The data detectives

New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush says the intelligence-led strategy is enabling police...
New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush says the intelligence-led strategy is enabling police to deploy resources to discourage people from committing crime. Photos supplied.
Craig Robertson, who is Wynyard Group chief executive officer, says his company's software is...
Craig Robertson, who is Wynyard Group chief executive officer, says his company's software is helping law enforcement agencies throughout the world, including New Zealand Police, use big data to break the ''triangle of crime''.
Mark Henaghan.
Mark Henaghan.
New Zealand Council of Civil Liberties and Tech Liberty New Zealand spokesman Thomas Beagle....
New Zealand Council of Civil Liberties and Tech Liberty New Zealand spokesman Thomas Beagle. Photo by NZ Herald.

Police are using big data to stop crime before it happens. The aim is to make New Zealand the safest country on Earth, writes Bruce Munro. But at what cost?

The voice down the phone is friendly and supportive, like a big brother.

It has been a month in the making, this interview.

In the meantime, the 1080 milk powder poisoning threat, the latest Roast Busters report and who knows what other police business has repeatedly bumped this appointment from one diary page to the next.

But finally, New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush is on the line from Wellington, and happy to chat.

''Not many people want to talk about the future like this. It's quite encouraging,'' enthuses Comm Bush.

He has been in the job a year, charged with driving a wholesale transformation of the police begun by the newly elected National government in 2009.

It is no small deal.

This is a 180deg about-face for all 12,000 police staff, shifting their focus from the offender to the victim, from reacting to crime to preventing it.

''We've really passed the tipping point. But we just have to keep driving that change so it is embedded in every corner of the organisation,'' Comm Bush says.

''So that all of our people put victims at the centre [and] know how to put prevention at the front of the business.''

The next phase of the metamorphosis has already begun and will take another three years to fully implement.

It is about harnessing technology to create the ''quicker, faster, more mobile, more visible ... police service that the public demands and deserves''.

In doing so, New Zealand's police will become the most modern and effective in the world, he says.

But even that is just a means to an end, the ultimate prize: making New Zealand the safest country in the world within the next five to 15 years.

''Safest on the roads, safest in our homes, and on the streets and in our neighbourhoods,'' Comm Bush intones.

The public face of this sea change is officers using mobile technology to free them from the police station and get them out on the front line.

More than 6500 officers are now packing smartphones and tablets that are intended to keep them out in the field for an extra 30 minutes per shift, equivalent to more than 520,000 frontline police hours each year.

Less visible, but at the heart of this revolution, is cutting-edge information technology that monitors social media and combines it with police files, personal information from government departments and client data requested from businesses.

Police use this potent mix in two ways: to investigate crimes that have been committed and to identify potential problems and deal with them, not after, but before crimes are committed.

It sounds like the plot for a movie set in either a utopian or dystopian future.

But it is here, and now.

And New Zealand is leading the way.

Comm Bush says the total transformation package - strategy, mindset, technology and implementation - is responsible for the country's 20% drop in crime in four years.

He says the technology is proving its worth, but he is reluctant to talk specifics. Social media monitoring was given a trial during the Rugby World Cup and used during the Cricket World Cup.

''We had real-time intelligence around anything that might be occurring.''

He will not say what potential incidents were dealt with, only that it was ''a real success'' demonstrated by the fact that it was ''absolutely without incident''.

Craig Richardson understands this brave new world. He is helping the police build it.

The phone conversation with Mr Richardson takes place a month before last week's talk with Comm Bush.

It is sparked by a copy of the speech Police Minister Michael Woodhouse gave to an Interpol gathering, in Italy, in November.

Mr Woodhouse was on a ministerial panel discussing ''Co-operation with the Public and Private Sectors: New Partnerships for a Safer World''.

In his address, he mentioned Wynyard Group which he said police were working with ''on its new world-class investigations platform''.

Mr Richardson is the 43-year-old chief executive of Wynyard Group; a New Zealand crime-fighting software company whose star is rising internationally.

Formed in 2007, Wynyard has its headquarters in Auckland and offices in Christchurch, Australia, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Middle East.

Most of Wynyard's clients are governments or government agencies.

They include Australian Federal Police, New Zealand Police, London Metropolitan Police and 94 US police forces, and intelligence agencies Mr Richardson prefers not to name.

Competitors include IBM, Palantir and BAE Systems.

Although Mr Richardson is quick to add, ''out of all those, we are the only serious crime specialist''.

Wynyard was ''in the right place, at the right time'' to get in on the ground floor of law enforcement's shift to targeting ''new crime'', he says.

Old crime, such as burglary, is declining in developed countries due to better security devices, smartphone tracking and improved policing.

