ICT Trends in European - Policing COMPOSITE Draft of Deliverable D4.1 - Fraunhofer FIT
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ICT Trends
in European
Policing
COMPOSITE
Photo: David Adams
Draft of Deliverable D4.1
© 2011 by COMPOSITE Project Authors: Sebastian Denef5, Nico Kaptein8, Petra S. Bayerl1, Kamal Birdi7, Fabio Bisogni12, Damien Cassan9, Jochen Christe-Zeyse4, Pietro Costanzo12, Mila Gascó13, Kate Horton1, Gabriele Jacobs1, Theo Jochoms3, Katerina Krste- vska15, Stojanka Mirceva15, Ad van den Oord10, Catalina Oţoiu11, Rade Rajkovchevski15, Zdenko Reguli14, Trpe Stojanovski15, Gabriel Vonas11 This research is partially funded by the European Commission as part of FP7 in the context of the COMPOSITE project (contract no. 241918). This report is the draft of a public deliverable to the Europe- an Commission (D4.1 Analysis of technology trends for policing) More Information: www.composite-project.eu 1-15 See affiliations on page 7.
Summary:
ICT Trends
in European Policing
In this report we present the results from interviews
and document analyses of current and planned infor-
mation and communication technology (ICT) projects
with police forces from 10 European countries and
from interviews with technology vendors in the field of
ICT for policing. Based on a cross-country, cross-organ-
isational analysis, we present the following themes that
describe major trends in ICT for European policing:
»» the integration of intelligence data systems
»» the adoption of mobile computing
»» the use of video surveillance technologies
»» the application of digital biometrics
»» the crosscutting issue of user acceptance
»» the emerging challenge of social media applications
We discuss how these issues are relevant and thereby
point to open issues for future research.
2
Contents
Introduction:
Studying ICT Changes
in European Policing 4
Methods:
Mapping Trends 8
Theme 1:
Integrating Systems 12
Theme 2:
Increasing Mobility 18
Theme 3:
Surveillance Technology 24
Theme 4:
Digital Biometrics 28
Theme 5:
User Acceptance 30
Theme 6:
Social Media 34
Discussion:
Informing
Future Research 38
3
Introduction:
Studying ICT Changes
in European Policing
Recently, rapid developments in the field of ICT have
had a major influence upon police work. Technologi-
cal innovations turn out to change the organisational
environment in significant ways. For police, ICT plays a
twofold role: New technologies can support police work
but also provide new opportunities for offenders to
commit crimes.
Within the COMPOSITE project, a European-wide
research project aimed at investigating change within
police forces, a dedicated work package ‘Technology
Adaptation’ specifically focuses on change processes
relating to ICT.
As a first step, the trend analysis presented in this
report scans for current ICT developments and thereby
provides pointers for future research.
4Researching Changes hand, but will not infringe upon sion, but also reveal best practices
in European Policing: civil liberties and human rights, on and bring about practical improve-
The COMPOSITE Project the other. ments in the conception, planning,
organisation and implementation
The COMPOSITE project performs For European police forces, these of change processes in European
comparative police studies in major societal changes have trig- police forces.
the European Union. The project gered ambitious change pro-
brings together researchers and grammes aiming at modernising Therefore, dedicated work pack-
police forces from Belgium, the and rationalising the way police ages are responsible for academic
Czech Republic, France, Germany, work is conducted. The face of the coordination, the dissemination of
Italy, Macedonia, the Netherlands, police slowly changes in a funda- the results to relevant police com-
Romania, Spain and the United mental manner.1 Consequently, munities and the general public, as
Kingdom (Figure 1) to investigate it is important to understand the well as for the implementation of
organisational change processes impact of the specific cultural and a consulting and training program.
in police forces. social contexts of policing and to
consider the sometimes dramat- Additionally, the project will set up
Security issues consistently rank ic differences in which current a European Police Monitor that
among the most pressing con- challenges, on the one hand, and aims to systematically collect in-
cerns of citizens in virtually all Eu- modern policing concepts and in- formation on change processes
ropean countries. Terrorism, or- struments, on the other, are inter- within European police organisa-
ganised crime, drugs, and violence preted and implemented in differ- tions and to share the results in a
have an impact upon citizens’ per- ent European countries. user-friendly way.1
ception of their immediate sur-
roundings and also shape their at- Central to the research in the
titudes towards the state and its COMPOSITE project is therefore to
representatives. study and compare these change
initiatives and to determine impor-
Open borders, the free flow of peo- tant factors that trigger change
ple, goods, information, and capi- processes, impact the implemen-
tal also facilitate the planning and tation and determine the chance
1 Jacobs, G., Christe-Zeyse, J.,
committing of crimes. Politicians of success.
Keegan, A., & Pólos, L. (2008). Reac-
and police forces alike are faced
tions to organizational identity threats
with the pressure to address these The results from the COMPOSITE
in times of change: illustrations from
problems in ways that should al- project should not only bring about
the German police. Corporate Reputa-
leviate citizens’ fears on the one new insights for scientific discus-
tion Review, 11: 245-261.
