Rights Based Pathway Pilot

The principle of policing by consent is fundamental to Scotland’s social fabric. Providing everyone with a fair, just and effective policing response is our moral responsibility and legal duty. It is an operational imperative to maintain and build the crucial bond of trust with our communities from which we draw our legitimacy.

The purpose of the Rights Based Pathway is to meet commitments in the Joint Strategy, Cyber Strategy, the Emerging Technologies Independent Advisory Group (ETIAG) recommendations and the Police Scotland and Scottish Police Authority Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), to support decision making and to maintain public trust and confidence in the organisation in respect of it adoption and use of technology.

With the introduction of new technology in mind, the Joint MOU states:

“The Joint MOU will apply to new and emerging areas of strategy, policy or practice, but the use of the Protocol should lead to the identification of broader, thematic, issues for policing meriting broader strategic discussion. For example, Police Scotland may seek to introduce new technologies to protect citizens against the growing range of digital threats and risks. There is, however, the need for a wider, contextual, discussion about the appropriate balance of duties of policing in Scotland, alongside the safety and privacy expectations and rights of the public.”

The express need for this approach was borne out of the lessons learned from Police Scotland’s initial introduction of Digital Triage Devices in 2020. This process identified the importance of evidencing a structured human rights and ethical approach, which maximised stakeholder and public engagement and consultation, prior to implementation.

Police Scotland completely understand the need to ensure public confidence and appropriate safeguards in utilising such technologies, however the challenge is to balance this against our statutory obligations in keeping the public safe, whilst making best use of available technologies to assist us in this mission. This has also been echoed by the SPA and are seeking to ensure that we have a balance of governance to introduce new technology. The Rights Based Pathway is therefore the mechanism for us to deliver against the terms of the MOU.

A new Data Ethics Triage process has been implemented that will assess all data related and data driven technology projects that go through Police Scotland’s Change process. The triage process will identify where ethical challenges may lie, provide a pathway to enhanced internal and external scrutiny and provide advice to projects to ensure that data and data driven technology is used legally and ethically.

The Data Ethics Triage process is an integral part of the Rights Based Governance Pathway to ensure that Police Scotland can demonstrate a consistent and proportionate approach to assessing data ethics and public interest considerations.

There has been extensive engagement and support internally and externally throughout the development of this process and in keeping with Police Scotland’s Values of Fairness, Integrity, Respect and Human Rights we believe that this model is a significant step forward in providing public reassurance on the police use of technology – which both keeps people safe, whilst upholding their rights.

The Rights Based Pathway is focused on the deployment of existing technology. This process currently does not exist and will be evaluated so that any lessons learned can be incorporated into future governance processes to ensure a robust rights based approach. The pilot of this pathway will not replace existing governance structures or change portfolio processes.

Child Abuse Image Database – Facial Matching (CAID FM)

In support of the pathway, CAID (Child Abuse Image Database) Facial Matching (FM) has been identified as the technology which will be used as a proof of concept for the Rights Based Pathway.

CAID is the Child Abuse Image Database and contributes to the fight against Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (OCSAE). It helps identify and safeguard victims, makes investigating Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse faster and more effective and supports international effort to remove images from the internet.

Since 2014, Police Scotland have contributed to CAID through the upload of Indecent Images of Children (IIOC) and it now hosts millions of abuse images.

Based on 2022/23 Q2 performance statistics, 936 OCSAE crimes were recorded in Scotland, an increase of 6.4% on the five year mean. Police Scotland’s detection rate for this period is 68.4%, an increase of 2.4% on the five year mean.

Certain types of OCSAE referrals originate from the US National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and are notified to Police Scotland via the National Crime Agency (NCA).

2015 - 2021, there has been a 511.2% increase in these referrals.
2019 – 2021 these referrals generated 2,498 National Online Child Abuse Protection (NOCAP) investigations.
75.8% of these were suspect NOCAP investigations.
24.2 % were Child at Risk (CAR) NOCAP investigations (often a child uploading imagery themselves where it is not clear if there is associated criminality such as grooming behaviour).

Despite other improvements around process and pro-activity in this area, the growing demand is having a significant effect on the workloads and welfare of our officers/staff.

As part of the continuous improvement of CAID, the Home Office has introduced the use of a ‘Facial Matching’ (FM) capability. In simplistic terms, FM within CAID is currently where an image of an individual is uploaded by a law enforcement agency (LEA), with the aim of identifying if that individual is present within that database.

The introduction of this capability brings about efficiencies in respect of taking less time to review images. A case with 10,000 images would typically take up to 3 days. Now, after matching images against CAID, a case of a similar size can be reviewed in an hour. This has helped shift the balance between reviewing images to identifying victims, with the overarching aim of safeguarding children.

Following a successful pilot in 2020, with the exception of Police Scotland all UK forces now using CAID FM. In addition to the number of operational benefits it has also sought to improve the wellbeing of the officers/staff engaged in its use.

In January 2022, in terms of Police Scotland’s use of this capability, a data ethics triage was been completed (January 2022) and assessed as ‘MEDIUM’ with the requirement to clarify various aspect of the software with the Home Office and the developer, NEC. These have been subsequently addressed during a demonstration of the technology provided to a Police Scotland Senior Solicitor, PDWP staff and the Chief Data officer.

In April 2022, it was presented to the Independent Ethics Advisory Panel (IEAP) who were supportive of Police Scotland introducing this technology to protect children and identify offenders whilst supporting the welfare of our own staff.

In advance of its introduction, the use of CAID FM has been reviewed and approved at the PDWP Professional Reference Group meeting (January 2023) and through all of Police Scotland’s governance, including the Senior Leadership Board (April 2023).

Police Scotland currently has the network and hardware infrastructure in place to support the use of CAID FM. The adoption of this technology will vastly improve our effectiveness in investigating OCSAE crimes, balanced against the public’s right to privacy and will improve the wellbeing of our officers and staff working in this space.

BERLA

It also the intention of Police Scotland to introduce the use of software known as BERLA, to support the evaluation of the Rights Based Pathway.

BERLA will increase our capability to obtain information from motor vehicles as part of serious crime investigations. This has been subject to the data ethics triage process (March 2022) and assessed as ‘MEDIUM’ with a risk relating to data management, which is mitigated through BAU processes.

In terms of consultation, consideration was given to referring BERLA to a conventional Police Scotland Independent Ethics Advisory Panel (IEAP) however no ethical dilemma suitable for referral was been identified

A DPIA and EqHRIA have also been completed.