Thoughts

Personal reflections on law enforcement issues will occasionally appear here:

Questions of Bias, Trust and Security in Emerging Technology: Speaking Notes

© Steven David Brown

These speaking notes were presented at a round table discussion with students of the International Anti-Corruption Academy (IACA) Summer Academy, Laxenburg, Austria on 3 July 2019.

Emerging technology, that’s our theme, but what do we mean by ‘technology’? A hammer and a nail is technology. A ball point pen is technology. The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘technology’ as:

‘The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes.’

We’re here at IACA, so perhaps we can agree that technology in this context is:

‘The application of scientific knowledge to understand, detect, deter and disrupt corruption’.

But actually we are supposed to be talking specifically about ‘emerging’ technology. The implication being that we are discussing new types of digital tools or software that have become recently available and which have received a certain level of visibility and prominence. My first word of caution is that, just because something is new and is popular, does not mean it is effective or, even desirable. (more…)

A Bit of Evidence: a basic introduction to electronic evidence for non-technicians

 

(A version of this paper was presented at the ACFE European Conference in Brussels on 21st March 2016)

Electronic devices may well be the defining characteristic of our age. Actually, that assertion is not entirely accurate. The devices are not the defining characteristic in themselves. Our age is really defined by the uses to which such devices are put and our extreme level of reliance placed on them.

People from all walks of life are experiencing an unprecedented human interconnectivity that is impossible to either ignore or avoid: in study, at work, at home, at play, many, many communities are now integrated into multiple digital networks. At the time of writing[2] the latest statistics on Internet usage show that 3,345,832,772 people (i.e. 46.1% of the world’s population) have access to the Internet.[3] (more…)

Critical Vectors

Investigators are often called upon to make sense out of a tangle of confusing or contradictory material and to find out how it impacts on the investigation. Experienced investigators may rely on their intuition, or assess the information against a reasonable hypothesis. The above diagram represents a theoretical model for a process by which the value or significance of information for an investigation may be assessed. (more…)

Enablers for International Cooperation

In order for international cooperation to be fully effective and to operate at an optimum level, there are four factors or ‘enablers’ that need to be both present and properly aligned. See “Ready, Willing and Enable: A theory of enablers for international cooperation” in Brown, S.D. (ed.) (2008) Combating International Crime: The longer arm of the law Abingdon: Routledge Cavendish.
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