JRC and Europol examine how privacy technologies could change policing
A joint foresight study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and Europol examines how emerging privacy-enhancing technologies could both protect digital privacy and make criminal investigations more difficult.
The study, Horizon scanning on emerging privacy enhancement technologies, examines how technologies designed to protect personal information and secure digital communications could affect the future operating environment of European law enforcement agencies.
The exercise involved experts from law enforcement, academia, industry, research, and civil society. They assessed almost 200 technological and contextual signals before identifying 10 emerging technologies and innovations considered particularly relevant to future law enforcement operations and Europol’s work.
Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) allow information to be exchanged, processed, or analysed while limiting exposure of sensitive data. This can strengthen privacy, cybersecurity, and trust in digital services. However, similar capabilities can also allow criminals to conceal identities, secure communications, protect illicit transactions, or make electronic evidence harder to obtain.
The study highlights advanced encryption and encrypted computing as examples of this dual-use nature. Technologies such as fully homomorphic encryption can allow data to be analysed without revealing the underlying information. This could, for example, support privacy-preserving analysis of financial data. At the same time, stronger encryption can make criminal communications and stored evidence harder for investigators to access.
AI presents a similar challenge. Law enforcement can use AI to analyse large datasets, identify relationships and anomalies, and help detect manipulated content such as deepfakes. Criminal actors can also use AI to create synthetic identities, manipulate evidence, automate fraud, and adapt malicious activity to avoid detection.
Blockchain and distributed-ledger technologies are another area of interest. Their decentralised and pseudonymous characteristics can facilitate illicit financing and money laundering, while the persistence and transparency of many blockchain transactions can provide investigators with evidence for tracing financial networks. The study also points to risks involving digital identities and digital assets, including identity compromise and token theft.
The study considers quantum technologies, including the potential impact of quantum computing on existing encryption. The possibility that future quantum computers could undermine current cryptographic systems highlights the need to prepare for post-quantum cryptography. At the same time, quantum communications could provide highly secure channels.
Overall, the study examines the tension between technologies that can strengthen privacy and security and their potential to complicate investigations. It highlights the need for law enforcement to anticipate how developments in encryption, AI, blockchain, digital identity, quantum technologies, and other emerging technologies could affect access to information and electronic evidence.
