European Police: Data Volumes and Loss Hindering Investigations

European police are struggling to access, analyze and store potentially huge volumes of data needed to advance cybercrime investigations, a new Europol report has warned.

The policing group’s Common Challenges in Cybercrime study was written with input from criminal justice cooperation body Eurojust.

Three of the six challenges highlighted in the report relate to data needed for investigations.

The first is the sheer volume of that data, which might reach terabytes or even petabytes in size, “making it difficult to store, manage, and effectively analyse without significant knowledge, computational resources and specialised tools.”

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The report highlighted skills and technology shortages, especially in data science and digital forensics, that can lead to delays. It called for better alignment of data models across law enforcement and judicial authorities, standard reporting formats for service providers and a standard request format for government agencies.

The report also bemoaned the lack of a standardized EU legal framework for data retention for law enforcement purposes, meaning that in many cases, service providers have already deleted potentially key data before police access requests come in.

The report called, among other things, for permanent law enforcement access non-public WHOIS information “that is both swift and efficient.”

Europol also repeated oft-mentioned gripes about the challenges police have in accessing encrypted communications; whether those provided by a legitimate company like WhatsApp or a criminal service like EncroChat. Widespread use of cryptocurrencies further obfuscates the work of criminals, it argued.

The remaining three challenges outlined by Europal in the report are:

• Anonymization services, decentralized hosting and distributed storage, which slow down investigations, hamper the removal of illegal content and complicate requests for information
• International cooperation, which is stymied by blocked routes in international evidence-gathering, a lack of data deconfliction and the continued existence of safe havens
• Public-private partnerships, which are vital to preventing cybercrimes and taking down criminal infrastructure. The EU’s SIRIUS project is helping here by supporting best practices for cross-border access to e-evidence

While “new legislative tools” like the e-Evidence Package, the Digital Services Act, the AI Act and the Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention are helping to improve the situation, more work will be needed to integrate them into existing frameworks, Europol said.

It called for “continuous innovation, training and international collaboration” to overcome the challenges outlined in the report.

“In conclusion, while significant strides have been made, the road ahead remains steep and fraught with challenges that will demand a dynamic and adaptive approach,” it noted.

“The continued success of initiatives such as the SIRIUS Project, public-private partnerships such as the No More Ransom Project, and the strategic use of legislative tools will be pivotal in shaping the future landscape of cybercrime prevention and related enforcement.”