Deepfake 42/2024
FOI Reference: 42/2024
Request:
Question 1
For all crimes that fall under the Home Office offence group of stalking and harassment between January 1 2015 and December 31 2023, inclusive of both dates, please provide the number of crimes that include the keywords “deepfake”, “deep fake”, “artificial intelligence”, “AI” and “synthetic media” in the modus operandi report. Please also provide the dates of each of these incidents took place and an annual breakdown of how prevalent each of the keywords were. If you have a flag for online/cyber crimes, please tell me how many of these crimes were flagged as such.
For the most recent 100 crimes, please provide the contents of the modus operandi report
Question 2
For all crimes that fall under the Home Office offence group of blackmail between January 1 2015 and December 31 2023, inclusive of both dates, please provide the number of crimes that include the keywords “deepfake”, “deep fake”, “artificial intelligence”, “AI” and “synthetic media” in the modus operandi report. Please also provide the dates of each of these incidents took place and an annual breakdown of how prevalent each of the keywords were. If you have a flag for online/cyber crimes, please tell me how many of these crimes were flagged as such.
For the most recent 100 crimes, please provide the contents of the modus operandi report
Question 3
For all crimes that fall under the Home Office offence group of sexual offences between January 1 2015 and December 31 2023, inclusive of both dates, please provide the number of crimes that include the keywords “deepfake”, “deep fake”, “artificial intelligence”, “AI” and “synthetic media” in the modus operandi report. Please also provide the details of each of these incidents took place and an annual breakdown of how prevalent each of the keywords were. If you have a flag for online/cyber crimes, please tell me how many of these crimes were flagged as such.
For the most recent 100 crimes, please provide the contents of the modus operandi report
Response:
Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.
I can confirm that the cost of determining whether any information relative to this request is or isn’t held is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond therefore we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12 (2) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.
Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Dyfed Powys Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies. The following exemption has been applied to the whole of the information you have requested:
Section 12(2) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit
Section 12(2) states: “…Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”
The cost of determining what information is held, if any, relevant to your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the “appropriate level” as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. It is estimated that it would exceed 18 hours (i.e. minimum of 9147 hours) to comply with your request. The regulations can be located @ www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244
The Freedom of Information Department has been advised that the information in relation to the whole request is not held in an easily retrievable format. This is due to the fact that with our current crime recording system, we would have to manually review each relevant offence to see if it pertained to the requested information (e.g made reference to “deepfake” etc).
Therefore, in order to ascertain if there is any information relevant to your request, every harassment/stalking, Blackmail and sexual offence crime record created during the timeframe specified would require individual interrogation.
It has been established that there are a total of 54,882 relevant crimes recorded that would require individual interrogation and it has been estimated that it would take an average of 10 minutes to research each individual record. The relevant time estimate is detailed below:
Q1
Stalking and harassment crime records;
2017 – 2116 records x 10 minutes per record = 352.6 hours
2018 - 2939 records x 10 minutes per record = 489.8 hours
2019 - 4601 records x 10 minutes per record = 766.8 hours
2020 - 5968 records x 10 minutes per record = 994.7 hours
2021 – 9647 records x 10 minutes per record = 1,607.8 hours
2022 –10293 records x 10 minutes per record =1715.5 hours
2023 – 7801 records x 10 minutes per record = 1,300.1 hours
Total time estimate for Q1 = 43407 records x 10 minutes per record= 7234.5 hours
Q2
Blackmail crime records;
2017 – 56 records x 10 minutes per record =9.3 hours
2018 - 218 records x 10 minutes per record = 36.3 hours
2019 - 124 records x 10 minutes per record =20.6 hours
2020 - 90 records x 10 minutes per record = 15 hours
2021 – 205 records x 10 minutes per record = 34.1 hours
2022 – 287 records x 10 minutes per record = 47.8 hours
2023 – 358 records x 10 minutes per record = 59.6 hours
Total Q2 time estimate = 1348 records x 10 minutes per record= 224.6 hours
Q3
Sexual Offence crime records;
2017 – 1230 records x 10 minutes per record = 205 hours
2018 - 1428 records x 10 minutes per record = 238 hours
2019 - 1450 records x 10 minutes per record = 241.6 hours
2020 - 1248 records x 10 minutes per record = 208 hours
2021 – 1559 records x 10 minutes per record = 259.8 hours
2022 – 1734 records x 10 minutes per record = 289 hours
2023 – 1485 records x 10 minutes per record = 247.5 hours
Total Q3 time estimate = 10133 records x 10 minutes per record= 1688.8 hours
Time estimated for whole request= 9,147.9 hours
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for the WHOLE of this request under Section 17(5) A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or section 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact. You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the time shown above to fall within the 18 hours. Should you require any further advice in relation to this matter please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the Force’s right to cite exemptions if relevant
It should be noted that as a result of the systems adopted by Dyfed-Powys Police in relation to the recording of such information that the information released may or may not be accurate.
Furthermore, it should also be noted that Police forces in the United Kingdom are routinely required to provide crime statistics to government bodies and the recording criteria is set nationally. However, the systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the crime data. It should be noted that for these reasons this force's response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.
(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 07/03/2024)