Australian Police Building Ai To Translate Emoji Used By ‘crimefluencers’

Australia’s Federal Police (AFP) is working on an AI to interpret emojis and the slang used online by Generation Z and Generation Alpha, so it can understand them when they discuss crime online.

AFP commissioner Krissy Barrett revealed the plan in a Wednesday in which she discussed “decentralised online crime networks and loosely affiliated individuals in Australia and offshore who are glorifying crime online, such as sadistic online exploitation, cyber-attacks and violence.”

“While these networks do not have a centralised hierarchy or a single ideology, they are prolific and are attracted to violent extremism, nihilism, sadism, Nazism and satanism,” she said. “They are ‘crimefluencers’, and are motivated by anarchy and hurting others, with most of their victims pre-teen or teenage girls.”

The groups are a matter for Australia’s feds, she said, because “If it used to take a village to raise a child, because of advances in technology, it now takes a country to keep them safe.”

Barrett said these groups recruit members who “often have to pass a test or undertake a task, such as providing videos of the self-harm of others, or other gory content.”

“In this new, twisted type of gamification, perpetrators reach a status or new level in their group when they provide more content showing more extreme acts of depravity and sadism.”

Investigators identified 59 alleged offenders who are thought to be members of some of these prolific crime networks, and secured “nine international and three domestic arrests.” Those arrested in Australia were aged between 17 and 20.

“A sub-group within the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group has also been established to target these groups,” Barrett said. That means law enforcement across Australia, the UK, USA, Canada, and New Zealand are trying to stop these criminal scum.

The AFP has set up a task force to target the gangs, and Barrett said it’s “developing a prototype AI tool that will interpret emojis and Gen Z and Alpha slang in encrypted communications and chat groups to identify sadistic online exploitation.”

Which sounds like one use of AI nobody can object to.

Social media and terrorism

Barrett also discussed the AFP’s anti-terrorism activities, which have since 2020 seen 48 youths aged between 12 and 17 investigated, and 25 charged with one or more terrorism-related offence.

The commissioner mentioned one case in which a 14-year-old who had access to firearms and explosives, and a “nationalist and racist violent extremist ideology,” used “a Snapchat account to post issue-motivated violent extremism.”

A tipoff to the AFP alleged the child planned a school shooting, and investigators thwarted that plot and secured a conviction.

The Commissioner said posts of that sort are not unusual.

“In most cases, social media or online gaming have been used to radicalise, or for a young person to flag their intent to commit … a terrorist act.”

Crypto takedown

Another anecdote Barrett shared concerned an investigation into “a well-connected alleged criminal, who we suspected had stockpiled cryptocurrency from selling a tech-type product to alleged criminals around the world.”

AFP officers obtained a warrant to search the suspect’s home, and found “an image on his device displaying random numbers and words. The numbers were divided into groups of six and there were more than 50 variations of the number groups.”

“Our digital forensics team determined it could be related to a crypto wallet – but the accused allegedly refused to hand over his passwords for his crypto wallet, which is a Commonwealth offence that carries a penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment,” Barrett said. “We knew if we couldn’t open the crypto wallet, and if the alleged offender was sentenced, upon release he would leave prison a multi-millionaire – all from the profits of organised crime.”

While computer power is essential, is not always as creative and innovative as a human

An AFP data scientist investigated the numbers, guessed that “some of the number strings felt wrong and they looked like they were not computer generated” and then decided to remove the first number in each sequence. That approach led to decipherment of a 24-word recovery seed phrase and recovery of $9 million in cryptocurrency.

“And it was not a one-off for this member,” Barrett said. “He recently did it again with another wallet, using different methodology, recovering more than $3 million in crypto.”

“To me this highlights that while computer power is essential, is not always as creative and innovative as a human,” she said.

Phones tell tales about the dead

Barrett’s last story concerned the AFP’s forensics team which together with Sydney’s University of Technology and “a pioneering body donation centre to understand how smart devices, like phones and watches, can help determine how long a body, dead or alive, has been buried during a natural disaster or foul play.”

“It is not as simple as it sounds because our scientists need to determine how soils, fluids and other contaminants can affect smart devices and the data they provide, such as heart beats or body temperature changes,” the commissioner said.

Barrett mentioned that effort in the context of the speech’s theme that the AFP has developed skills and capabilities to tackle crime wherever it happens, including online, but the speech also outlined real-world action including deployments of Australian police to the Colombian jungle to destroy cocaine production facilities. ®

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