Commissioner Pedro Agudo (Lugo, 1967), as head of the Digital Transformation Brigade, is responsible for coordinating open-source police tools. Outside of a security agency, they are referred to as Osint. But a police officer has access to court orders and other legal resources: “The first debate I start is to figure out what’s open source and what’s not,” he says. Police use a “restricted osint,” he adds.
Agudo gave a presentation about his work at C1b3rwall, the annual cybersecurity congress hosted by the police at the National Police Academy in Ávila, which brings together thousands of participants every year. Agudo was the detective leading the investigation into the 2021 murder of young Samuel Luiz in A Coruña. There he used artificial intelligence to enlighten the video of the events: “It is said that I was the first to request the help of an AI and handling of images”.
That year Agudo also went to the House of Representatives to testify before the commission of inquiry into the use of Interior Ministry resources in favor of the PP. Now in charge of the Osint techniques, he is in Madrid, while another Galician, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is the favorite to become the next governor. A Google search reveals a dark past: “Yes, yes, 50% hate me and the other half love me,” he says, joking about improving his SEO to look better. In 2022, Commissioner Santiago Maroto, who had begun to direct Osint’s work in the police force, passed the baton to him: “The first to take charge is a purely technological Commissioner, Santiago Maroto, who knows a lot.” I’m coming from La Coruña and go to this department where Maroto teaches and trains me. Until he asks me to lead the Osint group in 2022.
Questions. Does osint mean anything else to the police?
Answer. Our goal is to make the best of the resources available to us, whether they’re free or not. From the department, we evaluate the technology. Many companies come to us with Osint technology. Improvements are made almost monthly. Both Maroto and I were researchers and know what we want.
Q But the police don’t just use “open sources”. Police often have access to the phone and search history. These are not “open” resources.
R Yes. But accessing it with a court order requires a technique to perfect it. Performing an extraction after receiving the court order and mastering the Osint techniques will give you better performance.
Q Is it a job that requires you to learn everything?
R A little bit. I improve because I learn from companies. When you receive daily visits from companies introducing you to the latest technologies, you will learn a lot more.
Q Sometimes the bad guys make it easier for themselves and post photos of their work on Instagram.
R The robbery gangs, Romanian or sometimes Georgian, often commit a crime and expose the loot for hours.
Q Pimp or sell?
R Dress it up They upload it to the networks thinking the police won’t follow up. We have arrested many such people. Photography not only provides identity, it also provides location. We also saw photos of meetings posted on networks. There are other mafia groups that like to show off, like the Camorra, and they perform in Ibiza with famous girls or stolen watches.
Q Is there also information about TikTok?
R There are many videos on TikTok of people we may be looking for. If you manage to track a profile because you can identify it, you’ve already found it. And if you see her in a pool one day, you can check out the hotel she’s in.
Q See you on TikTok.
R When conducting an investigation, address any legal elements that can help you. TikTok is one of them.
Q Is ChatGPT already useful for research?
R Why not? To collect data, artificial intelligence can already help with investigations. For example with an economic structure, a company, relationships between people, synergies between companies. How does a generic structure work or will it be updated as ChatGPT-4? [que ya puede conectarse a internet] to a current structure? It can help journalists a lot.
Q But also the police?
R Naturally.
Pedro Agudo, in Avila.
Q Does artificial intelligence also exist in other areas?
R Anything is possible when it comes to facial recognition in compliance with data protection law. But it’s more future-oriented.
Q As?
R Face or anthropometric recognition is being perfected. The police just introduced a system called Abis. It has facial recognition, which already works very well, but the important thing is what’s coming in the future. AI can improve these types of tools.
Q But there are legal limits.
R Only if it is compatible with data protection law. If you’ve passed a camcorder law that allows recording, AI can improve this tool.
Q How does the Osint work as part of an investigation?
R In every sense. In the context of a judicial investigation, it also serves as a preventive measure at the beginning of an investigation to present it to the judge or prosecutor. When hate is talked about in various forums, it is necessary to check whether they are committing crimes or not.
Q As?
R There are preventive searches. We know there is a specific forum of people talking about the Holocaust. There could be a hate crime. This must be checked preventively. Or if you get into a free forum and leave a trail, that’s Osint too, as you don’t need permission to access that forum. You can still identify a nickname and see where it has been and who it has met on the network.
Q Then come the citizen-only steps.
R The most restricted are always prosecuted. There are stable guarantees. I miss research. I’m just coordinating here. If I were in a research unit tomorrow, I would take everything I learned to study. We evaluate the tool and make it available to the operational units. I know what to look for. I go to whoever did my job years ago.
Q How different is it to the people who do osint outside of the police force?
R There are specialists outside the body who use the resources even better than we do. We also train such people in the body and we have many. But there are people out there who have been making osint their entire lives. You have to walk alongside the experts on the street because they have a lot of information. When we use these techniques, you can’t give free rein to the investigators, there is a colleague who takes over the supervision.
Q In the lecture, he said that emojis are a new language for criminals.
R The bad guys use a different language. We evolved from the drugs theme on mobile Encrochat. We entered this system and decrypted it. But if you do not master the language of emoticons today, you can be excluded from an intervention. They use regular phones, but if you’re looking for communications between criminals using only emoticons, you won’t find out if you don’t have their passwords. It’s like Enigma, the Nazi coded language.
Q But is snow, for example, a drug?
R Some are easy. But others are words. That’s why I mention Enigma.
Q Like a hieroglyph.
R Clear. I can mean “reunion” and the smiley is orange. This is on a different phone. Everything evolves, including the bad ones. You need to find the source code.
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