The Joint Research Centre of the Commission announced the study Horizon scanning on emerging privacy enhancement technologies in the article How emerging privacy technologies could reshape law enforcement.
The study was developed by the EU Policy Lab at the JRC and Europol’s Innovation Lab.
The introduction in the article:
Encryption, AI, and digital identity tools can strengthen privacy and security. They can also be exploited by criminals. A new JRC–Europol study looks at emerging privacy enhancement technologies and how Europe can best prepare for them.
Tools that protect personal data, digital identities, and communications can strengthen cybersecurity and public trust in digital services. Often called privacy-enhancement technologies, these tools enable data to be shared or analysed while limiting the exposure of sensitive information.
These same features can be exploited to conceal identities for malicious purposes, secure criminal communications, or make digital evidence harder to access and analyse for law enforcement agencies. This makes lawful access to electronic evidence increasingly important for investigating serious offences.
How can Europe improve security in digital spaces while safeguarding fundamental rights? A new study by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and Europol explores possible technological developments and their implications for future law enforcement work, offering reflection points for policymakers, law enforcement authorities, researchers, and investors.
The report is relevant for the financial surveillance activities of banks. From the article (marking by me):
Artificial intelligence is one of them. It can assist law enforcement agencies with complex tasks, including detecting patterns in large datasets, identifying connections in complex information, and detecting manipulated media. (…)
Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies provide another example. They can be exploited for illicit financing, money-laundering and the movement of criminal proceeds. However, their transparent and permanent records can help investigators trace suspicious transactions and identify patterns linked to organised crime. The report also highlights possible future risks to digital identities and digital assets, including identity compromise and token theft.
Advanced encrypted computing is another emerging technology that offers both opportunities and challenges. For example, fully homomorphic encryption makes it possible to analyse encrypted data while keeping the underlying information protected. This could open up new possibilities for privacy-preserving investigations: for example, financial transactions could be analysed to identify patterns associated with money laundering or other suspicious financial activity, without exposing all the underlying transaction data. It is a powerful technology; however, it brings along new questions: who should be allowed to use it, and what characteristics or patterns should they be allowed to search for?
