Emerging technologies at the heart of the INTERPOL Forum on New Technologies

SINGAPORE – Law enforcement agencies must quickly understand new forms of crime arising from emerging technologies such as decentralized metaverses, which offer new ways of transmitting and accessing information that law enforcement does not order. Financial crimes based on non-traceable tokens (NFTs) are becoming more widespread, as are money laundering schemes. These tokens are hosted on decentralized platforms such as blockchains, which pose a serious challenge to law enforcement agencies as they can be managed without the involvement of a responsible authority. Therefore, law enforcement agencies should consider new solutions, such as open source tools, to improve data collection. Legislation also needs to adapt to these developments, which take time.

The INTERPOL Forum on New Technologies: Law Enforcement in Web 3.0, held at the INTERPOL Global Innovation Complex in Singapore from 15 to 17 November 2022, highlighted the risk of law enforcement officers falling behind criminals. Organized in collaboration with the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, the Forum noted that closer cooperation between law enforcement agencies, the private sector and academia could accelerate the understanding of these new technologies and their criminal implications. Through this New Technologies Forum, INTERPOL helps its 195 member countries identify and understand the practical applications of new technologies related to the transition to Web 3.0.

Raja Kumar, chairman of the Financial Action Task Force, highlighted the increasing use of privacy-enhancing techniques to blur the lines between cyber-currency transactions and the real identity of criminals. To keep pace with these operations and the stealth techniques criminals use to hide their identities, Mr. Kumar realized the importance of global and international cooperation to effectively intervene at the ecosystem scale. The rapid emergence of these new criminal issues and techniques, especially when it comes to cross-border transactions and offences, puts murky regulations and law enforcement on the back burner.

Another speaker, Patrick Ghion of the Regional Cyber ​​Competence Center at the Geneva Cantonal Police, spoke about the use of new communication vectors by criminals, such as encrypted communications, groups behind closed doors, and the need to provide illegal content. join a group or secure email providers. Mr. Ghion also urged attendees to prepare now to deal with threats that may not seem real today, such as issues related to space security and brain-machine interfaces.

Take space security as an example: the proliferation of satellites can present both opportunities and threats to law enforcement. They can indeed use satellites to collect data, but hacking satellite communications compromises public safety and security. In turn, brain-machine interfaces will blur the boundaries between perception of reality and induced signals.

Through this New Technologies Forum, INTERPOL helps its 195 member countries identify and understand the practical applications of new technologies related to the transition to Web 3.0.

The forum also included several workshops and knowledge-sharing sessions that identified challenges related to market decentralization, such as lack of accountability, barriers to evidence gathering, and lack of alignment of legal frameworks. Law enforcement agencies should expect the barriers to entry to Web 3.0 to ease, which will greatly facilitate access to the creation of decentralized marketplaces and accelerate/expand user adoption.

As several presenters and participants noted, criminals are moving fast and law enforcement must find tools to help them stay ahead of the game. The Forum recognized the need to work together to use technological tools to process large amounts of data for surveys in a scientific, empirical and reproducible manner. Cross-sector cooperation is also important to ensure adequate and quality professional training, which is one of the main needs of law enforcement agencies to keep up with the trend of decreasing crime.Web 3.0.