5Fulfilling the demands of this Eu- further increase the relevance of ment in various ways. ICT in the
ropean approach, researchers of adequate design and use of ICT. police is closely regulated by laws,
15 organisations from 10 Europe- yet may go way beyond what is al-
an countries work in COMPOSITE, ICT systems present an opportu- lowed for the ‘normal citizen’. ICT
as the map on page 7 shows. The nity for police forces to increase use and design thus become deli-
project consortium additionally their capabilities. ICT concepts, cate issues.
receives advice from its end-us- architecture and design have ma-
er board with experts from police tured significantly and are subject The research on ICT in COMPOS-
forces and other police related or- to continuous innovation. Relevant ITE is guided by the understand-
ganisations. ICT may range from systems in- ing that “computer technologies
stalled in public environments over are not neutral—they are laden
PC-based systems in offices, to with human, cultural and social
Focusing on ICT: systems installed in cars and mo- values”1 and is focused on socio-
Work Package bile systems used on-site. In addi- technical issues that arise from ICT
Technology Adaptation tion to systems that are specifically within the context of police work.
designed for the police, ICT in use Thus, we focus on issues that arise
In the frame of the COMPOSITE by the general public may offer the in the interaction between technol-
project, the work package ‘Tech- police new means of dealing with ogy, on the one hand, and police
nology Adaptation’ focuses on their tasks. organisations, individual actors,
change processes related to digi- private companies and the general
tal information and communica- Emerging ICT and their appropria- public, on the other.
tion systems (ICT) that have a tion by society may also constitute
noticeable effect on policing, in- a threat that demands new com-
vestigating the adaption of these petencies and practices to be de-
ICT systems by European police veloped and integrated in existing
forces. police work. Offenders could use
systems directly against the police
Policing is a highly complex, in- or against the general public.
formation-led activity that re-
quires the integration of multiple The extended use of ICT turns out
data sources, often in short time to be much more than just a tech- 1 Harper, R., Rodden, T., Rogers,
frames. The sensitive nature of nical innovation to make police Y., and Sellen, A., eds. Being Human:
most information and the severe work easier and more efficient. Human-Computer Interaction in the
consequences of possible errors Technological innovations change year 2020. 2008, Microsoft Research:
the organisation and its environ- Cambridge.
6Figure 1: COMPOSITE Project Consortium
6
7
1 2 3
4
10 5
8 9
14
11
13
12
15
Project Consortium
1 Erasmus-University 6 University of Durham, 12 Fondazione per la Ricerca
Rotterdam, Netherlands United Kingdom sulla Migrazione e sulla
(Coordinator) 7 Sheffield University, Integrazione delle Tecnologie,
2 University Utrecht, United Kingdom FORMIT, Rome, Italy
Netherlands 8 Capgemini Telecom Media 13 ESADE Business School,
3 Police Academy of the Defense, France Barcelona, Spain
Netherlands 9 Centre National de la Re- 14 Masaryk University, Brno,
4 Fachhochschule der Polizei cherche Scientifique, Czech Republic
des Landes Brandenburg, Paris, France 15 University St. Kliment Ohridski,
Oranienburg, Germany 10 University Antwerpen, Skopje / Bitola, Macedonia
5 Fraunhofer-Institut für Ange- Belgium
wandte Informationstechnik 11 Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj,
FIT, Sankt Augustin, Germany Romania
7Methods:
Mapping Trends
Our first objective in the work package ‘Technology
Adaptation’ is to map the current, most relevant ICT
developments, opportunities and related practices in
the domain of policing and to look for commonalities
and differences across Europe.
To learn about current ICT trends, we approached the
field by studying current and planned ICT projects at
different police forces and by studying new technologi-
cal developments coming from the industry of ICT
solutions for police contexts.
By comparing all the data collected through interviews,
surveys and document analyses, we identify a number
of themes that describe current trends and issues for
ICT at European police forces.
8Studying Police and projects. For each project, informa- Our approach combined a detailed
Industry Perspectives tion about its scope, the motiva- product enquiry, surveys and semi-
tion and triggering needs, the tech- structured interviews with se-
As ICT emerges in the interaction nology itself and its impact on the lected key vendors. We selected
between market demands and practice and problems, were gath- vendors that currently deliver tech-
technological innovations, our ered. We asked questions such nology to police forces or aim to
analysis takes into account cur- as: What systems are currently be- do so in the future. We looked for
rent demands and initiatives by ing envisioned, designed or intro- companies that attend internation-
police forces as well as current duced for police work? What po- al police conferences and added
and envisioned systems offered by lice processes do these systems them to a list, which we screened
vendors. support? What needs do they ad- for their relevance in providing ICT
dress? How are systems designed, for the police.
On the police side, we conduct- specified and introduced? What
ed interviews with ICT experts at are the problems during design We invited companies to partici-
police forces in all 10 European and introduction? Which ICT con- pate in telephone interviews; 20
countries. Local teams performed stitutes a threat to police work? were willing and able to participate
semi-structured interviews with a How are those threats handled? in an interview (see the list on page
total of 52 police officers from a 11). The companies interviewed in-
variety of police forces (see list on We further collected public or po- cluded both large, multinational
page 11). To cover a wide range, lice-internal documents for addi- companies and small, local niche
we aimed at talking to different po- tional information about the pro- players. We focused on European
lice forces in each country at local jects identified in the interviews. companies, but also included a
and federal levels with different The interviews were recorded if few vendors that have their cur-
tasks such as border police or mu- possible and, in combination with rent business mainly outside Eu-
nicipal police forces. the data from the documents, rope. Each interview lasted around
used to produce a record for each 45 minutes. Based on semi-struc-
Interviewees were officers with re- project as part of a cross-national tured guidelines, we identified cur-
sponsibilities related to ICT, whose database. rent and foreseen ICT applications
tasks ranged from specifying user for police. The vendors were asked
requirements for a particular pro- On the vendor side, a cross-nation- to explain their technology and to
ject to deciding on national ICT al market study on available ICT in explain who would work with the
strategies. Each interview lasted the field of first response was per- technology and how it would affect
between one and two hours. Based formed to identify important trend- police work. We also asked for best
on semi-structured guidelines, we setting vendors and designers hav- practices and challenges around
identified current and planned ICT ing a strong impact in this sector. the introduction of this technol-
9ogy. To conclude each interview, gorised the data accordingly and Presenting
we collected vendors’ views on the checked whether or not issues Six Themes
relevance of different technologies occurred in multiple countries.
