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Ethics and technology framework to fight crime

Europol has published a report aimed at helping law-enforcement agencies to evaluate the use of new technologies while upholding people’s fundamental rights and maintaining trust. 

The report was presented at a conference hosted by the EU’s law-enforcement body this week. 

Assessing Technologies in Law Enforcement: A Method for Ethical Decision-Making sets out a seven-step ethical assessment method to help law enforcement navigate the challenges of digital transformation.

Moral concerns 

This includes identifying moral concerns, assessing risks and benefits, and ensuring that technology use remains lawful and proportionate. 

The report looks at technologies such as video analytics, the use of AI for risk assessment in gender-based violence cases, the use of open-source data-scraping, and the use of chatbots to prevent online child sexual abuse. 

Europol says that the report is designed to be regularly updated with new use cases and ethical considerations. 

The seven steps set out in the report are: 

• The moral problem,
• The facts,
• The involved parties,
• Values (common values, professional values, and special values),
• Values-based options,
• Principled choice, and
• Summary. 

Values 

The report states that the first three steps provide a description of the case that, in part, helps decide which values in step four matter to the case. 

The first step involves examining different moral reactions to the use of a new technology, before noting the facts of the case and how the technology is to be applied. 

Step three involves mapping the viewpoints of people or groups affected by the case. 

The report lists transparency, fairness, privacy, and accountability as the four main values that should guide the use of the technology. 

The final three steps assess options and possible best practices for the use of technology. 

The report suggests that step five should involve agencies asking themselves if they can justify the use of the technology in question, while step six lists further questions that should be posed to consider whether the technology should be used and the potential consequences.