Cape Town - There is a high-tech race between criminals and law enforcement and according to speakers at the 35th International Crimestoppers Conference in Cape Town, measures are already in place to stay ahead.
This comes after Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko identified technology as vital in the fight against crime.
Fraud, organised and cyber crime, human trafficking and vehicle crime were key areas of focus, with calls from experts across the major crime categories to keep advancing data management, communication platforms and public engagement.
Nhleko referred to a 2012 study by Ascensia which found that citizens in general believe police should open up more to digital tools to enable them to fight crime.
“[The Ascensia study shows that]…citizens have made it clear that they want to support police in fighting and preventing crime, but that they need more information from police to do so. Digital tools should play an important role in communicating with citizens who want to support police to fight crime, but do not feel adequately informed of police activities. By adopting new digital technologies police can create new communication channels to engage citizens and gather leads to support their investigations,” said Nhleko.
Technology is being developed and deployed to perpetrate crimes with a view to leaving little digital footprint. This ranges from selling illicit goods on the internet to mass identity theft and credit card fraud. Vehicle crime poses a dynamic challenge to law enforcement and sits against a backdrop of an often violent modus operandi.
“Vehicle crime investigators are faced with ever changing technology as well as the introduction of new vehicle models each month. Modern vehicles are more like moving computers constantly threatened by hackers and technology enabled jamming devices are upgrading constantly,” said International Association of Auto Theft Investigators (Iaati) President Tinus Odendal.The Iaati database consists of 2.36 million cases of car theft involving 1.27 million insurance claims.
Micro-dotting
Recent legislation implemented in South Africa stipulates that all vehicles must carry micro-dotting technology. What this means is that all new vehicles will contain approximately 1 000 hidden markers that hold the identity of that vehicle, so that in the event of the vehicle being stolen it can be easily identified. Importantly, the locations of the 0.5mm dots are not visible to thieves.
“About 17% of vehicles in SA are now fitted with Datadot technology and 16 000 police officers have been trained to identify datadot technology,” according to Kheepe Moremi, head of marketing at Datadot.
Moremi said cars with microdot technology have a 63% higher recovery rate than those without. Similarly, cars with tracking devices have more than an 80% chance of being recovered, while those without a tracking device fitted have less than a 10% chance of being recovered.