Fighting crime with Big Data Weapons

Big data analytics is increasingly playing a role in the fight against crime. Publicly shared information combined with data from local authorities, social services and intelligence gathered by beat officers is helping police forces around the world spot trouble before it starts. It helps the police be much less reactive, and slowly starts to reveal the real trouble spots and troublemakers in a neighborhood, estate or street. When information like that becomes clear, the police can do something about it long before anyone dials 999. And that counts for people as much as it does for pubs or clubs. Law enforcement is finding new ways to use technology and big data against crime. CCTV cameras are no longer impotent. They are commonly used in police cars and carried by officers to create a permanent digital record of everything going on around them.

This will make it harder for criminals to commit crimes. In recent years we have witnessed criminality moving off the streets with a huge increase in the amount of credit card and online identity fraud. But even there new big data algorithms are being developed to detect fraudulent behaviors in real time.