The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) Secretary General Jurgen Stock said the organization is looking at how it can solve crimes in the metaverse.
According to a BBC report, the metaverse initiative is necessary for Interpol to not get left behind.
Jurgen Stock stated “Criminals are sophisticated and professional in very quickly adapting to any new technological tool that is available to commit crime. We need to sufficiently respond to that. Sometimes lawmakers, police, and our societies are running a little bit behind.”
Last October, Interpol unveiled the first-ever fully operational Metaverse designed for law enforcement worldwide. To ensure that this new virtual environment is secure by design, Interpol also announced an Expert Group on the Metaverse that will reflect the concerns of law enforcement worldwide.
The virtual space allows police officers to experience what the metaverse would be like, giving them a feel of the kind of crimes that might occur and how they might be policed.
In terms of potential crimes in the Metaverse, Interpol’s innovation and technology head Dr. Madan Oberoi noted that there have been incidences of sexual harassment in the digital realm. However, he claims that applying the notion of crimes that occur in physical space to the Metaverse is challenging.
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“If you look at the definitions of these crimes in physical space, and you try to apply it in the metaverse, there is a difficulty. We don’t know whether we can call them a crime or not, but those threats are definitely there, so those issues are yet to be resolved,” Oberoi stated.
Oberoi added that if law enforcement is interested in helping people who have been hurt in the metaverse, they need to know about the metaverse.
“And that is one of our objectives – to make sure law enforcement personnel start using the metaverse and they become aware,” he noted.
According to Stock, Interpol will be crucial in future metaverse crime investigations, as he states no country can fight these types of crime in isolation because cybercrime is international by nature.
Stock added “This is why Interpol is so important because only national cyber-crime does not exist – almost all of the cases have an international dimension. That is what Interpol is about with 195 member countries, they all are needed to tackle that type of crime.”
