What are the potential criminal opportunities posed by emerging biometrics?

Background

"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."

Next steps

"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."

Source

This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:

Policing Areas of Research Interest

Related UKRI funded projects


  • TENSOR - Reliable biomeTric tEhNologies to asSist Police authorities in cOmbating terrorism and oRganized crime

    TENSOR will provide LEAs a platform that facilitates the biometric evidence extraction, sharing and storage in cross border environments allowing them to share best practices in an automated, robust, secure, privacy-pres...

    Funded by: Horizon Europe Guarantee

    Lead research organisation: THRIDIUM LIMITED

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project focuses on biometric evidence extraction, sharing, and storage in cross-border environments, addressing the potential criminal opportunities posed by emerging biometrics.

  • Integrating Research and Industrial biometrics Strategies (IRIS)

    The promise of biometric technologies in offering security through automated person authentication and recognition has meant that increasingly they are seen as important components in the overall approach to security and...

    Funded by: EPSRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Kent

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project discusses the promise and challenges of biometric technologies in security, but does not specifically address the criminal opportunities posed by emerging biometrics.

  • University of Bradford and Acume Forensics Limited

    To develop an innovative Biometric identification and Tracking System and supporting database that provides accurate and immediate identification of subjects from custody suites or CCTV footage, in line with Home Office ...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD(THE)

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project focuses on developing a biometric identification and tracking system, which partially addresses the potential criminal opportunities posed by emerging biometrics.

  • Seminar series on genetics, technology, security and justice. Crossing, contesting and comparing boundaries

    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

  • Hummingbird: Human-machine integration for biometric authentication

    We live in a technological age in which we can use our voice as a password to access online banking, and our children can pay for school lunches with a fingerprint. Biometrics, which reflect our physiological or behaviou...

    Funded by: EPSRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Southampton

  • SID: An Exploration of Super-Identity

    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

  • Development of a touchless biometric identification system powered by Artificial Intelligence to solve identification challenges in developing countries

    "The ability to identify individuals accurately and reliably is a fundamental condition for providing essential services such as health, finance, and government services. In developing nations, the lack of reliable ...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: SIMPRINTS TECHNOLOGY LIMITED

  • FINDER: Forensic Identification via Non-Destructive Evidence Retrieval

    Smytec Ltd has created a ground-breaking Forensic Imaging technology, removing the need for old fashioned fingerprint retrieval methods and replacing these with a high-tech solution. Smytec aims to bring fingerprint evid...

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: SMYTEC

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project FINDER focuses on forensic identification using non-destructive evidence retrieval, which directly addresses the potential criminal opportunities posed by emerging biometrics.

  • At scene of crime DNA characterisation

    Forensic science is an important tool in the fight against crime and this proposal will build on cutting edge research to create technology that will revolutionise the way DNA fingerprinting can be used at crime scenes t...

    Funded by: EPSRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Hull

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