D-SCENT: Raising challenges to deception attempts using data scent trails

自9-11和7-7以来，恐怖主义一直是公众关注的主要问题。为了确保公共安全和保护英国经济，需要进行研究，提供新的方法，在袭击发生前挫败它们，识别可能正在准备或实施袭击的人和网络，并提供明确的证据，用于证明质疑、逮捕和起诉是合理的。在这项研究中，我们将调查是否可以通过“气味痕迹”来识别和证明欺骗，也就是说，通过跟踪嫌疑人的运动、交流和行为，对嫌疑人的活动进行连贯的描述。我们将开发软件来推断哪些活动与嫌疑人的气味痕迹一致，哪些活动被排除在外。这些推断将使调查人员能够在实时（例如，鼓励嫌疑人放弃正在进行的攻击）和面谈期间（例如，指出嫌疑人的陈述与可能改变面谈进程的气味痕迹证据之间的不一致）对嫌疑人提出质疑。该项目将调查人们在进行欺骗活动以在对抗性的“寻宝”类游戏中获得优势的背景下的气味痕迹。这些游戏将在与利益攸关方协商的情况下开发，以提供对反恐背景的非敏感类比。玩家，通常是付费参加游戏的本科生，将在游戏期间通过从启用地理空间定位设备的移动设备获得的位置和通信数据进行监控。将开发用于整合这些数据的新型软件，以建立玩家在游戏过程中活动的线索。人工智能的方法将结合在一起，根据玩家的位置、轨迹、活动和与其他人的联系，从气味线索中推断出哪些活动是可能的，哪些是不可能的。我们设想有3支队伍参加比赛：A队代表对手，B队代表警察或公众，C队代表情报部门。A队通过在限定时间内到达目标地点来得分，如果他们想要获胜，就必须违反一套游戏规则。他们必须设法向B队隐瞒违规行为，B队通过成功阻止或识别A队的欺骗行为来得分。团队C可以通过向团队A发送线索来挑战团队A，这些线索被保留或可以为团队B提供情报信息。此外，在比赛的关键时刻对a队球员进行采访时，从气味痕迹中得出的推论将帮助C队决定如何最好地证明或伪造怀疑。通过在游戏过程中对玩家进行观察，我们可以调查人们在面对揭露自己欺骗行为的证据时如何改变自己的行为。我们还将在游戏中的关键时刻采访玩家，作为对嫌疑人采访的模拟，从玩家的活动描述中引出他们的活动，然后根据他们自己的气味痕迹向他们提出挑战，这些线索要么与合法游戏一致，要么不一致。这将使采访和分析技术得到改进，并将提供线索，说明人们在面对自己的欺骗行为后，随后如何改变自己的行为。这些结果也将使我们能够检验来自法医心理学的关于如何最好地检测欺骗的假设。这项研究还使我们能够探索公众对反恐监测和监视的认识和反应。我们将与一个由代表主要公共和学术机构的利益攸关方和学科专家组成的咨询小组合作，确定与收集和使用人们通过公共空间流动的数据相关的道德和法律问题。我们还将对游戏玩家和其他不参与游戏的人进行问卷调查，以衡量在玩游戏和其他情况下对监控和监视的态度。

Since 9-11 and 7-7, terrorism has been a major public concern. To ensure public safety and to protect the UK economy, research is needed that offers new methods to foil attacks before they are executed, to identify people and networks who might be preparing for or undertaking an attack, and to provide clear evidence that can be used to justify questioning, arrests and prosecutions.In this study, we will investigate whether deception can be identified and proved from 'scent trails', that is, coherent accounts of suspects' activities over time compiled from tracking their movements, communications and behaviours. We will develop software to derive inferences about what activities are consistent with suspects' scent trails and what are ruled out. These inferences will allow investigators to challenge suspects, both in real time (e.g., to encourage suspects to abandon an ongoing attack) and during interviews (e.g., to point out inconsistencies between a suspect's account and scent trail evidence that might change the course of an interview).The project will investigate scent trails in the context of people undertaking deceptive activities to gain advantage in adversarial 'treasure hunt'-type games. The games will be developed in consultation with stakeholders to provide a non-sensitive analogy to counter-terrorism contexts. Players, typically undergraduate students paid for participation, will be monitored during games via positional and communication data obtained from mobile devices enabled with geospatial positioning devices. Novel software for integrating these data will be developed to build up scent trails of players' activities during game play. Methods of artificial intelligence will be combined to derive inferences from the scent trails about what kinds of activity are possible and impossible given a player's location, trajectory, activities and links with others.We envision games with 3 teams: Team A represent the adversary, Team B the police or general public, and Team C the intelligence services. Team A scores points by visiting target locations within a time limit under a set of game rules that they must violate if they are to win. They must try to hide rule violations from Team B, who score points by preventing or identifying Team A's deceptions successfully. Team C can challenge Team A by sending them indications of the scent trails that are held or can feed Team B intelligence information. Moreover, the inferences from scent trails will support Team C in deciding how best to prove or falsify a suspicion during an interview with Team A players at key points during the games.By conducting observation of players during games, we can investigate how people change their behaviours when they are confronted with evidence that reveals their deceptions. We will also interview players at key points during games as a simulation of interviews with suspects, eliciting from players accounts of their activities before presenting them with challenges based on their own scent trails that are either consistent or inconsistent with legal game playing. This will allow interview and analysis techniques to be improved and will provide clues as to how people subsequently change their behaviour after they have been confronted with their deception. The results will also allow us to test between hypotheses deriving from forensic psychology as to how best to detect deception.The research also allows us to explore public awareness of, and response to, monitoring and surveillance in counter-terrorism. With an advisory panel of stakeholders and subject specialists representing key public and academic bodies, we will identify ethical and legal issues associated with collecting and using data on peoples' movements through public spaces. We will also conduct questionnaire studies with game players and others not involved in the games, to measure attitudes to monitoring and surveillance in game-playing and other contexts.