Author: Dick van Veldhuizen
Last week Roseman Labs presented at Europol Industry & Research Days in The Hague. Over the course of the event, alongside our demonstrations, I had the opportunity to speak with law enforcement leaders, practitioners and researchers from across Europe. Here is what stood out.
A common priority across my conversations was the need to keep pace with criminal networks operating at a scale and speed that is growing rapidly, across borders and domains. These networks are leveraging technology and AI in ways that are increasingly difficult to match. Adding to this complexity is the hybrid nature of modern threats. The boundaries between state actors and criminal networks are becoming less distinct. Law enforcement finds itself increasingly on the front line: responding to incidents such as drone disruptions and sabotage, and investigating domestic actors operating under the influence of foreign state actors.
The objective expressed across these conversations was consistent: to match the pace and scale of modern threats, law enforcement operations need to become more intelligence-led and dynamic, focusing finite resources where they can disrupt these networks most effectively. All of this within the right legal boundaries and with solid governance in place. That requires agencies to evolve the way they operate.
Law enforcement agencies across Europe are working towards a more integrated response, across domestic security organizations including intelligence, defense and emergency services, and with international law enforcement partners. Central to this is sharing data and intelligence to build a common operational picture. That picture needs to answer practical questions: where are the threats, how do they move, and how are the networks connected, so that responses can be coordinated at both local and international level.
The people I spoke to were clear that progress is needed on three levels at once: trust between organizations, structures that support joint working, and a technology platform that makes facilitates it. These are not sequential steps. They need to develop together.
Agencies are investing in capabilities on two fronts. On the technology side: tools that make sense of available data, enrich it with intelligence from partners, identify emerging threats early, map criminal networks, and support operational decision making including through AI.
What stood out from these conversations is the equal emphasis on strengthening legal capabilities. Operations want to move fast, and the technology exists to support that. What has historically slowed things down is the gap between what operations need and what legal teams can assess and enable, particularly around data sharing and the use of AI. The agencies making progress here are closing that gap deliberately. They embed legal expertise close to operational and technology teams, build domain knowledge around data collaboration and AI, and find ways to handle new initiatives efficiently without starting from scratch each time. Legal becomes an enabler rather than a bottleneck.
In the coming weeks I will be publishing a series that picks up where this leaves off, looking at the research that underpins these developments, including work by the London School of Economics and UNICRI, and at organizations that are already putting these objectives into practice across data collaboration, joint operations and legal enablement.
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