So police are now prioritising violent crime (including family violence, child abuse and homicide) and globalised, technology-enabled new crime (such as terrorism, cyber warfare and trafficking of drugs, weapons and humans).

''Traditional old crime enforcement agencies are transforming and retooling into intelligence-led new crime prevention agencies.''

A critical component of that, for New Zealand Police and a growing number of agencies worldwide, is Wynyard's advanced crime analytics software.

This product takes data from many sources and processes it using special algorithms to look for people, relationships and events that are of interest to the police.

''And that all happens automatically. It's a machine going through saying, this is a person, this is an event, this is a location,'' Mr Richardson explains.

The goal is to construct, and then break, the triangle of crime.

The three tips of the triangle are the offender, the victim and the location.

The sides of the triangle are the relationships between each.

In the middle is the crime, or the potential crime.

''What we are in the business of doing is, from lots of data, finding offenders, victims, locations and crimes, and understanding how those are all related,'' Mr Richardson says.

''To protect a victim we are trying to anticipate, I don't really like the word predict, but we try to find out who could be an offender, where could a location be.

''An example of this could be a child at risk in a family home, or a child at risk from a paedophile. So, in that case we are trying to prevent it.

''Or, if you took maybe a big event, then we say, 'OK, who could be an offender, who could be a victim, and how do we take one of these factors away?'

''Crime prevention is about taking away the victim, the offender or the location. If we can take away one of those components then the crime cannot occur.''

Mr Richardson is adamant this is not mass surveillance.

Wynyard's software trawls through publicly available data - websites, news feeds, chat rooms, blogs, and social media - and then combines it with relevant data the law enforcement agency has collated.

''For all the police forces I know in the world, including our own, they are not in the business of mass surveillance; that's illegal. They don't do it, or at least I've never seen anyone do it. They either have due cause to be concerned that someone may be victimised or [it is] a known offender or a repeat offender.''

The technology is used in targeted ways, he says.

''If you are a good person, then our tools will never find you. If you are a bad person, our tools may find you, but frankly we're not interested ... We're really interested in the top end, the seriously bad end of the market.''

Details of the use of Wynyard's tools are sparse.

One example, publicised in January, is of 92 US agencies clubbing together to use the software to try to catch a crime syndicate dubbed the Felony Lane Gang.

The gang of more than 100 thieves, operating in at least 34 states, has stolen tens of millions of dollars by using stolen identity cards to cash forged cheques.

Asked about the potential limits of this technology to prevent crime, Mr Richardson says it can certainly stop crime, but not all crime, yet.

''Can you stop every crime occurring? Probably not. There's just not enough resources to do that. But you are starting to get into the black magic of `Can you predict crime?' which is the stuff of Hollywood movies. I don't believe, at the moment, you can predict a crime and link a criminal to it.''

But the new discipline of crime science - understanding crime and how to prevent it - is developing quickly, he says.

''Modern policing agencies, including New Zealand Police, are absolutely at the forefront of this; investing in and operationalising crime science.

''The progress they are making; in my view, the results are compelling.''

He extols the ''thought leadership'' and ''smart commercial decisions'' within New Zealand Police top brass.

''They are one of the few agencies I have seen in the world that have a very clear strategy about what they are trying to achieve ... and are probably making more progress than I have seen from any other police agency in the world.''

On the face of it, the future they are reaching for is highly laudable.

Who would not want to live in the safest country in the world?

But going down this road, using information-gathering software to look for potential trouble so police can nip it in the bud before it occurs, rings large, fire-engine red, loudly clanging alarms for some people.

Not so much for Comm Bush.

He does not have any concerns that it is too great an invasion of privacy nor that it erodes the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Protecting people's privacy is ''really important'' to the police, he says.

''But we also have to be able to share people's information in a way that keeps people safe.''

He believes more information-sharing between government agencies would help crime prevention efforts.

Comm Bush is not seeking any law changes to lower the bar on the level of evidence needed to charge a person.

That is not primarily how they will be using the tools to prevent crime.

''We're not looking at prosecuting anyone, we're looking at intervening to ensure potential crimes aren't committed.

''Just by our mere visibility, we discourage people from committing crime.''

The technology will red-flag a potential problem.

An experienced officer will assess it.

If necessary, a police car or foot patrol will be deployed, and will just happen to show up at the right place before it becomes the wrong time.

End of problem.

''But we might also intervene - and we should if someone is looking to prepare a crime - to stop and have a conversation to either educate or discourage them from committing a crime.''

Wynyard's Mr Richardson acknowledges some people have concerns about privacy, but says they tend to be overstated by the media.

He says the best way to prevent crime, when it comes to a known high-risk offender or high-risk victim, is to have enough information about them to create what he calls a ''single view''.

The technology is available to build ''a single view of a potential offender in near to real time''.

But the law does not allow it to be fully used, he says.

