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Cutting edge technology and crime

By Allen Koehn - posted Tuesday, 21 October 2008


Popular television series in the US and here in Australia, celebrate the use of cutting-edge technology to solve serious crimes. In the perfect world created by these shows’ writers forensic police use an impressive mix of seemingly “high tech” modern forensic computing systems, CCTV, biometrics, DNA scanners - and a little creative license - to solve murders in record time.

Most people would believe that the program story lines are a bit far-fetched. But believe it or not, these portrayals of policing provide a glimpse of the advanced tools police could be using in the future. Many of the tools are in use today and have been successfully implemented around the world.

Police services are cautious about moving too quickly towards trialling new technology as there are strong disciplines around consistent and time-honoured evidence gathering police procedures - and for good reason. After all, the evidence needs to stand up in court.

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A priority of any government is to maintain the highest possible levels of police visibility and responsiveness for managing and responding to emergencies and breaches of the law, and to ensure continued community confidence and trust. So there is always pressure to spend the greatest proportion of any budget allocation on training, recruitment, retention and traditional tools used by police, including weapons, vehicles and communications equipment.

These days, however, governments and law enforcement agencies the world over are realising that technology can provide police with new weapons for law enforcement and crime prevention and can also help to serve their communities better. There is also a wider community expectation that police services are utilising the most capable and cutting edge means at their disposal to ensure that community safety is protected.

In the past 12 months in Australia, a range of technologies such as in car computers, biometric-based face recognition systems, handheld fingerprint scanners, surveillance and watch-list matching, and GPS vehicle locaters have been rolled out within various police jurisdictions.

In April last year, the Victorian government announced it would spend $3.4 million on face recognition technology to help police match faces with security footage or identikit images from police databases. In May this year, it was reported that police in Geelong, Victoria would consider new ID scanner security technology that allows them to warn venues of troublemakers loitering at the city’s night spots.

GPS satellite technology will soon be used to map every breath test conducted in Queensland to help police identify drink driving black spots. New South Wales Police is also considering adopting a simple email or “e-policing” system that alerts residents of crimes occurring in their local area, and asks them to become more active in fighting crimes in their communities. E-policing is already being used by some of the largest police forces in the world to combat crime, including the Los Angeles Police Department in the US.

A Call Center system, now in use in the US and the UK, helps to take the pressure off already stretched police resources. The system allows people to get fast and easy access to “non-emergency” information and services, effectively freeing up police resources dedicated to deal with those situations that require an immediate response.

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All these examples highlight the increasing use of technology in law enforcement, and also its potential in a range of different ways to help police organisations provide a better service overall.

According to a recent report in The Guardian, CCTV cameras in the UK aren’t preventing crime. Only 3 per cent of street robberies in London were solved with the assistance of CCTV cameras. The use of CCTV images for court evidence had also been poor, the report said.

However, this report ignored two issues. First, that CCTV has been in place for many years and newer installations today go well beyond passive monitoring. Today a holistic approach to security using CCTV can provide a much more proactive and predictive capability, particularly when used alongside intelligent surveillance, face-in-the-crowd imaging and tracking, and building in the capacity for integrated human and other analytics in the surveillance process.

Second, visible measures such as CCTV cameras play a further role in building public confidence and trust. Last year, security surveillance footage was used to identify the person that abandoned three-year-old Qian Xun Xue (dubbed Pumpkin) at Melbourne’s Southern Cross train station, a process that would have been much more difficult without CCTV in place.

Ultimately, for the potential to be fully realised with any security technology - surveillance based or otherwise - what is needed is a broader focus on the business issue first if the solution is going to deliver on everything you need it to.

Unisys has established the Security Innovation Centre to facilitate this understanding in partnership with the University of Canberra and with the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship as a founding member. The Centre is all about bringing together the best minds from the private sector with the best minds from the University of Canberra and DIAC, in the interests of better security solutions for Australia and our community.

Road blocks to technology adoption

Funding, manpower and technology maturity along with evidentiary and procedural concerns have been roadblocks to technology adoption inside police services. Civil liberties and privacy considerations are also a critical factor to work through in any new technology initiative.

What is interesting is that attitudes towards privacy today are evolving. Indeed, attitude change has been a key factor in the current review of privacy laws in Australia by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC).

Australians are concerned about privacy. When asked about the issues that concern them, Australians consistently demonstrate that they are more concerned about misuse of their personal information and financial fraud, than they are about any other security issue, according to the Unisys Security Index.

Nearly 98 per cent of Australians indicated that they would be happy to provide extra identifiers such as photographs and fingerprints to verify their identity with banks, government departments and other organisations, if this would prevent fraudulent misuse of their personal details. And younger people are demonstrating a different approach to privacy again, particularly when it comes to sharing of personal information over the Internet and through social networking sites.

The bottom line is that attitudes towards privacy are evolving - across the community and among younger generations. People want to feel secure when they’re using the Internet to do banking online, or simply waiting at a train station. Today there is a much greater willingness to provide personal information if they can see that they get greater security, and convenience, as a result.

Technology to enhance privacy

A key finding of the ALRC Review of Privacy Law has been that some forms of security technology can actually enhance privacy, not diminish it, (particularly biometrics). This has been reiterated by the Australian Privacy Commissioner.

Previously, some have argued that biometrics technology has the potential to invade an individual’s privacy. But today there is a growing realisation that with the right controls biometrics can actually enhance privacy. There is also growing support for biometrics, with the majority of the community prepared to use biometrics for greater security and improved convenience. So much so that security, privacy and convenience today need to be seen as necessary and coexisting factors in any security initiative, rather than an automatic “trade off” as they once were.

Any technology that lowers the risk of personal information being hacked and misused protects an individual’s privacy. In Australia, Biometrics are already being used at the border in passports and as part of an Enhanced Border Control program being run by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

So while we need to keep privacy at the forefront of any security initiative - particularly in the field of law enforcement and policing - we also need to continue testing any assumptions about the level of community support for one type of initiative over another. This is an important message for police services as it is for other government agencies.

Conclusion

It might be unrealistic to have immaculately-dressed TV cops solving cases in 55 minutes without putting a hair out of place. But it does give us some insight into the potential cutting edge of policing today. Experience globally has shown that advanced technologies such as biometrics, predictive surveillance, integrated physical security, emergency call systems, and others, have the potential to dramatically improve the service provided by Australian police agencies.

The key to realising the future rests on three things:

First, a focus on the ultimate policing business outcome you are seeking to improve, not merely the latest technology you would like to introduce. This will ensure that the technology integrates with existing policing procedures, not merely adds to them.

Second, law enforcement agencies need to develop a vision for their overall IT environment and how it makes the job of a police officer easier, and enables them to more safely, provide a better service to the community.

Finally, an awareness of broader public attitudes - and changes in them - and a willingness to test some of the assumptions being made about levels of support for some initiatives over another. The results are not always what would be expected.

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About the Author

Allen Koehn is Managing Partner, Public Sector, Unisys Asia Pacific.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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