RCMP looking to expand its digital policing services

The RCMP is seeking to expand its digital policing services, months after the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) found that it violated the law by using mass surveillance technology. The RCMP intends to award two contracts -- each for three years plus two one-year irrevocable options -- to digitize its police services, according to a public tender issued on Sept. 9. Its tender noted that it plans to become fully mobile “with staff able to securely access data and applications from anywhere, on any RCMP device.” Its partner organization and other RCMP units will be able to interact digitally through an application programming interface and a law enforcement enterprise portal. “Officers in the field will have access to accurate, real time situational awareness information in support of operational decision making. Citizens and businesses will be able to interact digitally through an integrated RCMP portal to securely access information and services, report crimes and submit and track applications,” according to its statement of work. This move toward more digital policing comes almost eight months after the OPC found that the facial recognition technology company Clearview AI engaged in illegal mass surveillance on behalf of the RCMP. In June, it also found that the RCMP violated the Privacy Act. At the time, Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said his office’s investigation revealed “serious and systemic gaps in the RCMP’s policies and systems to track and identify, assess, and control novel collection of personal information through new technologies.” “In fact, there were no such systems,” he said. The RCMP noted in its tender documents that it will assess any machine learning capabilities for privacy or ethics concerns and concerns with bias to meet the requirements of the Government of Canada’s Directive on Automated Decision Making. In a statement emailed to the Wire Report, the RCMP wrote that it is seeking “professional service assistance to execute many of the objectives in its Digital Policing Strategy” which includes the use of data to predict, prevent, and fight crime. According to the tender, the RCMP additionally wants to improve its cybersecurity and develop and implement analytics solutions. The latter includes “the ability to leverage analytics and data insights into operational and planning decision making.” It goes on to say that the contractor may need to develop criminal and threat intelligence, threat identification and assessment, and develop solutions based on machine learning or artificial intelligence. The RCMP will also be able to “securely leverage” public cloud and cloud services, whenever it deems appropriate once its digital upgrades are complete, according to the tender. It is also digitizing its internal services. It plans to automate its ATIP business line and minimize the manual classification, processing or analytics of its data by digitizing its information. “The preference is to capture, manage and use information digitally through its entire lifecycle, aligned to the appropriate future state business processes, with the intent to minimize manual human intervention,” it stated. The OPC launched the pair of investigations into the U.S.-based Clearview AI and the RCMP back in February after media reports of the technology’s use by police departments. Clearview AI has since pulled its technology from the Canadian market. The OPC said Clearview AI scraped three billion images of faces and corresponding biometric identifiers off of publicly accessible information on the internet. Users of the technology could then upload an image to be matched against the database and then directed toward the source of the image. The RCMP told the OPC that it used the technology primarily for identifying, locating, and rescuing children from online sexual abuse. However, the OPC later found through records six per cent of the 521 RCMP searches of the technology linked to the National Child Exploitation Crime Centre, while 85 per cent of the searches “are not accounted for at all by the RCMP.” As a result of its findings in June, the OPC launched a consultation on its draft guidance for police departments and their use of facial recognition technology with an Oct. 15 deadline. — Reporting by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca and editing by Hannah Daley at hdaley@thewirereport.ca

RCMP looking to expand its digital policing services

News | September 22, 2021

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RCMP looking to expand its digital policing services

News | September 22, 2021

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