Researchers develop an intelligent data scanner that allows to scan the Internet to detect signs of organized crime

An international team of researchers, with the participation of the University of Granada (UGR), has developed an intelligent, data scanning system that allows to scan web pages and e-mails to search evidences of organized crime, as well as estimating the risk of occurrence of certain illegal activities.

This project, called ePOOLICE, is funded by the European Union through the Seventh Framework Programme, and was launched in January 2013. It has been developed by a consortium of companies, law enforcement agencies, and intelligence analysts. It includes the European Police Office (Europol), the Civil Guard (Spain's Guardia Civil), West Yorkshire Police (United Kingdom), the Bavarian Police (Germany) and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), as well as some universities, with the UGR among them.

Said project, lead by professor María José Martín Bautista and markedly multidisciplinary in its nature, has counted with the participation of researchers from the department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, and from the Andalusian Institute of Criminology. Both of them have their headquarters in the University of Granada.

The scanning system consists of several components (developed by various European research organizations), which combined can monitor the Internet and automatically produce alerts about scenarios that could favor the rise of threats related with organized crime.

The implemented prototype uses the latest technologies in the field of natural language semantic filtering, knowledge representation, data mining, information fusion, and Big Data intelligence analysis.

Creating a safer environment

As María José Martín Bautista explains, the main goal of ePOOLICE "is the development of tools for anticipating and more effectively battling the establishment and expansion of organized crime groups devoted to crimes such as human and drug trafficking, the production and distribution of child pornography, and cybercrimes."

One of the virtues of this system is being able to create a safe environment to utilize the data. The researchers have taken into account, during the whole process, the necessity of preserving the constitutional right to privacy and, at the same time, using the latest technological breakthroughs to ensure the citizens' safety.