On 10 July 2020, the Colombia National Police Intelligence Directorate (DIPOL) initiated a public bidding process for the procurement of an AI based cyber-intelligence system for DIPOL. Such system would provide the police with access to social media accounts and instant messaging services.
The cyber intelligence system should allow the dynamic monitoring of activity in social media and instant messaging networks that have public links. Additionally, the system should allow the identification of the following information in the mentioned networks:
- the account that generated the publication
- impact and reactions to the publication
- list of the accounts that have generated the most interaction
- geolocation of accounts pursuant to OSINT information of the sources
- influential accounts (those that generate more impact due to their number of followers)
- must allow keyword filtering of the comments
The system must also be able to “overcome the blocking of browsing accounts“; determine the identity of users, including names and dates of birth, among others; analyze their connections, and the information published in the account. It must have the technological capacity to generate hashtag alerts and identify behavioral patterns, both in the social networks and in instant messaging platforms.
According to an interview given by the General Jesús Alejandro Barrera, director of the DIPOL, all the collected information will be limited to publicly available data on the social networks, and will only be used by the DIPOL for crime prevention purposes. DIPOL has also emphasized that the technical conditions of the project “are not aimed at violating people’s privacy and personal data.”
Despite the fact that three bids were submitted as part of this bidding process, on August 27, the DIPOL, through its Resolution 049 of 2020, rejected all three offers, as it considered that none of them met the technical, legal and economic requirements defined by the entity.
