict mineral extraction akin to events in the Congo. Someone has a business model that is being applied more frequently than formerly realised. Mobile phones and BMWs come from some very dubious sources.

Children taken from mafia families to try to stop cycle of violence

Piece on 'Ndragheta from BBC. useful map and links.

Big data: police given access to British army's crime-fighting software

It isnt crime fighting software. It's data handling software being used to process large quantities of data and turn it/them into evidence. Video data as well as words. expensive and being used by Royal Military Police. Its a bit of a sloppy article, presumably that started off as a press release.

How Vulnerable Are Power Companies To Cyberattack?

Account of a meeting to discuss how to handle an attack on the power grid in the US and who might carry it out.

The real Bad Girls - extraordinary insight into London's female gang culture

Presumably, this piece is a taster for more to come? Article is a real teaser about female gang membership in the UK...and presumably primarily London?

Interpol open source data on Solntsevo group in Europe

This material comes from the Russian mafia website, which is well worth exploring for material on Russian organised crime. It's difficult to make individual links to posts as it is a structured site.

Tor 'deep web' servers go offline as Irish man is held over child abuse images

There will be more on this on geek webpages, but the story appears to be that the FBI managed to use malware to identify some users IP addresses. I'm not sure that our man from the Guardian hasnt entangled at least two, maybe three separate stories together. Firstly, there's a guy in jail in Dublin awaiting extradition proceedings. secondly, a number of users of Tor disappeared from the network over the weekend. Thirdly, the story this post began with. More to follow, I suspect.

Organized Crime Research Highlights Number 2

Courtesy of Federico Varese