Periodic Reporting for period 1 - POLIIICE (Powerful Lawful Interception, Investigation, and Intelligence)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-03-31
POLIIICE long term vision is to advance European LEAs to a novel lawful-interception (LI), investigation and intelligence era in which they will be able to effectively prevent, detect and investigate crime and terrorism amid the new age of communication (5G&Beyond, application level E2EE and Quantum based cryptography). These new age of communication technologies turn legacy LI solutions to totally in-effective and therefore put significant risk on Europe’s fight against crime and terrorism. POLIIICE will offer, research, validate and demonstrate array of innovative LI measures at cloud & network level as well as at edge-device level that together will enable LEAs to efficiently overcome the new age challenges and enable high throughput of LI. In addition, POLIIICE will research and model QUDDaaS (Quantum unlock, detection and decryption as a service) as an envisaged central service, potentially outsourced at pan-European level, which will harness quantum computing (enhanced by AI) for decryption of lawfully intercepted encrypted communication (which is vulnerable to Quantum’s Shor algorithm), for brute force detection of target-user’s credentials/tokens needed to access encrypted cloud-native apps and for Quantum unlock of lawfully seized mobile devices. QUDDaaS may also detect and classify lawfully intercepted communications that are resistant to Quantum decryption power and therefore can’t be decrypted. Moreover, POLIIICE also aims to improve the information exchange and cooperation among European LEAs by proposing and implementing a mechanism and procedure (‘POLEX’) for exchanging pseudo-anonymized suspect identifiers (captured by LI) between different LEAs for the purpose of detection of inter-LEA overlap in suspect identifiers which will enrich LEA intelligence and expedite investigation of cases. Both QUDDaaS and POLEX will be managed and provided at EU level through a central hub called ‘POLIIICE EU-Hub’. Notably, POLIIICE will be designed for ensuring the cost-effectiveness, security and integrity of the new age of LI and will provide the legal and ethical guidelines and framework for each of its measures while strictly complying with privacy preserving and ethics rules of operation. At exploitation level, POLIIICE project will contribute to the LI compliance standardization (defined by 3GPP/ETSI) and will recommend EU policy and regulation changes which are essential for effective adaptation of POLIIICE vision and innovative LI measures.
List of all POLIIICE technical measures that have been researched and developed:
Front-End-1 (Cloud and Network Level of LI measures)
1 5G compliance LI solution and interfaces from CSP to LEA --> Demonstrated (TRL 5-6) in Pilot-1 (at NNF 5G lab in Lannion, France)
2 Envisaged Standardized Injection Interface (‘I2’) for CI agents --> Demonstrated (TRL 1-2) in Pilot-1 (at NNF 5G lab in Lannion, France)
3 COTS Cloud Extractor (CCE)
4 5G RAN-enhanced lawful Geo-location tracking
MDF measures (Complementary to the compliance LI solution of Front-End-1):
5 SF (Smart Filtering) powered by AI
6 QC (Quantum compression)
Front-End-2 (Edge-Device Level of LI measures):
7 Cyber intelligence (CI) Type-1, 2 &3 --> CI Type 1 &2 demonstrated (TRL 1-2) in Pilot-1 (at NNF 5G lab in Lannion, France)
8 Envisaged LI interface to Mobile-Ad Network companies
9 COTS forensic unlock & extraction of seized edge devices for the benefit of LI
10 Active and passive tactical interception and location tracking of 5G mobile devices (’IMSI catchers’/‘Stingray LI’)
EU-Hub measures (including UX/UI development and integration of QUDDaaS and POLEX)
13 QUDDaaS (Quantum Unlock, Detection and Decryption as a Service)
14 ‘POLEX’ (POLIIICE Exchange) -
Back-End measures (at COTS Monitoring Center)
15 COTS Monitoring Center with (big-data) analytics and AI to expedite investigation and intelligence work --> Link analysis demonstrated in Pilot-1 (at NNF 5G lab in Lannion, France)
16 Metadata analysis, AI and DPI for classification and characterization of left/residue traffic that can’t be decrypted integrated within the COTS Monitoring Center --> DPI demonstrated in Pilot-1 (at NNF 5G lab in Lannion, France)