now and in the coming years. The The categorization led to common The six themes we present in the
interviews were recorded and sum- themes and special ICT topics cur- following text stem from a bottom-
marised in a standardised format rently relevant to European police. up categorization of the data.
that followed the interview guide-
lines. Based on the feedback from the The following themes are not nec-
vendors, we refined these catego- essarily exclusive, indeed we often
ries, so that police and vendor in- found technologies or initiatives
Combining Data and puts jointly build a set of themes that touch multiple themes. Nev-
Deriving Themes that reflect the current trends. ertheless, the themes represent
visible patterns and trends in our
To combine the results, we cod- To validate the results and com- data mirroring common issues of
ed the data according to themes bine the police and industry per- ICT in European police forces from
in the use of technologies, moti- spectives, we presented early different perspectives.
vations and problems, looking for results of the analyses to the end-
overlapping patterns in the data. user board (see list on page 11). While some of the themes are
During the workshops, we dis- technologically driven and directly
With the project records, we per- cussed the themes and asked the point to a certain class of devices,
formed two steps of analysis. First, officers to rank the identified top- others stem from a common moti-
local teams looked for patterns ics according to current relevance vation or need, or address a com-
and special issues within their re- in their country and police force mon problem.
spective country and added issues and according to their estimated
not covered in the project records relevance for the next 2–4 years. We have ordered the first four
in a summary report. Second, we While priorities differed across themes by their respective pres-
performed a comparative analysis countries, all themes were con- ence in the data and their occur-
of all projects identifying cross-na- sidered relevant and no additional rence in different countries. The
tional trends. In this second step, themes were added. fifth theme ‘User Acceptance’ pre-
we coded the data with keywords sents a common issue across dif-
for the types of technologies used, ferent projects, the final theme
motivations and arising issues, in points to a trend that does not
order to extract patterns from the have a large presence in all coun-
records. In a database including tries but is expected to gain in-
all projects and codes, we cate- creasing relevance.
10Involved
Police Forces
»» Belgium: Local1,2 and Federal »» Germany: Federal Police1, »» Netherlands: Police forces
Police1,2 (Police Zone Vlas1, State Police of Berlin2, State Rotterdam-Rijnmond1, Amster-
DIRCO Eupen Federal Police1, Police of Brandenburg1, State dam-Amstelland1, Gelderland-
General Directorate of Support Police of Rheinland-Pfalz1,2 Zuid1,2 and Limburg-Zuid2, Poli-
and Management1 and the Per- »» Italy: Arma dei Carabinieri1,2 tieacademie2, Voorziening tot
manent Committee of the Local and Corpo Forestale dello Stato1 Samenwerking Politie Neder-
Police1) »» Macedonia: Macedonian Po- land (vtsPN)1,2
»» Czech Republic: Czech lice1 (Criminal Intelligence Sec- »» Romania: Border Police1,2, Mu-
Federal Police1 and Municipal tion in Organised Crime Depart- nicipal Police of Cluj1
Police of Adamov1, Kyjov1 and ment1, Department of Forensic »» Spain: Mossos d’Esquadra1,2,
Letovice1 Science1 and Department of Madrid Municipal Police2
»» France: Police Nationale1, Informatics and Telecommuni- »» United Kingdom: South
Gendarmerie Nationale1,2 and cations1) Yorkshire Police1, North York-
Ecole Nationale Supérieure de shire Police1,2 and Greater Man-
la Police2 chester Police2
1 On-Site Interviews
2 End-User Board
Interviewed
ICT Vendors
»» Axis Communications GmbH »» IBM Nederland B.V. »» Rola Security solutions GmbH
»» BeInformed Nederland B.V. »» Memex Technology Ltd »» SAP AG
»» Cognitec systems GmbH »» Mendix Technology B.V. »» Thales Nederland B.V.
»» Esri Nederland B.V. »» ORACLE Corporation UK Ltd »» Verint Systems Ltd
»» Exalead (Dassault systèmes) »» Palantir Technologies
»» HONAC Nederland B.V. »» Panasonic Europe GmbH
»» HSB identification B.V. »» Research In Motion (UK) Ltd
»» I2 Group Ltd »» Ripples HLS Group
11Theme 1:
Integrating Systems
The first theme was the increased connection of
various systems and data sources in order to enhance
intelligence and increase efficiency. Standards and
new interfaces between systems are being developed
so that previously unrelated information can be com-
bined and used to support information-led policing.
Linking systems helps the police to increase overall
efficiency and to minimize the need to enter data more
than once. It also helps police forces to overcome
organisational boundaries between states and coun-
tries, as well as separated responsibilities for types
of crimes; boundaries that do not exist for offenders.
Additionally, combining data and intelligence across
organisational boundaries may dramatically enhance
investigative capabilities and provide support in real-
time.
The combination of intelligence requires different
police forces or departments to share sensitive data.
Beyond a search for design methods that fit these chal-
lenges, future research could provide answers to the
challenge of how to balance disparate organisational
goals such as catching-up with criminals and how to
sustain the trust of the general public.
12Building Interfaces ficers can be assigned tasks using the individual PC at a police office
the system and have the ability to becomes a terminal and logs on
This effort ranges from digitising report on their work. Officers who to the central terminal server that
criminal records that were previ- are overtaking tasks have access holds all the applications. Other
ously stored in paper form to de- to this information, and can add integration efforts should allow
veloping message formats that to it, which allows the creation of for the creation of search war-
allow sharing information across complete event histories of certain rants for people and goods in the
European police organisations. patrol tasks. national police system, directly in
the system of the federal police.
