Brussels, 24/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - Adopting the opinion by Gerard Dantin (Workers' Group, France) on "Creating a Safety Information Society by Improving the Security of Information Infrastructures and Combating Computer-related Crime" at its September plenary session, the Economic and Social Committee (ESC) felt that broader prevention and training measures (and combating exclusion) should be added to the repressive measures put forward by the European Commission in its Communication.
The ESC feels that adequate substantive and procedural legislative provisions were required to ensure that surfing the web did not allow tracking or investigation of an individual's private behaviour to occur. Sending anonymous unsolicited mail to a specific individual address, particularly from public fora (such as cybercafes or libraries) should also be banned, according to the ESC, in order to ensure that receivers of e-mail have the option of finding out exactly who sent the mail in question. The ESC also wants more detailed assessment of the risks to SMEs of security shortcomings on the internet (destruction and loss of data, theft of confidential files, viruses in their IT systems, etc).