What is Interpol Metaverse?

October 21, 2022

The Interpol Metaverse was launched at the 90^th General Assembly held in New Delhi.

Key facts

The world’s first metaverse specifically designed for law enforcement was launched recently.
It enables the registered users to take virtual tour of Interpol’s general secretariat headquarters in Lyon, France to interact with other officers through their avatars.
It also provides training courses on forensic investigation and other policing skills.
This newly launched facility is provided via the Interpol’s secure cloud.
It is currently fully operational for use by law enforcement officials from 195 member countries of the Interpol.
It provides benefits like remote work capabilities, networking, collection and preservation of evidence from crime scenes and capacity building.
It enables trainees to receive hands-on experiences in new skills related to law enforcement.
Metaverse’s role is expected to widen in the near future, with an estimated one in every four people spending at least an hour in Metaverse to work, study, shop and socialize in the year 2026.
With this comes the growing concerns of the security and safety in the metaverse.
The World Economic Forum, which collaborated with the Interpol, meta, Microsoft and others to define and govern metaverse, warned that social engineering challenges, violent extremism and misinformation will be the major threats in metaverse.
In the future, crimes targeting children, data theft, money laundering, financial fraud, counterfeiting, ransomware, phishing, and sexual assault and harassment are expected to occur in the metaverse.
This is going to be major challenge since current laws do not consider some of these activities as crimes when they occur in virtual world and not in physical world.
Interpol Metaverse will help address these issues and create a secure future by providing training and capacity building opportunities for law enforcement officials.
It will also create a forum for discussions of such concerns among the members of the Interpol.