Abstract
ANITA platform aims at improving investigation capabilities of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) by delivering a set of tools and techniques to efficiently address online illegal trafficking of counterfeit/falsified medicines, novel psychoactive substances (NPS), drugs, and weapons with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Expert.ai has developed a dedicated written content analysis engine to support investigative activity. The market already offers several solutions adopting AI and in particular Machine Learning (ML) to support investigative activities. The particularity of the work carried out in the ANITA project is to adopt a lateral thinking approach and the supervised generation of knowledge from the analysed contents. Rather than focusing on searching for specific proper names of substances, weapons, NPS, etc. that are constantly evolving in considerable speed, we propose to concentrate on searching for precursors, namely collateral concepts related with the target of the investigation. Is the case of accessories for weapons such as sights for rifles or glass vessels used to produce the drugs themselves? This approach is not compatible with the use of ML, but the use of deep semantic analysis of the text is necessary. This article reports the system's ability to automatically identify precursors and generate stimuli and knowledge which the investigator must validate; that enhances the creative and intuitive approach (serendipity) to investigation combining the best of the detective's skills with the power of AI and in particular Natural Language Understanding (NLU).
Highlights
Talking to the investigators involved in the ANITA project, it emerged that over the recent years, online illegal trafficking activities have expanded hugely
In order to give a clearer idea of the results obtained, examples are given for all three phases included in the process
We explained that the scope is to understand the topic of each text automatically analysed, let us take this text as an example (Kleemans & Soudijn, 2017): “The first measure was aimed at two particular precursor chemicals, i.e., PMK in the case of ecstasy and BMK for amphetamine
Summary
Talking to the investigators involved in the ANITA project, it emerged that over the recent years, online illegal trafficking activities have expanded hugely For tackling these emerging challenges, a significant part of law enforcement agencies (LEAs)’ efforts have been invested in training activities to equip officers and practitioners with the necessary knowledge and skills related to this continuously and rapidly evolving scenery. Investigative intelligence is a specialized area of data analytics that serves the needs of those who are hunting for bad actors and typically protecting people, networks, and assets. It is a data-based approach to investigation. At the state of the art, the platforms that manage this type of solution offer:
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