The European Commission Wednesday proposed a European cybercrime center to...

with its own separate management board, up to 55 employees and an annual budget of 4.6 million euros ($6 million). The center will serve as Europe’s focal point for fighting Internet crime and will target activities that generate large criminal profits such as online frauds involving credit cards and bank credentials, it said. EU experts will also try to prevent crimes affecting e-banking and online booking transactions, protect social networks from cybercrime infiltrators and help combat identity theft, it said. The center will also warn EU governments of major cyberthreats, alert them to weaknesses in their online defenses, and provide operational support in actual investigations, it said. The idea is to get Europe’s best brains together, said Home Affairs Commissioner Cecelia Malmström. The center won’t target individual file-sharers, only severe organized crime, she said. It will link with industry, the private sector and civil society on specific technical and forensic issues, she said. Europol already deals with computer crime, but its limited resources prevent it from gathering information from various sources or responding to law enforcement, judicial and private-sector queries, the EC said. The center will work with Eurojust, the European Network Information and Security Agency, EU countries and others and will exchange information with partners beyond the police community, it said.