By Sean Parnell/theaustralian.com.au
SOPHISTICATED computer profiling has uncovered 53 serious organised crime figures ? some suspected of laundering more than $100 million a year ? who were previously unknown to authorities.
photo: organisedcrimelive.com
In what is being heralded as a major advance for policing and national security, the Australian Crime Commission has positioned its Fusion Centre at the forefront of the data wars in an effort to bolster criminal investigations, maintain national security and protect government resources.
The Fusion Centre has brought together ACC officers and specialists from a number of government agencies and empowered them with advanced computer technology to examine possible patterns of crime and money flows. Together, they collect, distribute and analyse data from various public and private sources, red-flagging any anomalies for further investigation and compiling an integrated national criminal intelligence picture for traditional law enforcement agencies.
The Fusion Centre has been operating for only a year but has already detected 53 people suspected of involvement in serious organised crime. Of those new targets, who are now under investigation, 22 are suspected of being involved in money laundering and financial crimes and 19 in the illicit drugs market.
ACC acting executive director David Lacey said the new capability allowed investigators to ?fuse a picture? out of various data sources and examine it further, using traditional law-enforcement methods or, if necessary, the ACC?s coercive powers and telecommunications interception.
Dr Lacey said similar agencies overseas used data fusion to avoid conflict between law enforcement agencies but the ACC sought to be more proactive.
?What we?ve created in the first 12 months is pretty unique in terms of what we?ve seen in North America and Europe . . . where they tend to use fusion as a deconfliction tool,? Dr Lacey told The Australian.
?That?s one of our roles, but because of the role of the ACC, particularly in proactively identifying organised crime and monitoring it, there?s a secondary and, I think, higher-order opportunity and priority for us, and that is more around generating, proactively, targets previously unknown for the jurisdictions to support those agencies.?
The Fusion Centre has generated more than 2300 leads in 12 months from operations that often began with relatively simple data-mining and data-matching techniques.
The ACC identifies potential operations or takes suggestions from its partner agencies, who retain access to the Fusion Centre and share their own databases.
In one such operation, the Fusion Centre compared the details of more than 28,000 casino high-rollers with known criminals and associates and found 78 potential matches. Given some of the high-rollers were recording losses in the millions of dollars, the Fusion Centre cross-matched their reported income and referred cases of apparent welfare fraud to Centrelink and cases of unexplained wealth to the Australian Federal Police.
Another operation involved using data reported to the Australian Transaction Reporting and Analysis Centre to examine overseas financial transactions.
It uncovered individuals operating out of two small city shopfronts who were moving large amounts of funds offshore ? about $20 million in a single month ? suspected of being proceeds of crime.
Given the nature of the Fusion Centre?s work, which involves the examination of publicly and privately held data, there will inevitably be concerns over privacy and accuracy issues. The Australian has been refused access under Freedom of Information laws to various audit reports of the ACC?s Australian Criminal Intelligence Database, which is used in the Fusion Centre and linked to other agencies through the Australian Law Enforcement Intelligence Net.
Dr Lacey insisted the Fusion Centre took its responsibilities seriously, given accurate data were its ?life blood?.
He said there were strict rules governing what the Fusion Centre could look at, how long it could store data and who it could share them with. Communications security officers were tasked with monitoring integrity and legal issues.
The database was uploaded with 345,785 new documents last year. It had 4778 active users in 2010-11, compared with 2631 the year before, and contains more than one million profiles.
The Australian sought a full demographic breakdown of the individuals listed on ACID under FOI laws but was denied. It has been unable to obtain any further details of their country or state of origin.
Viewed: 8Source: http://news.maars.net/blog/2011/07/13/computer-profiling-exposes-organised-crime-figures/
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.