In Belgium, a current reform in- In the Czech Republic, systems In another initiative, integration
tegrates police forces that were are set up to make wider use of should allow for periodic security
previously separated. As a conse- the central registry of drivers for checks against existing databases
quence, police forces also work on the municipal police. At the time of on people’s background to support
developing an integrated informa- writing, this solution is being test- authorities in providing residence
tion system that replaces two ex- ed in three big cities—Brno, Pardu- permits but also in cases when
isting systems and manages all po- bice and Prague. people take jobs in safety-critical
lice-related information regarding infrastructures.
people, vehicles, goods and loca- In Germany, given the diversi-
tions to create an integrated sys- fied IT structure of the 16 state The federal police also runs a pro-
tem of police records and to gener- police forces and two federal po- ject to digitize and improve crimi-
ate police statistics. lice forces, there is the need to in- nal record databases that store in-
tegrate and standardise existing formation about the behaviour of
In another initiative, Belgian police systems. A common information an offender before and after the
forces work on establishing a web- model should allow for the integra- act of crime and other patterns in
based toolset that allows them tion of existing systems at differ- the behaviour and personal char-
to share information from differ- ent police forces. Current projects acteristics that might help to draw
ent sources across the organisa- across states combine intelligence conclusions in cases when an of-
tion. Tools support briefings and of certain crime types or offender fender commits a second crime.
de-briefings, disclose operational groups. Here, previously analogue informa-
information relevant to the daily tion becomes part of the overall
work of the police, enable search- Integration of IT systems also system.
ing and accessing relevant docu- takes place within individual forc-
mentation, and allow the planning, es. The federal police currently in- In Italy, the Carabinieri imple-
coordination, monitoring, and troduce central server infrastruc- ment a system to support their na-
management of police patrols. Of- tures to unify the systems so that tionwide asset management. The
13system integrates various data the intelligence data can be ex- In Spain, an overall information
sources for decision support and changed between different law en- system integrates core data via
monitoring regarding police equip- forcement agencies. As all data is web services. Vertically, within
ment such as vehicles, furniture, collected in one place, police forc- Spain, the systems integrate the
weapons or communication de- es avoid entering the same data databases of open calls and warn-
vices, from their acquisition to the twice. A central system also allows ings regarding people and ante-
dismantlement, thus providing a for a unified level of system secu- cedents and histories of people.
real-time overview of all the nation- rity and centralised updates. Horizontally, within all units in Cat-
al resources, trends and needs. alonia, the system integrates a va-
In the Netherlands, efforts are riety of 31 databases.
In another project to support in- undertaken to automate the in-
vestigators in criminal profiling, tegration of information from dis- In line with the breadth of the ex-
the Carabinieri combine opera- parate sources. For instance, a amples above, the vast majority
tors’ inputs with other data sourc- software has been developed that of technology vendors suggest
es taking into account, for exam- automatically searches in newspa- that the improvement of infra-
ple, visibility, weather, or audible pers, internet, transcripts of televi- structure in collaboration and data
conditions at the crime scene. The sion or radio broadcasts for clues exchange, on the one hand, and
system, thereby, creates criminal on known or suspected criminals. projects that make use of such in-
and forensic profiles of offenders At the federal level, a new Central frastructure to share data and in-
and reconstructs the crime scene. Intelligence Officer (CIO) has just telligence, on the other, are two of
The analysis will help investigators been appointed. the key business drivers for their
to define the perimeter for their op- police customers. Typically, most
erations. In Romania, the border police in- attention goes to the front-end
troduces a national alert informa- systems that support the officers,
In Macedonia, police forces will tion system that allows national investigators and analysts direct-
establish a national coordinating authorities through an automatic ly. A number of vendors indicate
centre for intelligence analysis. search procedure in the system, that police forces tend to under-
By standardising the collection to have access to search warrants estimate the investment needed
of criminal data, police and other of people and goods. The systems in the back-end infrastructure and
state institutions could become helps to fulfil the Schengen Aquis systems to fully use the potential
more efficient in their work. The and supports customs control, the of information systems for police
centralised, unified, and unique issuance of visas and stay permits collaboration. Vendors expect that
database system should con- as well as other control activities investment in infrastructure and
tribute to strengthening the fight carried out by police forces or oth- back-end systems will be an im-
against organised crime. In future, er authorities. portant trend in the coming years,
14possibly related to the introduction tive police cars are being tracked are used to monitor crowd move-
of public and private cloud technol- by GPS, with its position becoming ments. This facilitates the coordi-
ogy and off-the-shelf software. available for command control. In nation of resources, for instance,
another project on car accidents, during large events.
a digital map allows police to an-
Digital Geo References alyse accidents by looking for pat- In Romania, the border police
terns in the data. Integrating dif- makes use of the GPS signals from
Police also make use of the emer- ferent maps and geo reference TETRA terminals in order to locate
gence of digital geographic ref- systems, for instance, enables of- all assets in the field and to allow
erences. Real time references ficers to analyse road pavements for real time monitoring and coor-
of police cars, for instance, allow and assess their influence on the dination.
for improved coordination, while danger of traffic accidents.
references of crime sites support In Spain, the Mossos d’Esquadra
evaluations. Moreover, digitally In Italy, the Corpo Forestale dello have been using a tool to analyse
geo-referenced information sup- Stato deploys a nationwide system crime data geo referenced and
ports statistics that can be accu- for monitoring and anticipating all to produce specific reports about
mulated and can be made acces- natural risks, particularly in moun- crime mapping. On the one hand,
sible for decision makers. tainous regions and regarding the system should support current
weather conditions. An integrated investigations by visualizing infor-
In the Czech Republic, as also and geo-referenced system allows mation related to different types
reported in the following theme, the collection of information direct- of crimes. On the other, the system
computing in cars allows to con- ly from operators in the field and should support prevention and fa-
tinuously track the location of the the transmission of information in cilitate the observing and compar-
cars and make them available to real time to all Italian authorities ing of crime incidents to decide on
command centres. Police cars involved in securing mountain ar- countermeasures at operational,
thus become part of an efficient eas and transport infrastructure. investigational and strategic lev-
integrated rescue system and in- Additionally, new ways of publish- els. Also, as in other ‘in-car’ sys-
crease the level of coordination in ing constant updates through web tems, the Spanish police work on
emergency response. and mobile applications enhance creating location information from
access and the quality of service computing in cars to decrease the
In Germany, within the state po- provided to industry and the gen- workload on command centres.
