I was reading articles about the FBI investigating the “Love letter” worm/virus, and I thought to myself, wouldn’t that be a job for Interpol? Then I wondered, what exactly is Interpol? As a youngster, I imagined it was an institution employing globe-trotting detectives that went around the world to investigate crime.
From a Yahoo! search, I found a link to Interpol but the link wasn’t valid. Same thing with http://www.interpol.com (which is a a link I found somewhere else.)
From reading at the site above, I guess I misunderstood what Interpol was all about. It seems that Interpol is an organization that coordinates between police forces in different countries, but doesn’t have any “agents” of its own.
Does anyone else have any more information? I think if an international police force doesn’t exist, someone should start one (presumably under the aegis of the United Nations.)
They already have an international police force. It’s called the U.S. Military :mad:
My (very limited) knowledge of Interpol leads me to believe that they keep track of international criminals and provide worldwide arrest records for local agencies tring to deal with such criminals.
My (purely anecdotal) knowledge of Interpol stems from some problems a friend had … but it seems from what he was told that their main purpose is, in fact, coordinating police forces in different countries. I guess they simply are more familiar with the protocols in the countries they work with, without actually doing investigations themselves.
the experience my friend involved an agent in another country who wanted to have him questioned in this country. They called Interpol, who called the local cops, who did the actual questioning. Of course they sounded much more intimidating when they could say, “Interpol contacted us in this matter.”
maybe an agent will show up and let us know more.
Who started Interpol? I always had the vague impression the thought came from France, but I don’t know.