Life after EncroChat - will AI balance the odds?

What next for serious crime law enforcement once the convictions bonanza runs out of steam?

Since the cracking of EncroChat’s E2EE (end-to-end encryption) smartphone communication system in 2020, law enforcement agencies across the world have had a bonanza in convictions and take-downs of serious organised criminal gangs.

According to the UK's National Crime Agency, by October 2023, ‘Operation Venetic' alone led to more than 3,000 arrests with over 1,200 convictions. The NCA also claims to have averted 200 threats to life through the recovery of 173 firearms, 3,459 rounds of ammunition and over 9 tonnes of class A drugs.

Getting secure convictions is time consuming, costly and involves multiple domestic and international agencies working together, where even the slightest mistake in due process can lead to a case collapsing, which is why many appear to take so long to come to court. This unprecedented success was as a direct result of evidence attained through the compromised EncroChat system.

So, what happens when law enforcement agencies have wrung the last drop of value out of EncroChat? Unfortunately, such is the nature of organised crime that where gangs have been shut down and their members convicted, there will be plenty of aspiring groups and their leaders ready to fill the void.

Without the glut of intelligence, there will be a notable drop in conviction rates compared to the last few years. As new gangs replace old ones, the resulting turf wars will see increased levels of violence, including gun crimes, as they get themselves organised, tooled up and start asserting themselves, and it's almost certain that they will have learnt from the mistakes of their predecessors.

Not least will be a greater caution about how they communicate and a better awareness of the latest surveillance capabilities and techniques. Alternative E2EE communications systems are already being used, based in Eastern Europe and other countries where they are less likely to be compromised by law enforcement agencies.

Serious organised crime gangs have a lot of money with which to protect their operations, and investing in state-of-the-art encryption systems and anti-surveillance technology is well within their capability.

In this never-ending game of cat and mouse, the criminals are always one step ahead because they don't have to follow the rules, and ironically the cracking of EncroChat is being challenged in the European Court, with various defendants citing human rights violations. So, what options does law enforcement have for balancing the odds?

In our highly connected country, second only to China for the greatest number of surveillance cameras per capita, there is a vast amount of intelligence data being created every second. This is where artificial intelligence comes in. The improvements in AI-based systems capable of facial recognition, behavioural anomalies, tracking and profiling gives a huge potential for law enforcement.

The Holy Grail is the theoretical potential of AI to use all this data to predict and alert law enforcement that a crime is about to be committed with sufficient time to enable its prevention - remember Minority Report? The only issue being allowing AI lawful access to that data, and the fine balance between security and freedom.

The controversial Online Safety Act, which received Royal Assent on the 26th of October, is one of the measures the UK government has brought in an attempt to balance this equation. Primarily intended to protect children online, it enables law enforcement, with the help of Ofcom, to force private companies to identify and prevent illegal activity, as defined by the Act - some of which is muddied by the vagaries of definition.

The main target is the use of E2EE systems for criminality. In the context of serious organise crime, Schedule 7 (Priority Offences) of the Act specifically includes drugs and firearms. In amongst the small print is the requirement for messaging platforms to scan users' messages for illegal material, which is fine if the criminals are using WhatsApp, but there are plenty of covert systems that are effectively beyond the legislation's reach.

The controversy of using private companies to enforce the law aside, the Online Safety Act is unlikely to have any real impact on serious organised crime: they will always find ways of communicating securely and illegally. After all, they are criminals. You'll still have the odd idiot posting a selfie with bags of drugs and money on Instagram, but the serious criminals are getting smarter and will be overly cautious of the new reality.

I believe the Online Safety Act, and its inevitable scope creep, will have more of an impact on citizens' privacy rights than it will in reducing serious organised crime. The once-in-a-generation EncroChat-like bonanza is unlikely to be repeated - at least, without the highly controversial move of allowing AI unfettered access to the vast array of surveillance, communication and location-tracking sources.