lice of Brandenburg, geo referenc- eral public.
es are being introduced in a num- From a vendor perspective, geo-
ber of existing technologies. As in In the Netherlands digital geo graphic information in police ICT
the Czech Republic, new interac- references from mobile phones systems has become a common
15standard. Mapping solutions are ‘Euregion’ Meuse-Rhine is an inte- collaboration and information ex-
mature and information exchange grated socioeconomic area, which change. Increasingly, cross-coun-
standards work well. All relevant makes it important to compare try police collaboration and infor-
products are able to deal with spa- neighbouring municipalities in dif- mation exchange is supported by
tial data and either have geograph- ferent countries to understand if pan-European organisations like
ical presentation or can easily be certain trends are local or region- Europol, Frontex, the European
integrated with specialised soft- al. Currently, the efforts focus on Commission (e.g. DG Home) and
ware. Vendors report that in prac- burglary, human-trafficking and also Interpol. Similarly, information
tice, many police forces are only drugs. For burglary, data is already systems such as the Schengen In-
partly using such technology and exchanged via email attachments formation System (SIS) and the Eu-
have not completely integrated that are automatically parsed and ropol Information System (EIS) play
and connected their solution si- stored in a central database. a limited but important role. The
los as they use older software that different organisations at a Euro-
does not integrate well with other The police forces in this particu- pean level are also important to
geo systems as it was developed lar region also work on creating a help overcome legal boundaries,
before the dominance of geo infor- shared intranet. Initially, a trilingual develop standards and stimulate
mation. Vendors therefore suggest newspaper was created for police the re-use of best practices.
that it is only a matter of time be- officers. With the vision to go be-
fore this technology is ubiquitously yond a newspaper, police forces
used. currently investigate the possibil- Data Exchange between
ity of making information available Police and Prosecution
about police developments in the Authorities
Combining Intelligence area, for example information from
among European Police working groups on specific crime Besides the linking of data within
Forces types. A current challenge in real- and across police forces, we also
ising this cross-national intranet is observed the effort to exchange
Especially at border regions, po- posed by the need to protect infor- data with prosecution authori-
lice forces also work on combining mation properly, requiring a shared ties. Standardised data exchang-
intelligence from police forces of secure connection and a costly in- es should increase efficiency by
different nations. frastructure. minimizing workload and errors
when transferring data. The data
In a collaboration between Bel- In addition to the effort by neigh- exchange has to adhere to strict
gium, Germany and the Neth- bouring countries, several Euro- laws and regulations regarding the
erlands, police forces share in- pean organisations and systems creation and handling of evidence.
telligence on certain crimes. The hold growing relevance for police
16In Belgium, the novel integrated In Macedonia, police forces and exchange also, as reported under
police information system that has other state organisations work on the following theme, includes the
been previously described also establishing a national coordinat- sharing of digital biometric data.
handles and standardizes the ex- ing centre for intelligence analysis
change of police-reports with pros- that should bring about compat- Technology vendors realise that
ecution authorities in a structured ible ways of entering and changing for police the exchange of data
and secured way. Both organisa- criminal records and thereby sup- with criminal justice or with other
tions, police and prosecution au- port crime analysis by the police, relevant public authorities such
thorities are required to establish law enforcement and other state as intelligence agencies, cus-
compatible, digital work flows. institutions. A centralised, unified toms, border police forces or im-
database system should strength- migration authorities is not just a
In Germany, the federal police en different institutions in the fight technical question. While vendors
wants to submit records that are against organised crime. claim that requirements such as
currently stored in the police sys- data security, fine-grained access
tem digitally to prosecution author- In Italy, the digitalisation of crime control and full traceability can be
ities. Digital records should elimi- notice transmissions from law en- fulfilled, they think that their po-
nate the need to manually copy forcement officers to prosecution lice customers’ culture, habit and
the records in the systems of the authorities is currently under re- caution in practice make them as-
prosecution authorities. The pa- view. The use of a digital transmis- sume that technology is less ma-
per-based records are, however, sion system that fulfils legal proce- ture. Increasingly, vendors consol-
still required to fulfil legal require- dures, also securing information idate and aim to offer a full suite
ments. The federal police needs through certified emails and digital of intelligence and or investigative
to integrate their systems with 16 signatures, may contribute to en- case management tools. Most of
state prosecution authorities that sure a quicker, more effective and the vendors claim that they do this
currently use different systems. precise handling of crime notices. in a way that police forces can still
opt to work with other products if
The state police of Brandenburg In Spain, Mossos d’Esquadra they prefer. In many cases, ven-
works on standardising digital pho- work on a closer integration of dors can substantiate this claim,
to and video media captured by police forces and prosecution au- but not in all. It becomes increas-
police officers and the process to thorities. A system allows the po- ingly difficult for police forces to
hand over this data to prosecution lice to receive orders digitally, once distinguish between what different
authorities. Tools need to respect the judicial secretary signs it. Once vendors have to offer and involve
the legal separation between the verified, the police digitally dele- third party organisations for prod-
two organisations. gate the order to the responsible uct assessment.
police unit. In another project the
17Theme 2:
Increasing Mobility
The second common trend was a need to increase
mobile capabilities. Here, we found a broad overlap in
mobile ICT solutions across countries.
