The current challenge
Following the recent announcement from the Home Secretary regarding strengthening police vetting, the National Police Chiefs’ Council has confirmed that all police forces and law enforcement agencies must check their officers and staff against national police databases.
However, will searching police databases alone be enough to ensure that all necessary checks are undertaken in relation to criminal history, employment history, credit history and social media use?
Social media and open-source data has proven its value in providing key evidence needed to help secure a conviction. This is particularly true for sexual abuse cases where activity is posted and recorded online. However, with most people now having at least one digital device and an online presence, this data is hidden in a sea of digital noise and therefore not easy to find, access, capture, analyse or share.
With that said, the traditional vetting procedures of searching siloed police databases or trawling a social media profile are no longer fit for purpose. Law enforcement must be able to tap into internal folders and databases, externally sourced data, consented data, and internet data, and bring all that information together in one place. Only then will all potential red flags be identified, and the reputation of police be ensured.
A game-changing solution
Chorus has developed a federated search and entity attribution engine that will provide a revolutionary solution to the vetting process moving forwards.
Powered by ShadowDragon, the Chorus Intelligence Suite (CIS) can query any entity, such as a username, phone number, email address and perform a bulk search across 200+ data connectors, including:
- Social media networks
- Websites (including adult sites)
- Messaging and chat forums
- Payment platforms
- Breach databases
Internal police databases can also be connected into via an API, to be searched at the same time.
If you find something of significance in your search, you can expand on that data set to perform an advanced search. For example, a Facebook advanced search will return results specific to a Facebook account, such as available data around hometown, education, workplace, likes, events, following etc. You can also set watchlists for a particular person to ensure that any new information related to them is received immediately via a notification. Any evidence found online can be captured securely and covertly and saved to your case within the CIS.
There is no doubt that a technology-led approach to the vetting process is the answer to adhering to the stricter standards. So much evidence is available online that could provide key insight into any potential wrongdoings of staff, but to unearth it, you must have the tools to support you.
If you would like a demo of the CIS and to see the federated search and entity attribution engine in action, contact us at [email protected]