''Really the only thing constraining it at the moment is the public debate on what information should be collected on you and then what information should be shared between people who can stop a crime.''

He believes most New Zealanders think crime prevention information-sharing is ''fair and acceptable'' and ''we're probably not doing enough of it''.

He says people should be more concerned about the level of information corporates hold on individuals.

''I would be frankly more worried about what Google, Amazon, Visa and eBay know about me than what the police know. Because no-one is looking over their shoulder and they aren't accountable to anybody. They can share it with anybody, and they do.''

Unfortunately, it turns out the police have been dipping into that too.

Last month, it was revealed police have been requesting people's personal information from companies without a search warrant.

''Broad swathes of people's personal data are being sought regularly by police from airlines, banks, electricity companies, internet providers and phone companies without search warrants by officers citing clauses in the Privacy Act,'' the New Zealand Herald reported.

Requests have been made by police citing ''maintenance of the law'' provisions in the Privacy Act.

The requests carry no legal force yet are regularly complied with.

Prof Mark Henaghan thinks privacy and information sharing is ''a really important issue''.

The head of the University of Otago law faculty says the longstanding view under the law is that confidential information cannot be shared except in extreme circumstances.

But New Zealand is moving towards loosening that definition.

He raises three related concerns.

''The question is, when can you share that information? Under current principles you would only share it if there was imminent threat to someone else's life. Because, otherwise it is none of their business,'' Prof Henaghan says.

''And should you go trawling just in case you might come across stuff?

''And what are you going to do with it if you come across other information?''

It is difficult to argue against a victim-focused police strategy.

You risk being labelled either someone who has something to hide from the information gathering tools or a bleeding-heart liberal who is out of touch with the reality of the forces of evil arrayed against us.

But Thomas Beagle gives it a good go.

The spokesman for the New Zealand Council of Civil Liberties and Tech Liberty New Zealand says there are important reasons why surveillance should not be conducted en masse just because the technology exists to allow it.

And despite claims of it being a targeted tool, the use of it to monitor big events such as the Cricket World Cup reveals a different reality, Mr Beagle says.

Democracy relies on people being willing to rock the boat, but surveillance suffocates that instinct and changes people's behaviour, he says.

In the late 1800s, the people who thought women should be given the vote were ''severely rocking the boat''.

''And if they knew all their personal information was on a government database, even if the Government didn't use it, just knowing it is there has a major chilling effect on freedom of expression.

''It is a very rare person who doesn't have anything in their life they are a little bit embarrassed about. ''

Mr Beagle believes comprehensive information-gathering changes the power relationship between the Government and the people.

That balance is a delicate one.

If it swings too far in favour of the State, it ends up biting people on the backside.

History shows even New Zealand's highly respected police are not above exploiting situations.

Think Arthur Allan Thomas, Louise Nicholas, Roast Busters, Teina Pora.

Police have traditionally operated in the arena of crime, evidence and prosecution.

It seems they now also intend, at the Government's behest, to occupy the space of monitoring, likelihood and deterrence.

It can be stopped, Mr Beagle says.

''Because the police are a state agency. We can tell them not to do this if we want.''

This week, the Otago Daily Times asked Police Minister Michael Woodhouse whether he had any concerns about the police's victim focused, intelligence led, world-leading crime prevention programme initiated by his government six years ago.

Through a press secretary, Mr Woodhouse declined to comment and said the questions should be directed to New Zealand Police or the Ministry of Justice.

The questions stand:

• Does the public need to be willing to give up some privacy and accept greater surveillance and pre-emptive intrusion in order to be better protected by the police? Do the threats justify this?

• Does the police practice of collecting and collating data from various sources (social media, police files, other government agencies, businesses) amount to an unwarranted intrusion in to people's privacy?

• Is the shift to identifying potential offenders and intervening before they commit a crime an erosion of the principle of ''innocent until proven guilty''?

• Being watched changes behaviour. Aren't we in danger of only being left with the appearance (and not the reality) of personal freedom?

 


GETTING THE LOW-DOWN

New Zealand Police's new intelligence-led crime prevention strategy uses big data to help it monitor events and persons of interest so resources and personnel can be deployed to nip potential problems in the bud.

Here is where Police information comes from:

• Online: Publicly available websites, news feeds, chat rooms, blogs, and social media.

• Police files: Includes evidence, statements and convictions.

• Government departments: Information is shared by Police, ACC, Inland Revenue, Housing New Zealand Corporation and the Ministry of Social Development. Police say it has ''countless agreements at both district and national level''.

• Business: It has recently emerged Police are requesting people's personal information from companies without a warrant, citing unenforceable ''maintenance of the law'' provisions in the Privacy Act.

• Intelligence agencies: Police do not keep records of how often they request assistance from the NZSIS and GCSB.


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