"Identification and tracing is the ability to trace, attribute, and confirm the identity of a person, location or activity to evidential levels, such as tracing missing persons.
Emerging biometrics can be used to ascertain or impersonate a person’s identity. Advances in analysing microbiomes (the combination of microbes unique to individuals) and genetics could lead to new ways to identify and track criminals from traces left behind. Similarly, as computational power increases, so the ability to measure and identify data characteristics unique to a person increase. This puts at risk people’s right to privacy while, simultaneously, providing new ways to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt a person’s location, supporting existing forensic approaches. We are keen to understand what potential criminal and investigative opportunity is emerging and what the limits are of biometrics."
"We welcome your engagement with our ARIs in the following ways:
• If you have evidence that completely or partly supports or answers one of our ARIs, we invite you to share that with us. For any ongoing research relevant to policing and crime reduction, we encourage you to register your research on the College of Policing’s research projects map, which has been designed to promote collaboration and support requests for participants.
• If you are, or plan to be, carrying out research that relates to one of our ARIs, we’d like to hear about it. While we cannot respond to speculative approaches for research funding, we will where possible act to support your ambitions, including finding you policing partners where possible.
• If you are submitting a funding or grant application that aligns with one of our ARIs, we hope that referencing policing’s ARIs will help to strengthen your case for the possible public impact of the research.
• We will use the ARI document to structure our academic engagement, prioritise events and build new connections with external partners. We will be using our ARIs in our engagement with UKRI, and we will publish any opportunities for funding via our website https://science.police.uk/
Please send any correspondence and questions to csa@npcc.police.uk, including ‘ARI’ in the subject heading."
This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:
The capacity to identify one another is paramount. It underpins social dialogue, commercial transactions, individual entitlements to goods and services and issues of legal and criminal responsibility. In today's society,...
Funded by: EPSRC
Lead research organisation: University of Southampton
The SID project explores the identification of individuals, including biometrics and data characteristics unique to a person, addressing privacy risks and forensic opportunities.
Identity and privacy have recently rarely been out of the headlines. Government has justified the need to identify citizens and track behaviour or security reasons, and promoted data sharing with the promise of the benef...
Funded by: EPSRC
Lead research organisation: University of Oxford
The Privacy Value Networks project focuses on the value of personal data, risks of data collection, and stakeholders' perceptions, relevant to privacy risks from identifying unique data characteristics.
Security concerns - about crime, terrorism, mass death atrocities and disasters - are a key driver for the development of new technologies, and human genetics research has played an important contribution here. DNA techn...
Funded by: ESRC
Lead research organisation: Northumbria University
The Seminar series on genetics, technology, security and justice addresses the challenges and opportunities of forensic genetic technologies, including privacy concerns related to identification and security efforts.