Addressing Ethical Challenges of Creating New Technology for Criminal Investigation: The VALCRI Project

Abstract

In developing a semi-automated decision support system using cutting-edge visual technologies to aid police intelligence analysts (the VALCRI project) it was recognised that addressing ethical, privacy and legal issues would need to be considered from the start. From the beginning, experts in these fields were embedded in the project and externally an independent ethics board was established and a number of ethical concerns were identified. Addressing the concerns presented some challenges both in terms of process and product and are the subject of this paper. Insights about these problems can contribute to other research projects beyond the area of crime visualization, for instance addressing concerns such as logging processes for auditing and evidence in other sensitive projects.