Adapting digital radios, computing in cars and mobile
and handheld PCs stretches the boundaries of what
police officers can do in the field without returning to
the police station.
Technology vendors describe these developments in
terms of ‘intelligence led policing’: In any location, real
time information and intelligence support police offic-
ers in their work. Sensor information is fed in real-time
into police systems and processes.
For future socio-technical research, the drive for mobil-
ity changes the organisation of police work. Given that
the police are traditionally a hierarchically structured
organisation, the question arises as to how empower-
ment of officers by mobile devices interacts with the
identity and current structure of the police.
18Computing in Cars Finally, another in-car system in In Germany, the state police of
the Czech Republic introduces mo- Brandenburg is currently introduc-
By introducing computers or mo- bile video recording. Here, a van is ing about 100 custom designed
bile devices in police cars, officers equipped with surveillance tech- police cars that feature a comput-
gain access to police databases. nologies to support on-site recon- ing system to perform standard po-
Additionally, they can offer servic- naissance. lice services on-site. The available
es on-site to the public and thus re- technology and the need to cut
duce operational costs or even the In France, the Gendarmerie Na- costs motivated the introduction
number of police stations. Adding tionale introduce a bus that be- of the police cars that allow police
computing, cars can become mo- comes a command post and a lab- officers to perform several servic-
bile ‘contact and coordination cen- oratory. It is designed to be sent es on-site for which they previous-
tres’ for crisis situations. Increas- to complex crime scenes as part ly had to return to the station. To
ingly, technology is made available of the national unit of criminal in- provide a stable data connection
in police cars to support police vestigation. The command post to the car across the state, several
work in real time. includes radio technology, a satel- mobile networks are used in com-
lite telephone link and an antenna bination.
In the Czech Republic, differ- switch with a capacity of 100 tel-
ent projects focus on computing ephone lines. The laboratory of- In Italy, the Carabinieri integrate
in cars. Police cars should become fers a large set of modern forensic a computing system in vehicles
mobile contact and coordination technologies. An auxiliary power that can be controlled by voice
centres that will in the case of unit ensures complete autonomy. commands or via a touch screen.
emergency provide the public with In combination, all this equipment While patrolling, the operating of-
basic information. To inform the allows for the analysis of evidence ficers can have full control of ve-
public, the car integrates an LED directly on site crime scenes. hicle instruments, check multiple
display and a megaphone and also databases linked from different
can establish a radio station. Also in France, new systems im- organisations, exchange data, pic-
prove the ability to identify vehi- tures and videos in real time, with-
Another initiative introduces PCs cles. Installed at the beacon light, out further operator support. This
in regular police cars that make its an infrared film camera automati- new tools has the goal to make op-
current position available for the cally scans the surrounding envi- erations more safe, precise and
command centre. It also establish- ronment for cars and compares li- well timed, and to improve the per-
es the computer as a platform to cense plates with the national and ceived respect by citizens, as a re-
connect future devices. international databases. The sys- sult of the enhanced effectiveness
tem can automatically read up to of inspection procedures.
4000 vehicles per hour.
19In the Netherlands, cars will Mobile and Handheld PCs scanner, a reader for digital docu-
be equipped with access to inter- ments and a printer. Another hand-
nal police databases, automat- With the adoption of handheld de- held system can be used by offic-
ic number plate recognition and vices and mobile PCs, police of- ers while patrolling on foot in the
video surveillance systems and in ficers hope to gain visibility in the train or at the airport and compris-
special situations also connected public (Figure 2) and lower re- es a fingerprint scanner and digital
to systems of the tax authorities. sponse times. Novel mobile sys- document reader.
Discussed are functions such as tems allow police to write fines,
the real-time sharing of videos be- offer an on-site credit card pay- In Spain, the Mossos d’Esquadra
tween cars, dispatch and offices. ment option, take pictures of crime introduces PDAs (personal digital
The intention is to speed up the scenes, use maps to trace patrol- assistants) as a tool to process
availability and integration of in- ling routes, fill out complaints or fines to reduce the number of in-
formation, and to increase the check police databases remotely. termediaries between the police
chance to identify criminals on the force and the traffic office. The tool
street. In Germany, in the state of speeds up the process of charging
Brandenburg, local police officers and comes with a device for insert-
In Spain, several police forces are able to provide more services ing credit cards. The PDA can also
aim at integrating PCs in cars. on-site as part of a structure re- be used to look up police search
In a recently started project the form that reduces the number of warrants and enables police to
computer on board is envisioned police officers and police stations, document traffic accidents by dig-
to give the officers the chance to reflecting the shrinking population ital photos. Currently, the PDAs
auto-manage their patrol so that in a state. Police officers are pro- have to be distributed throughout
the workload on the control centre vided a laptop that has access to the territory and need to be inte-
will be decreased and the officers all standard police applications. All grated with the office of transpor-
can focus on other tasks. To en- laptops can be monitored remotely tation. At the moment, there is one
sure safety, ergonomic issues are and need to be connected to the PDA per patrol that is shared by
important and day and night time police network once per week to two police officers. There are plans
contexts are being considered. The receive updates. to assign each officer a separate
keyboard, for instance, is designed PDA and thereby to turn the PDA
with illumination. For the German federal police, mo- into a personal device.
bile computing supports the bor-
der-control and identification work In the United Kingdom, smart
on-site. A mobile border control of- phones allow police officers to
fice can be folded into a suitcase. take photos and access back-of-
It includes a PC with a fingerprint fice databases to see maps and
20Photo: Hans van Rhoon
images of wanted or missing peo-
ple. Police officers also can upload
text and photos as crime data. Ad-
ditionally, officers receive the lat-
est information or intelligence on
their smart phones.
