Sweden pilots surveillance technology to combat terrorism and crime

The growing threat of radical terrorism and organised crime in Sweden has sparked government-led homeland security initiatives to finance anti-crime projects driven by advanced technology.

To this end, the government has prioritised funding for specialist counter-terrorism agencies, such as Säpo (Säkerhetspolisen), Sweden’s national security service, which also has counter-espionage duties.

To bolster city-wide and community-based surveillance, the national police administration and homeland security agencies are cooperating to run a landmark pilot scheme in Stockholm using CCTV-audio surveillance. The project is expected to launch in the first half of this year.

This is the first time Swedish law enforcement has been permitted to deploy audio detection equipment in public spaces. The new generation of sensors being used in the pilot project are capable of picking up and identifying the location of sounds, such as gunshots, explosions and breaking glass, and reporting them to central police monitoring stations in real time. 

Technology is set to play a more prominent early-warning role to support Sweden’s homeland security, public safety and counter-terrorism strategies, said Joakim Söderström, head of the National Police Authority’s (NPA) camera surveillance unit.

“The use of advanced camera and audio technologies will enable police to respond to incidents more quickly,” said Söderström. “It means shortening response times by up to two minutes compared with a citizen reporting an incident to a national emergency hotline number.”

The pilot programme will initially be operated in Stockholm’s densely populated Järva district. The NPA needed special authorisation to use the advanced audio surveillance equipment, and approval was required from Stockholm’s County Administrative Board (CAB/Länsstyrelse) for the project to proceed.

Järva was chosen for the pilot following extensive talks between Sweden’s leading homeland security agencies and the NPA.

The CAB had already given permission for the NPA to conduct wider-range video surveillance in a number of high-crime urban and suburban residential areas of greater Stockholm. The CAB also gave consent for the NPA to conceal new camera and audio surveillance equipment at public locations, making such equipment, including microphones, invisible to the public.

The project will see the “placement” of hundreds of high-sensitivity compact microphones in urban communities selected for the pilot.  

However, the authorisation given by the CAB includes important privacy limitations. For example, recordings generated by the audio equipment cannot be stored and the NPA is prohibited from using audio sensors that have the capacity to record conversations between individuals in public places.

Apart from supporting anti-terrorism activities, the scaled-up use of technology will also help the police authority to combat general crime during the ongoing reorganisation of Sweden’s law enforcement agencies. This revamp will result in more centralisation of police resources, which effectively means fewer police stations and street patrols.

Sweden’s next-generation policing will put more emphasis on enhancing mobility and response times to crime and public safety incidents. The enhanced surveillance technology will be used to both support a more cost-efficient policing system and compensate for the continuing closure of traditional walk-in police stations in urban and rural areas across the country. 

The Järva project is seen as the first step in the police reorganisation plan to expand audio-supported CCTV surveillance.

“Using this technology means we can quickly determine whether the sound of any gunfire detected comes from a machinegun or a handgun, for example,” said Söderström.