Terrorism“Big picture” platforms boost fight against online terror activity

The fight against terrorism-related content and illegal financing online is speeding up thanks to new platforms that join up different internet-scouring technologies to create a comprehensive picture of terrorist activity.

The idea is that when an online tool discovers a fragment of information it can be added to a constellation of millions of others - revealing links that might otherwise have gone undetected or taken much longer to uncover.

In 2017 legislation, the EU said that serious crimes, such as attacks on a person’s life, or the threat to commit them, can qualify as a terrorist offence if they have the goal of intimidating a population or destroying a country’s economic, political or social structures.

Terror groups ranging from the Islamic State to right-wing supremacist organizations use digital media to disseminate propaganda, recruit and train people, raise funds and move money around, and communicate with each other.

In recent years, such content has grown in “velocity, volume and variety” according to Professor Babak Akhgar, director of the Centre of Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence and Organized Crime Research at Sheffield Hallam University, UK.

Appearing in multiple languages and media forms, this content penetrates not just the easily accessible surface web but also the deep web - accessible to an ordinary person but not to a search bot, for example, password-protected sites - and the deliberately anonymized and concealed dark web, which can only be accessed by using special software.

With the rise in this material online, law enforcement agencies are looking for ways to trawl through it more efficiently, says Jonathan Middleton, acting head of international programs at the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

According to him, agencies currently tend to use different tools in isolation, and therefore may miss the connections between pieces of information. “They might use one tool to do a web search, for example, and another to monitor online social media,” he said.

Researchers with a project called DANTE are now combining various tools into a single platform, to automate the tracking of money flows, and dig out propaganda and training materials.

Fundraising