Most of the research aimed at counterterrorism, fraud detection, or other forensic applications assumes that this is a specialized application domain for mainstream knowledge discovery. Unfortunately, knowledge discovery changes completely when the datasets being used have been manipulated in order to conceal some underlying activity. Knowledge Dis

Predictive analytics and data mining technologies and techniques are increasingly being used by the intelligence, counterterrorism, national security and law enforcement communities as part of standard operating procedures. Used appropriately by trained analysts, this technology can do much to unearth patterns in fraud and financial computer crimes, as well as with regard to suspicious activities. Written by a known expert, this work helps agencies become familiar with advanced data mining and provides trainees with a manual covering the use of data mining in operational and investigative procedures. Building on concepts from the author’s previously published work, this volume offers a look into specific predictive analytic techniques, fully explaining how the techniques can be used to combat criminal activity and terrorism. To reinforce the training, it discusses detailed cases in which analysis was used to research and uncover criminal activity and events. The author examines many real-world issues including the debate over security concerns versus legal and privacy issues.

Police officers on the beat, officers on patrol, all cops - local, state, tribal and federal, 750,000 strong - doing what they do every day are the first and most effective line of defense against terrorist acts committed in the Homeland. This manual is designed to overcome the failure of our national counter-terrorist strategy to better utilize local cops in homeland security by providing essential and practical knowledge local officers can use to identify terrorist precursor activities and more effectively interdict and prevent terrorist attacks from occurring. The goal is to acquaint officers with proactive “first preventer” knowledge and tactics so they can make police counterterrorism an integral part of their duties. Numerous case studies flesh out concepts such as terrorism, homeland security, terrorist threats posed by different terror groups, police counterterrorism intelligence, lone wolf terrorism, behavioral indicators of Islamist radicalization, terrorist tradecraft, terrorism indicators and warning signs, the terrorist attack cycle, terrorist attack tactics such as sniping, weapons of mass destruction, arson, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), suicide bombing tactics and surveillance detection techniques. This manual is an excellent source of basic to intermediate training for intelligence analysts, members of Joint Terrorism Task Forces, criminal intelligence investigators, and all police officers.

This book analyses the usefulness of terrorist profiling utilised by law enforcement officers as a pre-emptive means to assist them in the detection, prevention and deterrence of terrorism and/or its preparatory activities. It explores two main themes arising from the phenomenon of terrorist profiling: the lawfulness of terrorist profiling and the utility of profiling. These two themes are explored in three separate parts. Firstly, the book begins by drawing upon human rights concerns arising from the use of terrorist profiling by law enforcement officers. Secondly, an analytical framework capable of making determinations on the usefulness of terrorist profiling. This framework develops a profiling spectrum that ranges from formal and informal manifestations of terrorist profiling that forms the basis for evaluating its usefulness. Finally, the book presents an examination of various manifestations of terrorist profiling by separating the analysis of the ‘construction’ of profiles on the one hand, from their ‘application,’ on the other, so as to be able to identify and examine profiling’s usefulness as a technique to assist law enforcement officers make predictions about likely offender characteristics. This book ultimately concludes that terrorist profiling should only be conducted by undertaking a systematic assessment of the construction of profiles separate from the application of profiles whilst simultaneously taking into account fundamental human rights concerns with the practice of terrorist profiling. The work will be an essential resource for academics, law enforcement officers and lawyers in the disciplines of law, criminology, human rights, criminal justice and policing. As the book engages with terrorist profiling, it will also be of interest to those engaged in the psychology of terrorism.

Modern terrorist networks pose an unprecedented threat to international security. The question of how to neutralize that threat is complicated radically by their fluid, non-hierarchical structures, religious and ideological motivations, and predominantly non-territorial objectives. Governments and militaries are crafting new policies and doctrines to combat terror, but they desperately need new technologies to make these efforts effective. This book collects a wide range of the most current computational research that addresses critical issues for countering terrorism, including: Finding, summarizing, and evaluating relevant information from large and changing data stores; Simulating and predicting enemy acts and outcomes; and Producing actionable intelligence by finding meaningful patterns hidden in huge amounts of noisy data. The book’s four sections describe current research on discovering relevant information buried in vast amounts of unstructured data; extracting meaningful information from digitized documents in multiple languages; analyzing graphs and networks to shed light on adversaries’ goals and intentions; and developing software systems that enable analysts to model, simulate, and predict the effects of real-world conflicts. The research described in this book is invaluable reading for governmental decision-makers designing new policies to counter terrorist threats, for members of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities devising counterterrorism strategies, and for researchers developing more effective methods for knowledge discovery in complicated and diverse datasets.

In the past eight years, there has been a massive increase in government spending on counterterrorism intervention development and implementation. Given this increase, there are two evidence-based policy questions that are important to address: Is there evidence that any of these programs are effective – in other words, can they be shown to be linked to reducing terrorism, terrorist recruiting, or to improving the response and management of terrorist events? Do these interventions have secondary or collateral effects that may be costly, harmful, illegal, beneficial, or otherwise? As Lum and Kennedy discovered in an evaluation research on counterterrorism interventions, only a minuscule number of empirical studies of terrorism exist and there is an almost complete absence of evaluation research on counter-terrorism strategies. This is startling given the enormous increases in the development and use of counter-terrorism programs, as well as spending on counter-terrorism activity. Even more disconcerting was the nature of the evaluations we did find; some programs were shown to either have no discernible effect on terrorism or lead to increases in terrorism. The emphasis of the need for empirical research in evaluating interventions and informing policy cannot be overstated, and is the primary goal of Evidence-Based Counterterrorism Policy.