Driven by the introduction of the
automatic number plate recog-
nition technology, which caused
many more vehicles to be stopped,
the police also introduced hand-
held touch-screen devices by
which police officers can scan digi-
tal fingerprints of suspect drivers
when they are pulled over by the
police. The fingerprints are then
checked against a national data-
base to learn if the individual can
be identified from past criminal re- Figure 2: Mobile devices as an intermediate between police and public
cords.
lowing officers to enter data using social media and the geographic
In Romania, the local police are mobile technology, vendors plan to presentation of data.
recording all traffic related contra- take the location of the officer into
ventions using PDAs connected account and present locally rele- Vendors of mobile devices are in
wirelessly to a database. The sys- vant information to the officer, as a highly competitive market. As a
tem significantly reduces the time a ‘location based service’. An of- consequence, this line of technol-
that a local police officer needs to ficer, for instance, could receive a ogy drives innovation: Consumers
identify, report and sanction a traf- message when she is near the res- become more selective in buying
fic contravention. idence of people who have a fine products and check if competitors
due or are wanted in the context of offer better solutions. Consumer
From a vendor perspective, us- an investigation. Vendors push the preference is highly volatile.
ing mobile devices to make infor- development of ‘apps’ and related
mation available at any place and technology and integrate new di-
any time is a commodity. After al- mensions for police work, such as
21Digital Radios ous police forces use a number tal radio service that replaces the
of different types of radio com- old analogue radios for police and
To improve communication, police munication systems. In future, other emergency services in Eng-
forces adopt digital radios. As an- the adoption of the TETRA stand- land, Scotland and Wales. While
alogue radios become obsolete, ard should ensure compatibility the system is now in use, current
digital radios with nation wide cov- among the police forces and with initiatives deal with the migration
erage, encrypted and secure com- other countries. to adopt the next generation of the
munication and interoperability network, also exploring how they
with emergency systems take their In Romania, for the border po- may be integrated with private net-
place. lice, one of the requirements from works and beyond national bor-
the Schengen Acquis is the devel- ders.
In Germany, all state and federal opment and implementation of a
police forces currently adopt digi- secure and autonomous communi- From the vendor perspective,
tal radios, well before the systems cation system in order to be able to digital radio technology is mature
are in use by fire fighters and other join the Schengen Area by March and vendors see no specific open
security authorities. The € 4.5 bil- 2011. The operational objective technological issues, with the ex-
lion project comprises the forma- of digital radio is to ensure secure ception that other applications
tion of the digital radio infrastruc- communications, at anytime and may depend on or need to be in-
ture and the integration of radio anywhere for the police force. This tegrated with the new communi-
devices and command centres in system also permits the use of an cation infrastructure. For the in-
daily practice. Digital radio is con- automatic vehicle location solution dustry, communication means are
sidered to be without alternative, to share positioning information regarded a precondition more than
as digital radios are cheaper and between the border police and oth- an end by itself. Digital radio sys-
provide encrypted communication er national security forces. tems allow for a variety of potential
while analogue radios are no long- applications that can only become
er produced, nor supported. Cur- In the United Kingdom, inquir- effective if back end systems and
rently, some German states final- ies into a series of public disas- infrastructure are in place.
ize the introduction of the system ters in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g.
while others plan its introduction Hillsborough Football Stadium;
in the next 2–3 years. King’s Cross Rail Station Disas-
ter) highlighted poor communica-
In Macedonia, a number of cur- tion between police officers as a
rent and future projects introduce crucial factor contributing to loss
digital radio as part of the overall of life. These analyses contributed
police reform. Currently, the vari- to the design of Airwave, the digi-
22Special Equipment noises to influence crowd behav-
iour. The idea here, is to exploit
In the Netherlands, we found basic physical reactions to create
projects focused on mobile tools ‘less-lethal technologies’ with a
that push the boundary of what mass effect.
is technologically possible and re-
quire technological innovations. Apart from adopting existing mo
bile computing solutions, the
An increasing number of crimes in- Dutch police further employ inno-
cluding weapons has motivated a vation brokers who oversee these
project that aims to replace risky projects that require collaboration
and intrusive body searches. Mo- with technical research.
bile weapon scanners—function-
ally comparable to the ones al-
ready in use in airports around the
world—are being developed for pa-
trol officers on the street.
In another Dutch initiative, a ‘DNA
shower’ is employed to increase
the number of convictions in shop
burglaries. Shop-specific DNA par-
ticles are sprayed on the burglar
while leaving the shop, as mobile
tags that link the person unequivo-
cally to the location. In a recent pi-
lot, this technique was also found
to work very effectively as a deter-
rent for crime.
In another project, the Dutch po-
lice develop alternative means for
crowd control. Current research
explores, for instance, the use of
smells, bright lights or very loud
23Theme 3:
Surveillance Technology
Surveillance technologies, especially video recording
systems are being developed to support police work.
Currently, there are initiatives to introduce video
systems for the observation of public spaces, but
police also implement systems with automatic image
processing algorithms that are used, among others, for
number plate recognition.
Evidence of the effect on subjective and objective
safety and security is mixed and case dependent. In
general, police forces regard the use of this type of
technology as helpful.
While technological issues still need to be resolved,
especially with complex image processing algorithms,
another issue of these surveillance technologies is its
social implication. Depending on the respective coun-
try, policy makers and police forces need to balance
the need for providing safety with the citizens’ rights
for privacy.
24Observation continues, more cameras are be- ing and analytical abilities of the
ing installed. police.
