European challenges for fighting crime and terrorism

The European Union stipulates a number of challenges in the field of fighting crime and terrorism. One component permeating all of them is technology’s evolution. It is a driving force for the nature and development of criminality. In order to inhibit crime and terror, it is hence pivotal to keep up with technological innovations and their use within the illegal realm.

The overarching ambition of all the activities that the EU collects under the heading “Fight against Crime and Terrorism” is to mitigate potential consequences of crime- and/or terrorism-related incidents, or, in the best case, avoid them altogether. The most pressing issues in this context are posed by illegal human trafficking, terrorist attacks, radicalisation, child sexual abuse and various forms of cyber-criminality. Whereas the last point is – by its name – defined via its technological component, in fact each of the focus areas is increasingly determined by innovations in computer and data science. For example, child sexual exploitation is reinforced by the use of the internet, and especially the darknet, as a platform for child sex offenders to communicate, store and share material. Also, the hunt for new victims continues to be one of the internet’s most abhorrent facets.

When it comes to official policies, the cyber-aspect to crime and terror is not yet satisfactorily understood nor properly addressed. At the same time, the emerging omnipresence of the Internet of Things triggers a constant expansion of the attack surface as well as the number of attack vectors. It is therefore a key challenge to determine what the actual drivers of new forms of cyber-criminality are and to investigate their trends. Moreover, it proofs insufficient to focus on technological analysis only, because the human factor plays a major role as well. Psychological, neurobiological and sociological phenomena, like online disinhibition effects or a surge in juvenile participation, have to be taken into account in order to indeed understand the criminal processes.

Organised crime and terrorist organisations are at the forefront of technological innovation, while Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) are often lagging behind when tackling such criminal activities supported by advanced technologies. However, the potential provided by emerging technologies is just as promising for LEAs in case investigation methodologies are updated and renewed. New tools allow for real-time forensic analysis, fast information gathering, exploitation and exchange. Moreover, large amounts of data from a variety of origins have become available to practitioners, which they could take advantage of in a greater manner using most advanced techniques of Big Data analysis and artificial intelligence. Further research and broader implementation of existing methods within LEAs is thus absolutely crucial.

At the same time, the EU stresses the need to always hold up European values and to fully respect fundamental rights as the right to privacy and the right to protection of personal data. Technological innovation combined with moral integrity represents a guiding light for future common European efforts in fighting against crime and terrorism.

References

[1] European Commission.  (2017). Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2018-2020. Secure societies.

Keywords

Terrorism, cyber-criminality, child sexual exploitation, child abuse, forensics, digital forensics, Big Data, artificial intelligence, illegal trafficking, fundamental rights, organised crime, Internet of Things, human factor, online disinhibition effect, darknet, prevention