A project to build and maintain an innovation-driven network of LEAs combating cybercrime - accelerating the EU’s ability to counteract growing pressures of cyber threats. Heeding advice from EUROPOL’s EC3 flagship report Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment, CYCLOPES create synergies between LEAs from MS and connect industry and academia by stimulating and sustaining dialogue on pressing security matters threatening the stability of Europe and Citizen safety. Dedicated teams will scour markets, identifying solutions and research activities to highlight actions and innovative products to assist LEAs tackle the complexity of cybercrime. Besides technology, the project supports continued development of LEAs, working closely with practitioners to define current capacities and elicit capability gaps and requirements in crucial areas: procedures, training, legal and standardisation. Consequently, other objectives are: identification of priorities for standardisation; recommendations for innovation uptake and implementation; social, ethical and legal reports providing guidance and training suggestions for cybercrime investigators; dissemination of results through workshops, conferences, webinars, publications, policy papers and media. All outcomes will be suitably considered for exploitation - helping to propel the EU in the fight against cybercrime. Practitioners’ workshops are a driving force behind the project and cover three 3 domains: 1) cybercrime affecting people directly, 2) cybercrime affecting systems, 3) digital forensics. The project is to synchronise with other activities conducted by relevant parties EUROPOL, INTERPOL, CEPOL, ECTEG, ENISA; networks: ENLETS, ENFSI, I-LEAD, iLEAnet, EU-HYBNET, covering topics that go beyond efforts of these initiatives and preventing duplication. This also applies to projects where activities align with CYCLOPES (i-ProcureNet, Stairs4Security) and future projects funded by the EC, especially in the area of AI.

The increasing complexity of security challenges combined with the accumulation of significant amounts of digital data calls for better and more widespread use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities for law enforcement agencies (LEAs). AI can provide benefits to LEAs at all levels given the right understanding, tools, data and protection while increased awareness of criminal misuse is providing an immediate and concerning threat that must be tackled rapidly. Furthermore, a community that brings together LEAs, researchers, industry, security practitioners and other actors in the security ecosystem under a coordinated and strategic effort is essential for the realisation of these efforts into operational practices. STARLIGHT presents an inclusive and sustainable vision for increasing the awareness, capability, adoption and long-term impact of AI in Europe for LEAs. Five strategic goals underpin STARLIGHT’s approach: (1) Improve the widespread UNDERSTANDing of AI across LEAs to reinforce their investigative and cybersecurity operations and the need to uphold legal, ethical and societal values; (2) Provide opportunities to LEAs to EXPLOIT AI tools and solutions in their operational work that are trustworthy, transparent and human-centric; (3) Ensure that LEAs can PROTECT their own AI systems through privacy- and security-by-design approaches, better cybersecurity tools and knowledge; (4) Raise LEAs’ expertise and capacity to COMBAT the misuse of AI-supported crime and terrorism; and (5) BOOST AI for LEAs in Europe through high-quality datasets, an interoperable and standardised framework for long term sustainability of solutions, and the creation of an AI hub for LEAs that supports a strong AI security industry and enhances the EU’s strategic autonomy in AI. STARLIGHT will ensure European LEAs lead the way in AI innovation, autonomy and resilience, addressing the challenges of now and the future, prioritising the safety and security of Europe for all.

ANITA will design and develop a novel knowledge-based user-centred investigation system for analysing heterogeneous (text, audio, video, image) online (Surface Web, Deep Web, DarkNet) and offline content for fighting illegal trafficking of drugs, counterfeit medicines, NPS and firearms. ANITA will combine a) innovative data source analysis of crypto-currency network and transactions and blockchain technologies; b) advanced Big Data analytics tools for automatic analysis of the vast amounts of multimodal content of the identified sources; c) sophisticated methodologies for capturing, modelling and inferring knowledge in human understandable forms (e.g. expressive ontologies), extracting also relevant and new knowledge from neural networks and formally storing it in the form of ontologies; d) development of an adaptive, cognitive user modelling framework that will capture, analyse, interpret, mimic and integrate key human cognitive and information processing functions for: i) incarnating the incorporation of human perception/cognition principles in the system processing pipelines (i.e. integrating the investigators ‘in-the-loop’ of the overall analysis process) and ii) facilitate the transfer of domain knowledge from the expert users to the novice ones; e) domain-related and user-oriented intelligence applications, which will enable users to identify patterns for spatial, temporal and causal correlations among illegal trafficking events, entities and activities and to support decision-making processes for countermeasures to undertake. All the above functionalities will be coupled and reinforced by an in-depth interdisciplinary analysis of the online illegal trafficking phenomenon (including the study of reaction strategies and countermeasures) and a thorough analysis of the online resources with respect to social, ethical, legal and privacy issues of concern. The proposed system capabilities will be demonstrated in multiple relevant operational environments.

Community policing promotes the implementation of bi-directional collaboration channels between citizens and Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). By enhancing the discovery of relevant and up to date information, it speeds up the detection of risks, eases their prevention and builds a continuum of collaboration which motivates citizens and LEAs to work together. Over 36 months, TRILLION - TRusted, CItizen - LEA coILaboratIon over sOcial Networks - delivers a fully-fledged platform to support the extensive collaboration between citizens and LEAs. The operational environment of the platform is not limited to an on-going crisis, but also extends to the period before it through early identification and prevention of emerging risks. Major challenges addressed by TRILLION include creating the necessary trust to entice provision of information, ensuring that the information leads to realistic and credible knowledge and using this knowledge through secure bi-directional communications to guide actions of individuals closest to an identified risky situation. TRILLION delivers a comprehensive service based platform and mobile applications that support the knowledge-based, real-time collaboration among law enforcement agents, first responders and citizens whilst ensuring that privacy and data protection are taken into account. The TRILLION consortium and supporting organisations include 6 citizen communities, 6 law enforcement stakeholders, 3 industrial players and 5 universities and research centres. Extensive trials take place through pilots, early validations and serious game based training across Italy, Portugal, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, involving close to 2.000 citizens and law enforcement agencies representatives.