How Interpol Prepares to Investigate Crimes in the Metaverse

Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock said the global police agency is investigating how the organization might police crime in the metaverse.

The metaverse is the widely debated but not yet realized concept that in the future people will be represented by three-dimensional avatars in their online life.

Interpol has built its own virtual reality (VR) space, where users can take training courses and attend virtual meetings.

Stock said it’s important the agency doesn’t get left behind.

“Criminals are very sophisticated and professional in quickly adapting to any new technological tool. available to commit crimes,” he asserted.

“We have to respond to it. Sometimes legislators, the police and our societies are a little behind.

“We have seen that if we do it too late, it already has an impact on the confidence in the tools we are using and, therefore, in the metaverse. On similar platforms that already exist, criminals are taking advantage of it.”

Accessible only through secure servers, the environment allows police officers to experience what the metaverse could be like, giving them an idea of ​​the crimes that might occur and how they might be policed.

What is the metaverse?

Some people think that the metaverse could be the future of the internet.

It is believed that virtual reality could be what the smartphone modern is to the first and crude mobile phones of the eighties.

Instead of being on a computer, in the metaverse you could use glasses to enter a virtual world that connects all kinds of digital environments.

But since it’s still just an idea, there’s no single agreed definition of the metaverse.

In other words, calling a VR world a metaverse is a bit like calling Google the Internet.

So, How can Interpol, an organization that facilitates global police cooperation, investigate the metaverse if it doesn’t exist yet?

This is where virtual worlds would come into play.

But within these virtual worlds there have been problems in real life.

In 2022, a BBC investigation found problems of verbal and sexual harassment within virtual reality gameswhich a journalist described as “disturbing”.

That same year, activists claimed that the avatar of a 21-year-old researcher had been sexually assaulted in Horizon Worlds, Meta’s virtual reality platform.

What is a metaversal crime?

Madan Oberoi, Executive Director of Technology and Innovation at Interpol, stated that there are problems when defining a metaversal crime.

“There are crimes that I don’t know if they can be classified as crimes or not,” he says.

“For example, cases of sexual harassment have been reported. If we look at the definitions of these crimes in physical space and try to apply them in the metaverse, a difficulty arises. We don’t know if we can classify them as a crime or not, but those threats are there, so those issues are yet to be resolved.”

According to him, one of the great challenges facing Interpol is raising awareness of these problems.

“The example I often use is that if you have to save a drowning person, you need to know how to swim,” he said.

“Similarly, if law enforcement is interested in helping people who have been injured in the metaverse, they need to know the metaverse. And that is one of our goals: make sure law enforcement personnel start using the metaverse and become aware.”

“In that sense, it’s very important.”

Regulate and Investigate in the Metaverse

As for regulation, Nina Jane Patel, co-founder and director of the metaverse research organization Kabuni, states: “What is illegal and harmful in the physical world should also be illegal in the virtual synthetic world.”.

“In this area of ​​convergence, we will find ourselves in a very difficult situation if we can treat each other in a certain way in the virtual world, but not in the physical world.”

“And we will be causing a lot of disconnect and miscommunication between what is acceptable human behavior in our digital world and our physical world.”

Stock said that Interpol will be instrumental in investigating future metaversal crimes.

“With one click, the tests are on another continent,” he said. “Cybercrime is international by nature”.

“That is why Interpol is so important, because there is not only national cybercrime: almost all cases have an international dimension.”

“This makes the role of Interpol, almost 100 years after its creation, so important in today’s world, because no country can fight this type of crime in isolation.”

“That is what Interpol is all about with 195 member countries. Everyone is needed to deal with this type of crime.” (YO)