Image copyrightLUCKYBUSINESSImage captionModern thieves are likely to use social media to check if you are home before calling roundTechnology is now at the “root” of all serious criminality, says Europe’s police agency.The returns generated by document fraud, money laundering and online trade in illegal goods helps to pay for other damaging crimes, said Europol.The wider use of technology by criminal gangs poses the “greatest challenge” to police forces, it said in a study.It revealed that Europol is currently tracking 5,000 separate international organised crime groups.Empty housesThe “comprehensive” study of organised crime in Europe found a wide range of crime groups ranging from loose networks of individual criminals up to large trans-national bodies that generate profits whoch rival those of legitimate multi-national corporations.

Crowdfunding platform Indiegogo intervened to stop a handheld retro computer console campaign from acquiring further funding, the BBC has learned.The Spectrum ZX Vega+, backed by Sir Clive Sinclair, had achieved its original crowdfunding target.But then Indiegogo halted further fundraising because of delivery delays and a lack of communication to backers.The project’s organisers had asked the BBC not to reveal the development.The BBC understands no consoles have been delivered to backers, despite a pledge last month that they would “ship after 20 Feb 2017”.And the company behind the project – Retro Computers Limited – suggested these details might put its team at risk.

If the tech industry is drawing one lesson from the latest WikiLeaks disclosures, it’s that data-scrambling encryption works, and the industry should use more of it.Documents purportedly outlining a massive CIA surveillance program suggest that CIA agents must go to great lengths to circumvent encryption they can’t break. In many cases, physical presence is required to carry off these targeted attacks.”We are in a world where if the U.S. government wants to get your data, they can’t hope to break the encryption,” said Nocholas Weaver, who teaches networking and security at the University of California, Berkeley. “They have to resort to targeted attacks, and that is costly, risky and the kind of thing you do only on targets you care about. Seeing the CIA have to do stuff like this should reassure civil libertarians that the situation is better now than it was four years ago.”