At a surprise session of the 90th Interpol General Assembly in New Delhi, India last week, the international enforcement agency unveiled the Interpol Metaverse, a VR space in which police officers can interact and trade information with one another as well as take a number of immersive policing courses. The Interpol Metaverse includes a digital copy of its Lyon, France HQ campus, which delegates were invited to tour using their avatars during the launch. Supposedly for training’s sake, it even features a TSA-style airport security area and (horrifyingly) an “Immigration and Border Police” station.
According to Interpol, its new police metaverse was born from a need to prevent criminal exploits in the VR world. “As the number of Metaverse users grows and the technology further develops, the list of possible crimes will only expand to potentially include crimes against children, data theft, money laundering, financial fraud, counterfeiting, ransomware, phishing, and sexual assault and harassment,” the agency said in a statement.
Interpol cited a tech research firm’s recent study that concluded every US adult will spend at least an hour each day in the metaverse by 2026—a figure that currently feels incredibly unrealistic, given the metaverse’s high cost of entry and its own developers’ extreme disinterest in actually using the platform. Despite this, Interpol and the World Economic Forum insist that “social engineering scams, violent extremism, and misinformation” are already on the rise.
It’s unknown just how much comfort the Interpol Metaverse will offer to users who might actually experience this up-and-coming form of victimization. The police are notoriously bad at addressing sexual harassment and assault in the real world; because the metaverse is so new, it’s highly unlikely that law enforcement would treat these subjects any better in a virtual space. Many municipal and state agencies fail to investigate cybercrime at all, including identity theft and social engineering scams, because they believe that’s federal law enforcement’s job. (Meanwhile, federal agencies like the FBI lack the resources necessary to investigate these reports.) Who’s to say victims will experience better outcomes in the metaverse, where regulations are few and far between and many real-world laws don’t apply?
The Interpol Metaverse does appear to offer a novel arena in which to conduct certain logistical training, like those involving airport security, meaning even the above skepticism (if revealed to be well-founded) won’t render Interpol’s investment worthless. But as always, it might be a good idea to implement your own safety measures in the metaverse—if you even use it to begin with.
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