Detective in the Machine: How AI is Revolutionizing Law Enforcement and Intelligence Work
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the landscape of law enforcement agencies and national intelligence organizations, empowering them to combat crime and protect public safety. With the advent of more intuitive and sophisticated decision intelligence software, investigators and analysts can harness the power of data fusion and AI to analyze vast amounts of data swiftly and effectively. This enables them to identify potential individuals of interest, discover hidden connections, and solve complex cases efficiently.
AI is no longer a luxury but a necessity for law enforcement
AI adoption is not a choice but a practical solution to the overwhelming data volumes that law enforcement and intelligence agencies face. It’s a tool that can improve efficiency, save time, and lead to operational and mission success.
As an example of the impact of soaring data volumes on intelligence agencies’ workload, the director of the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (part of the Department of Defense) has estimated that based on the current rates of data growth, his agency would need over 8 million additional analysts by 2037 to process all imagery data that will require analysis.
“AI is here to stay,” said the U.S. National Institute of Justice in a 2020 technical brief. “The criminal justice community faces shrinking budgets and a growing sense of mistrust from the community. With these things in mind … AI provides important opportunities to improve the criminal justice system. If designed and implemented well, AI-enabled tools have the potential to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and expand capabilities across many criminal justice use cases.”
Putting AI into practice
Decision intelligence solutions like NEXYTE demonstrate real-world applications of AI and how they can provide value to government agencies. The platform leverages AI and machine learning to expedite investigations and streamline intelligence work. NEXYTE, built on the robust big data platform Elasticsearch, allows organizations to amalgamate all data types, including structured and unstructured, into a user-friendly application for comprehensive analysis and search.
Here are specific ways in which AI is being used today in law enforcement investigations and intelligence work:
AI for Video and Image Analysis
AI algorithms can analyze video, image, and audio files to identify individuals, guns, potential child pornography, and a range of other objects and criminal behaviors. If there are audio files of a possible suspect with a known identity, that “voice print” can be automatically compared to other audio and video files thus potentially revealing links to other suspects as well as events, locations, phone numbers, devices, etc. Similarly, law enforcement authorities can use decision intelligence solutions to transcribe audio files to text and translate them into multiple languages. These automated analyses can be done in seconds or minutes compared to hundreds or thousands of hours of human effort.
AI for Risk Scoring
In many types of law enforcement agencies, investigators and other professionals must prioritize their time and resources on the highest-risk suspects, geographical locations, transportation modes, etc. That challenge applies to drug enforcement, human trafficking, border control, customs enforcement, fraud investigations, and many other types of investigations. The machine learning capabilities in decision intelligence platforms can dramatically improve the prioritization process through modeling and risk scoring, drawing on whatever customer-provided data is available to identify the most likely targets. One agency with the mission of stopping contraband from entering a country increased its discovery rate of illicit goods and customs violations by 155% over random inspections after implementing the NEXYTE platform with its risk-scoring models.
AI for Link Analysis
Link analysis is a frequently used type of visualization graph, which can show the connections between people, places, devices, phone numbers, vehicles and other entities. It also makes it easy to see the strength of the connections and clusters that may identify key actors and groups. NEXYTE further enhances these insights by allowing investigators and analysts to use AI to analyze all types of data, including video, still images, and audio files to automatically identify links between individuals and other entities.
AI for Automated License Plate Readers
Decision intelligence can process images from ALPR systems and generate alerts when cameras spot a targeted vehicle. AI can be used to enhance poor-quality images and can often make them readable in certain cases where manual viewing does not yield a result. These tools can also create geo-fences or “virtual fences” to pinpoint which vehicles enter and exit a geographical boundary or jurisdiction.
AI for Crime Forecasting
AI models analyze historical crime data, weather patterns, and other relevant factors to identify crime hotspots and predict the likelihood of crime occurrence by location, timing and crime type. Police can use these insights to allocate their resources more effectively and, in many cases, improve the likelihood of discovering or preventing crimes in progress.
AI for Pattern Detection
AI can also scan crime data from a law enforcement agency’s databases to cluster and detect patterns automatically. This could predict whether multiple crimes were committed by the same perpetrator or identify potential suspects based on historical data.
In all these instances, AI is revolutionizing law enforcement by enhancing investigative capabilities, improving public safety, and enabling more effective crime prevention and resolution.
Building Trust and Transparency in AI
While more and more agencies are adopting decision intelligence solutions, there continue to be obstacles. Some skeptics have questioned whether advanced analytics technology and AI will be used to eliminate jobs in law enforcement. The goal of this technology is not to replace humans but instead to empower investigators and analysts with the ability to make faster and more accurate decisions and gain insights that they could not achieve using only manual processes.
Others have raised concerns about transparency and possible biases from using AI in law enforcement. Responsible advocates for AI point out that data can build public trust and confidence and, when used responsibly, can help reduce bias. Data-driven transparency initiatives like crime maps and statistical reports can improve accountability, empower citizens, and promote collaborative problem-solving between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced its plan to balance AI technology’s advantages with the need for clear use standards and the importance of seeking input from the public, key industries and stakeholders.
AI technology “has the potential to be an indispensable tool to help identify, disrupt, and deter criminals, terrorists, and hostile nation-states from doing us harm,” said DOJ Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in February. She announced the formation of an Emerging Technology Board to advise the DOJ on the ethical uses of AI and “to understand and prepare for how AI will affect the Department’s mission and how to ensure we accelerate AI’s potential for good while guarding against its risks.”
These discussions will include DOJ counterpart organizations from various other nations. By the end of the year, the Emerging Technology Board and DOJ leaders will report to President Joe Biden about the use of AI in the U.S. criminal justice system.
AI-powered technology is already changing how many law enforcement and intelligence agencies operate. Looking ahead, we can anticipate progress in increased adoption and establishing standards and best practices for responsible use.
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