To support investigations, police
forces adopt video surveillance In the Netherlands, efforts are A video recording kit aims at re-
systems, in both stationary (Figure undertaken to display video sur- trieving and combining video foot-
3) and mobile settings. veillance footage from shops in po- age from numerous different
lice cars to increase the potential sources and systems, to support
In the Czech Republic, special to catch criminals ‘red handed’. criminal investigations. The project
police cars perform video surveil- was triggered by the assessments
lance, as reported in the mobility Technology vendors point out of the Metropolitan police follow-
theme. The in-car system consists that this technology is increasing- ing the 2005 terrorist attacks in
of cameras mounted on the vehi- ly used in practically all countries. London and aims at improving ef-
cle at a telescopic mast and port- Apart from police and law enforce- ficiency in making use of video sur-
able cameras that transmit video ment agencies, they have sold veillance technology. Integrating
signals wirelessly. The car system systems to municipalities, public mobile video sources, the analy-
includes a recording system with transport and traffic authorities, sis system indexes all data. Image
monitors and video encoders and shopping malls and private secu- processing algorithms are being
decoders. rity companies. developed to detect certain ob-
jects such as faces, vehicle license
Also in the Czech Republic, small- plates, specific types of cars and
er units of local police forces cur- Automatic Recognition abandoned bags or certain situa-
rently adopt mini cameras to moni- tions, such as brawls.
tor interventions and to capture Besides systems that allow for
evidence of criminal acts. These video surveillance manually, po- Technology vendors report that
police forces also promote the in- lice forces make use of image pro- this type of automated process-
stallation of static cameras at se- cessing software to automatically ing has become mature. Camera
lected public spaces. filter video feeds and process the technology and image process-
resulting data. ing have improved over the years,
In Macedonia, the city of Skopje further innovation is regarded as
is working on introducing a centre In France, besides the system iterative and relatively minor. Ven-
for the management of road safe- for automatic number plate recog- dors expect that the development
ty. As of today, 70 cameras were in- nition from within police cars that of the back-end infrastructure, the
stalled and have shown to prevent has been described under the mo- processing, exchange and analy-
traffic accidents as drivers are in- bility theme, other projects also sis of the relevant data and the
creasingly cautious. As the project aim at increasing the video record- use of such data in other systems
25Photo: David Adams
or by other agencies, as far as it
is regarded meaningful and prop-
er to do so, is coming in the near
future. Vendors acknowledge that
this type of technology faces diver-
gent levels of interest in different
countries.
Border Control
Video processing systems are also
used to perform border control, es-
pecially in complex contexts such
as at sea borders, which are diffi-
cult to oversee.
In France, the Police Nationale at
the Mayotte island, a French terri-
tory in the Indian ocean, develop Figure 3: Video surveillance of roads and public places in a control centre
an infrared-based video analysis
system to automate border sur- conditions. As of now, the system border at the Black Sea and, as
veillance. Every night, illegal im- is at an experimental stage and a requirement from the Schengen
migrants reach the island in small further technological enhance- Acquis, have to establish an inte-
wooden boats. As wooden boats ments are required. grated system of surveillance and
make radars unusable, the police control of vessel traffic. The sys-
use traditional human surveillance In the Netherlands, the border tem to be installed should support
with binoculars. Especially for sur- police currently develop a system the surveillance of the sea for a
veillance at night, the new system for automated number plate recog- real-time overview of all the posi-
should support officers in border nition at the borders. Similar sys- tions and movements of the pre-
control. Implementing the system, tems have been in use in Italy for sent vessels, processing informa-
given the complex conditions at some time now. tion from the radar stations and
sea, including high humidity and other sensors placed within the su-
changing temperatures, demands In Romania, the border police pervised sector. Currently, the bor-
algorithms that withstand these are responsible for the maritime der police is planning on upgrading
26the system’s data transfer capa- For this type of technology, Eu-
bilities between radar stations and ropean countries have individual
the command centre in order to laws and processes in place, be-
keep up with the ever increasing yond European guidelines on data
amount of recorded data. collection and retention. Retention
periods, for instance, can range up
Technology vendors note that to two years, or be longer for spe-
specific innovations may become cific data under defined circum-
relevant in the future, such as au- stances.
tomated image processing at air-
ports and the recognition of ab- The amount of data to be pro-
normal behaviour, as a trigger for cessed and analysed rapidly in-
further investigation. creases and has led technology
vendors to develop scalable archi-
tectures and solutions. To make
Lawful Interception sense of all the data, infrastruc-
ture and intelligence software for
Lawful interception is another an investigation unit or agency
specific case of surveillance tech- needs to be enhanced.
nology. Typically, it is about inter-
cepting and analysing information Vendors report that especially spe-
based on court orders. cialised units tend to adopt this
type of technology shortly after
While vendors explain that they availability. Consequently, this is
offer different technologies for an area that drives innovation, as
lawful interception, the often clas- technology vendors are reward-
sified nature of the projects, does ed for their investments and are
not allow them to discuss coun- able to sell their products without
try specific cases. A few special- long time lags. The solutions devel-
ised companies have improved the oped, such as data integration, the
ability to collect data in real-time work with large volumes of data
from satellites, phone calls and, in- and real time intelligence can then
creasingly, the internet. also be applied to other domains,
such as number plate recognition
or border security.
27Theme 4:
Digital Biometrics
Biometric data has come onto the agenda of European
police forces due to the implementation of digital iden-
tification documents and from the need to increase the
effectiveness and efficiency of identifying suspects, on
the one hand, and trusted persons such as authorised
colleagues or legitimate border passages, on the other.
In consequence, police forces need to set up new
infrastructures to deal with digital biometric data in
mobile and stationary setups.
While opinions diverge about the use of this informa-
tion, there is no doubt that biometric information will
become a ubiquitous piece of digital personal informa-
tion. Yet, fierce discussions on this issue show how
sensitive public reactions are to police storing personal
information. This raises the question of how these
technologies may be designed and introduced to the
satisfaction of both police and the general public.
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