Monitoring, identification, and countering threats to the security of citizens

Project coordinator:

  • Professor Emil W. Plywaczewski – Uniwersity of Bialystok.

Sub-project coordinator:

  • Professor Andrzej Najgebauer – Military University of Technology, Department of Cybernetics.

The institutions performing the project:

  • University of Bialystok;
  • Jaroslaw Dabrowski Military University of Technology in Warsaw.

Project objective:

The goal of the project is a comprehensive approach to the issue of monitoring and identification of such threats to the security of citizens as organized crime, and terrorism, with particular focus on the Internet and modern technologies. The results of the project will serve the purpose of proposing effective and practical methods to counter and combat these threats. The analyses conducted in the project and the proposed solutions will relate in equal proportions to the legal area and to technology.

Project description:

The work of the research team will consist in a comprehensive analysis of Polish and foreign laws with the purpose of finding effective means to combat threats to the security of citizens. The research will concern preventing and combating the most dangerous modern problems such as organized crime and terrorism. Special attention will be paid to the aspect of their existence in the cyberspace where new technologies, to include information technologies, find the broadest application.

Simultaneously, on the basis of an analysis of actual operations, records of preparatory proceedings, court proceedings, questionnaires, and interviews with practitioners and representatives of the academia (in Poland and abroad) an analysis of causes and symptoms of organized crime and terrorism will be conducted. A thorough diagnosis is a precondition for an effective search of adequate legal and organizational solutions. This translates directly into finding effective ways to implement technological solutions in the activities of law enforcement and administration of justice. Documents that will be prepared in the project will also make it possible to forecast the appearance of new threats to Poland and Europe. What is important is also an analysis of usage of the most advanced technologies in operations and reconnaissance activities of law enforcement bodies. Another task of the project is to make an inventory and an assessment of the existing legal institutions and technical solutions that determine the shape of the legal model of operational work. The research project will also aim at looking for legal solutions to practical problems with using information collected in the process of operational work in a criminal proceeding, e.g. the usage of informants.

An assessment will be made of real effectiveness of the existing legal instruments, as well as of other organizational and technical actions undertaken for the purpose of countering and combating phenomena associated with organized crime and terrorism. These phenomena include money laundering, financing of terrorism, and corruption. The above-mentioned steps will make it possible to build a model of mutually complementing actions that can effectively counter these phenomena. Also, with this goal in mind, an assessment will be made of the usefulness of new technologies used by law enforcement for the purpose of the so-called private wire-tapping, criminal reconnaissance, or anti-corruption activities.

In order to perform a complex assessment of threats and the means to counter and combat these threats, an analysis will be conducted of laws and organizational-technical solutions in countries such as Spain, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Moreover, the research project includes a study of the socio-economic context of organized crime and terrorism in these countries. Their legal solutions cannot be transferred to Poland thoughtlessly; instead, the real conditions in these countries should be analyzed in order to transfer the legal and organizational solutions used in these countries to Poland.

The technology part of the project will be performed by the Military University of Technology, and will include a presentation of prototype solutions involving identification of threats to the security of citizens, warning, and managing the security of the country, such as pilot expert installations of decision supporting tools in the area of crisis management, a network system for monitoring, collecting, and processing data to warn about threats and to counter the effects of crisis situations. The project will involve the following scientific fields: political science, ecology, economics, law, meteorology, physics, electronics, optoelectronics, chemistry, information science, biology, management, as well as many specific methods and techniques, to include those of operational studies, artificial intelligence, as well as detection and identification of threats. The completion of the project assumptions should result in a practical implementation of the research results in the field of security of the country and its citizens. These actions will bring about a development of new methods and techniques in the above-mentioned fields of science.

What constitutes a priority for this project is the effectiveness and adequacy of applying new technologies in the fight against organized crime and terrorism, to include, in particular, their trans-national nature. With this in mind, the actions described above will result in a comprehensive practical assessment of the above-mentioned solutions and in a preparation of proposals de lege ferenda, along with their solid justification, which will allow for their quick consideration in the legislative process. The project titled “Monitoring, identification, and countering threats to the security of citizens” is a legal clamp that holds together the other nine technological projects performed in the framework of the Polish Platform for Homeland Security.

 

Project financed by The National Centre for Research and Development