Change of direction for the fight against cybercrime. The Ministry of the Interior would have chosen to abandon the project of service with national competence which was to group together the police and gendarmerie forces in the fight against cybercrime in a single entity.
This project had however been announced on the occasion of the FIC 2021, and the director general of the Gendarmerie, Christian Rodriguez, was delighted to see the new Comcybergend designated to welcome this new service within it. A consecration for the gendarmes, who were thus granted a certain priority in the fight against cybercrime.
But according to information obtained by the newspaper The world, the project finally fizzled out.
Police lobbying
Blame it on the lobbying of the National Police, which argued to the ministry that the police forces have been involved in the fight against cybercrime for a long time and are frequently seized by the courts on leading cases.
The first police brigade specializing in the fight against computer crimes and misdemeanors dates back to 1995.
The gendarmes defend themselves on their side by recalling that the gendarmerie services are seized more often than the police by the magistrates of the J3 prosecution, the prosecution specializing in the fight against cybercrimes.
Separate services that will continue to work together
After several months of vagueness and hesitation, Minister Gérald Darmanin has therefore chosen to retrace his steps. “Rather than entrusting cyber to a single force, I preferred to raise the skills of all the forces of the Ministry of the Interior”, he explains to journalists from the World who questioned him about it.
A step back which is justified according to the daily by the approach of the presidential election, in order to avoid creating discontent.
In cyber, the police and gendarmerie services will therefore ultimately not be grouped under the same aegis. An organization chart which does not prevent investigators from collaborating on investigations on a daily basis, but which will not put an end to the competition between the Gendarmerie and the Police on the treatment of computer crime, a phenomenon which is growing in recent years.