TITANIUM Risk Management

Karlsruhe (29 March 2019)

TITANIUM's priority on minimizing the risks that go along with the development of novel technologies in the area of law enforcement is paramount for the consortium. The project includes two work packages that solely address legal, societal and ethical issues

TITANIUM SYNERGETIC ETHICAL APPROACH

The legal and ethical team assesses the general risks in a scientific manner in their respective field of work. The outcomes of the analysis set the foundation and define the borders for the development of tools within the project.

As software development and research continuously bring up novel approaches, the risk assessment is an ongoing process. The legal and ethical team is involved in all steps of this development.

Additionally, TITANIUM includes external stakeholders by reaching out to in multiple interview rounds. This includes a broad spectrum of people (e.g. law enforcement, data protection authorities, civil society organisations) and helps to broaden the perspective on issues and risks of the project. The development, legal and ethical teams are strongly interconnected to ensure that outcomes of the interviews can be fed into the projects agile development cycle.

INDIVIDUAL ASSESSMENT of the OUTCOMES

Users should not blindly trust outcomes of novel technological approaches and an individual assessment of the outcomes is necessary. To ensure this, TITANIUM develops training sessions and education material for end-users to show the capabilities as well as limitations of the technological approaches. In addition, the tools itself are designed to warn the user at certain points to ensure the outcomes of the analysis will not be misinterpreted.

RESULTS SUSTAINABILITY

TITANIUM aims to produce sustainable results. That means the outcomes of the project should be useful and relevant for the longest period possible. The invention of new technological concepts (e.g. new cryptocurrencies) bears the risk that the tools are rendered outdated in the long term. While this risk cannot be excluded completely, TITANIUM tools are developed in a manner that allows the update and adaptation of analytical methods to novel developments.

TOOLS MISUSE

TITANIUM is aware of the risk that technology can potentially be misused by law enforcement officers or by authoritarian regimes in general. The tools are hence developed in a manner that excludes the possibility of misuse of the software on multiple levels. This includes means such as user management, access restrictions, requirement for authorization that reduce the risk of misuse by limiting the power of the user. In addition, extensive and not common users’ interactions are traceable and can alert potential misuse of the tools, which can lead scrutiny by the supervisory instances at all times.