Surveillance technology:Researchers are developing artificial intelligence techniques and surveillance technologies to track suspected terrorists.
Information and patterns, or "scent" trails, gathered from suspect's movements, data from credit card transactions, mobile phone communications etc, will be used in conjunction with psychological techniques to avert possible attacks or to assure prosecution.
Speaking yesterday at the festival, Prof Tom Ormerod from Lancaster University outlined a three-year project that will follow harmless "scent" trails left by volunteers taking part in a "treasure hunt" exercise on the university campus.
The work aims to develop techniques to aid the police and security services in the investigation of criminal and terrorist activity by tracking individuals and monitoring communication between team members.
"One team representing the suspects competes against another team representing the police. Mock interviews take place with participants, where evidence from tracking and communications [ scent trails] is presented to interviewers to aid their questioning," said Prof Ormerod.
"Psychologists and data mining specialists then identify when participants are not giving a true account of events and are using deception.
"With the technology we currently have it is not easy to bring all the information from different surveillance systems together. It relies on human interpretation of the data," said Prof Ormerod.
The project will bring together different types of surveillance data into one system. It will also use computer-based artificial intelligence to help analyse the data.
The information gathered from the study will benefit the police when preparing to question suspects on their accounts of events.
This work could be important both in real time, to challenge suspects planning attacks, as well as in interviews challenging the account of those suspected of a crime or terrorist act.
"By studying the 'scent' trails before an interview and understanding the behaviour associated with deception, it can help the interviewer challenge the suspect with the right evidence at the right time to reveal the deception," said Prof Ormerod.
The study also aims to obtain public opinion on what degree of monitoring and surveillance is acceptable in counter-terrorism.