Advanced analytical tools bring fight to online criminals
The threat posed by the online trafficking of items such as weapons, drugs and counterfeit medicines has greatly increased in recent years. One reason for this is that the internet offers organised criminal groups new ways to cooperate and manage their criminal enterprises, and facilitates anonymous online payments through cryptocurrencies. “Synergies between trafficking activities and terrorism funding are another emerging trend that could lead to new organised criminal arrangements,” notes ANITA project coordinator Ernesto La Mattina from Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, Italy. “We need to find new innovative ways of identifying these online illegal activities, as well as more effective means of responding. To do this, we need to identify limitations in how we currently collect and use data and show how new technologies could be applied.”
Effective investigative platform
The ANITA project brought together 17 partners from across Europe, including police, academics and law enforcement agencies. The aim was to develop new high-tech tools to fight the growth of illegal trafficking, and to encourage more collaborative cross-border approaches in this endeavour. To this end, new applications for detecting and analysing online content, as well as monitoring suspicious online activity, were developed. These tools include cryptocurrency network analysis and advanced big data analytics tools, as well as video analysis and multilingual text translation and mining. These tools were then integrated into the ANITA platform. Here, law enforcement officers can find the tools and information they need to support specific investigative operations, as well as a means of cooperating with colleagues elsewhere in the world. “At the core of the platform is the ANITA Knowledge Graph,” explains La Mattina. “Here, all information sources relevant to a specific case under investigation are stored and can be browsed and visualised.” From there, the platform tools can help users to connect the dots of an investigative case, and to highlight patterns in illegal activities. Through automating the analysis of huge amounts of investigative data, useful suggestions and advice on an ongoing case can be given. “Another benefit here is that ANITA enables law enforcement agencies to connect the dots, and reconstruct an entire investigation in court,” says La Mattina. “The end result is a complete integrated platform that we believe could help law enforcement agencies to perform more effective and efficient illegal trafficking investigations.”
Valuable support tool
La Mattina is confident that ANITA will make a significant contribution to the fight against illegal online trafficking. “The final system was tested during two pilot sessions by six law enforcement agencies,” he adds. “We also think that the platform can support policymakers and security analysts, thanks to its big data analytics tools. These could be used, for example, to assess the current illegal trafficking landscape, and to predict future trends.” ANITA project partners are currently looking to further improve the tools that are available, and to continue testing the platform in relevant operational environments. The objective now is to make the solution ready for market, and to exploit the potential of the platform as a training tool. “This project has been a success story,” says La Mattina. “The platform is now widely known throughout the EU, and we have received excellent feedback from investigators. Several law enforcement agencies outside the consortium have asked to test the system for themselves, and the platform has already been used for several police training activities.”
Keywords
ANITA, online, trafficking, criminal, terrorism, big data, cryptocurrency
