Look out behind you: it's RoboCrook

From:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/look-out-behind

-you-its-robocrook/2007/07/05/1183351373149.html

Mick Keelty … virtual policing.
Photo: James Davies

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CLONED part-robot humans used by organised crime gangs pose the greatest future challenge to police - along with online scamming - says the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty.

Technology-enabled crime was "a new area that's growing exponentially", Mr Keelty warned yesterday.

It was difficult to estimate how much money the AFP would need to combat technology-based crime, but he identified robotics and cloning as future challenges.

"Our environmental scanning tells us that even with some of the cloning of human beings - not necessarily in Australia but in those countries that are going to allow it - you could have potentially a cloned part-person, part-robot," he told a parliamentary inquiry into the future impact of organised crime in Canberra.

"You could [also] have technology acting at the direction of a human being, but the human being being distanced considerably from the actual crime scene."

A feature of serious criminal networks was their ability to quickly adopt new techniques, and police forces would have to move quickly to keep up. "A lot of those skills will have to be imported into policing and probably exist more so in the private sector."

Mr Keelty said scams had sprung up in online virtual worlds including Second Life, where people can spend real money using credit cards to buy virtual real estate and gifts.

"Policing that is going to be quite difficult," he said.

Australian and British police had also noticed a trend of internet pedophiles crossing into real-life pedophilia, and were planning a joint operation to protect children in developing countries. "We are watching people in the virtual world convert what they are doing in the virtual world to travel to some of these countries where children are at risk," he said.

"So this convergence from the virtual to the real world is a new phenomenon and makes evidence-gathering quite difficult.

"It will be a problem for us into the future."

- AAP

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