Front-End-1 (Cloud and Network Level of LI measures)
1 5G compliance LI solution and interfaces from CSP to LEA --> Demonstrated (TRL 5-6) in Pilot-1 (at NNF 5G lab in Lannion, France)
2 Envisaged Standardized Injection Interface (‘I2’) for CI agents --> Demonstrated (TRL 1-2) in Pilot-1 (at NNF 5G lab in Lannion, France)
3 COTS Cloud Extractor (CCE)
4 5G RAN-enhanced lawful Geo-location tracking
MDF measures (Complementary to the compliance LI solution of Front-End-1):
5 SF (Smart Filtering) powered by AI
6 QC (Quantum compression)
Front-End-2 (Edge-Device Level of LI measures):
7 Cyber intelligence (CI) Type-1, 2 &3 --> CI Type 1 &2 demonstrated (TRL 1-2) in Pilot-1 (at NNF 5G lab in Lannion, France)
8 Envisaged LI interface to Mobile-Ad Network companies
9 COTS forensic unlock & extraction of seized edge devices for the benefit of LI
10 Active and passive tactical interception and location tracking of 5G mobile devices (’IMSI catchers’/‘Stingray LI’)
EU-Hub measures (including UX/UI development and integration of QUDDaaS and POLEX)
13 QUDDaaS (Quantum Unlock, Detection and Decryption as a Service)
14 ‘POLEX’ (POLIIICE Exchange) -
Back-End measures (at COTS Monitoring Center)
15 COTS Monitoring Center with (big-data) analytics and AI to expedite investigation and intelligence work --> Link analysis demonstrated in Pilot-1 (at NNF 5G lab in Lannion, France)
16 Metadata analysis, AI and DPI for classification and characterization of left/residue traffic that can’t be decrypted integrated within the COTS Monitoring Center --> DPI demonstrated in Pilot-1 (at NNF 5G lab in Lannion, France)
The innovation and progress beyond the state-of-the-art of POLIIICE is multi-dimensional:
A) First dimension of POLIIICE ambition and progress beyond the-state-of-the-art derives from the integration of array of complementary and innovative LI measures, at cloud & network level and at the edge-device level which together enable LEAs to overcome the new age challenges.
B) The second dimension of POLIIICE ambition and progress beyond the state-of-the-art is in setting up the EU-HUB (Front-End-3) for QUDDaaS and POLEX.
C) The third dimension of POLIIICE ambition and progress beyond the state-of-the-art is SF (Smart Filtering) powered by AI and QC (Quantum compression) at the MDF (complementary to the Compliance LI solution from Front-End-1)– to cope with the tremendous amount of data expected per intercepted target. Both implemented at the MDF (Mediation/Delivery Function), at the CSP side.
D) The fourth dimension of POLIIICE ambition and progress beyond the state-of-the-art derives from POLIIICE contribution to defining the legal, code of conduct and ethical frameworks of each of POLIIICE measures and providing LEAs’ recommendations for regulation and standardization updates to support all POLIIICE measures (specifically to those which are missing any standardization or regulation today, but their effectiveness in the new age LI is relatively very high).
A) First dimension of POLIIICE ambition and progress beyond the-state-of-the-art derives from the integration of array of complementary and innovative LI measures, at cloud & network level and at the edge-device level which together enable LEAs to overcome the new age challenges.
B) The second dimension of POLIIICE ambition and progress beyond the state-of-the-art is in setting up the EU-HUB (Front-End-3) for QUDDaaS and POLEX.
C) The third dimension of POLIIICE ambition and progress beyond the state-of-the-art is SF (Smart Filtering) powered by AI and QC (Quantum compression) at the MDF (complementary to the Compliance LI solution from Front-End-1)– to cope with the tremendous amount of data expected per intercepted target. Both implemented at the MDF (Mediation/Delivery Function), at the CSP side.
D) The fourth dimension of POLIIICE ambition and progress beyond the state-of-the-art derives from POLIIICE contribution to defining the legal, code of conduct and ethical frameworks of each of POLIIICE measures and providing LEAs’ recommendations for regulation and standardization updates to support all POLIIICE measures (specifically to those which are missing any standardization or regulation today, but their effectiveness in the new age LI is relatively very high).