It’s no secret that ISIS has a strong presence on social media and has for a while; it is, after all, one of the main ways it attracts new recruits across the globe.

Due to Islamic State’s activity on social media, new initiatives have been created in order to curtail these efforts. One such initiative is the group called CtrlSec, an anonymous cohort on Twitter that works to report accounts connected with ISIS.

Twitter, itself, an online platform meant to reach large audiences with the greatest ease, faces crippling limitations in its attempt to wipe out those accounts which ISIS commands. This is largely due to concerns regarding free speech and the fact that there exists no particular catch phrase or hashtag that ISIS uses, which could be identified by an algorithm.

CtrlSec aims to lessen these limitations by trying to flag as many Islamic-State-affiliated accounts as it possibly can. And it seems to be helping – as of June 2016 it claimed to have flagged 147,000 accounts, 133,361 of which were suspended.

The leader of CtrlSec, who goes by the alias Mikro, says he spends 15-19 hours per day overseeing CtrlSec’s 25 volunteer flaggers who flag accounts 24/7.

“I saw ISIS as a growing threat to today’s society and decided I had to at least try and do something about it,” said Mikro in a recent interview with Krithika Varagur for the Huffington Post.  And thus, Mikro who is an unemployed web designer, decided to create CtrlSec to do what he could to help the situation.

CtrlSec operates by means of four linked Twitter accounts, which are used to send out scheduled Tweets several times an hour containing the names of ISIS-affiliated accounts; these names are then used by volunteers to flag the accounts en masse.

These accounts are typically found through existing ISIS-affiliated accounts as well as by obvious hastags like #IslamicState and the Arabic equivalents. There are no special shortcuts. Common sense and fluency in Arabic are the volunteers main tools.

Mikro also mentioned in the interview that Twitter is not interested in working with the group. In response to Mikro’s critiscism, a Twitter representative stated: “We condemn the use of Twitter to promote terrorism and the Twitter Rules make it clear that this type of behavior, or any violent threat, is not permitted on our service.” Adding however, that Twitter does not consult third-party lists like those compiled by CtrlSec, which they described as “wildly inaccurate.”

But while CtrlSec cannot count Twitter among its supporters, those who work in counter-terrorism and even former CIA General Petraeus have praised CtrlSec and groups like it for their work.

This proves that even regular citizens can help to combat strongly threatening forces like ISIS.

If you want to help Clarion Project in challenging radical Islam –please be in touch.

clarionproject.org

Recent on-the-ground reports from Northern Iraq, as well as statements from senior U.S. and Iraqi commanders, clearly telegraph the next phase of the ongoing campaign against the Islamic State: the battle to retake Mosul. As Iraqi forces, backed closely by U.S. advisors, prepare for the imminent clearance of the strategic city, they should heed the lessons learned from previous efforts to wrest control of Mosul from the Islamic State. When facing a major clearance operation, the group has often managed to go “underground” rather than fight a conventional military force head on. This age-old insurgent technique enabled the Islamic State’s predecessor, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), to surviveyears of robust, sustained U.S. and Iraqi counter-terrorism operations in Mosul from 2004 to 2009 and re-emerge when U.S. forces left the city in 2010.

As clearance operations get underway in Mosul, the Islamic State will likely replicate this approach, deactivating and dispersing its military units and reinforcing its intelligence, security, administrative, and financial groups. The coalition of Iraqi and U.S. forces must anticipate this adjustment, and prepare to execute a deliberate campaign targeting Islamic State “enabler” elements, which may operate just under the radar of coalition and Iraqi forces, but in plain sight of the all-important civilian population. If the coalition does not do this, the group could survive yet again – maintaining its stranglehold on Mosul through extortion, intimidation, and assassination only to resurface there once coalition forces shift their focus elsewhere.

The Coming Liberation?

Virtually every analyst and pundit agrees that retaking Mosul from the Islamic State is a necessary and important next step for the coalition of Iraqi-government backed forces, many of which are already positioned in areas east and south of the city, such as Qayyarah and Sharqat. However, much of the recent media coverage of the upcoming Mosul operation, in hyperbolic fashion, has characterized it as the pivotal battle against the Islamic State, despite the fact that the group continues to control considerable territory in Iraq and Syria.

More seasoned experts and national security policymakers understand that the upcoming clearance operation will in fact be only the first phase of a complex “clear, hold, and build” campaign that will play out over months or years. A consensus narrative has emerged from these experts that the initial “clearance” of Islamic State forces from Mosul willbe relatively easy, at least compared to the much more difficult task of establishing some semblance of enduring stability in the operation’s wake. Drawing on hard-won experience from the last decade plus in Iraq, many experts have emphasized the importance of reconstruction, political reconciliation, and reestablishing representative governance for long-term success.

However, before too quickly turning its attention to the necessary but complex, difficult, and time-consuming task of re-establishing governance in the city, the counter-ISIL coalition must identify, disrupt, and ultimately defeat the Islamic State’s enabler networks – which will continue operating in Mosul’s underground, even after the overt military presence of the organization is reduced. This will allow Iraqi and coalition partners to consolidate their initial gains, maintain pressure on the Islamic State and, over time, degrade its ability to self-finance. Only once the Islamic State’s underground network is fully defeated will there be a real chance for enduring security and stability in Mosul.

The Past is Prologue: Mosul, 2005-2010

In order to better anticipate how the Islamic State is likely to respond and adjust to the upcoming clearance operations in Mosul, one need look no further than the group’s predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which subsequently became ISI (hereafter referred to as “AQI/ISI” for purposes of clarity and simplicity). The Islamic State is a direct descendant of AQI/ISI, and shares many key characteristics with its predecessor, from ideology and religious philosophy to organizational structures and attack methodologies. Most significantly, many of the top leaders of the Islamic State, including the current leader of the group Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were senior leaders within AQI/ISI.

Careful study of the group and its past operations, especially in Mosul, offers immensely valuable insights for military planners and policymakers. Along with several colleagues, we recently undertook an in-depth analysis of AQI/ISI, publishing a RAND Report entitled Foundations of the Islamic State: Management, Money, and Terror in Iraq, 2005-2010. The report draws from more than 140 recently declassified documents to present a comprehensive examination of the organization, finances, territorial plans, bureaucracy and management, and finances of the Islamic State’s predecessors in Iraq. One of our most compelling findings was the critical role that AQI/ISI’s functional support groups played in the organization’s effectiveness and resilience. We were able to construct a clear blueprint for how AQI/ISI developed its extensive underground support network in Mosul, which proved critical in setting the conditions for the Islamic State’s rapid seizure of the city in June 2014. This same robust network, which functions similarly to a dominant local criminal gang, still thrives in Mosul and could enable the Islamic State to remain resilient despite the success of any upcoming clearance operations.

Based on our analysis of AQI/ISI’s past behavior, we urge analysts and policymakers to be cautious before declaring how quickly or easily coalition forces will “defeat” the Islamic State in Mosul, and elsewhere. The group has repeatedly proven its ability to morph from a “statelet,” with an overt military and governance capability, to a covert terrorist organization, operating underground to preserve its control and influence over the local population while minimizing losses to the group. In fact, a May 2016 speech by now-deceased senior Islamic State leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani foreshadowed this exact approach, harkening back to the group’s previous success in going underground.

Breaking Down the Underground

Drawing upon captured documents and media from AQI/ISI between 2005 and 2010, our team constructed a clear picture of how the group organized and operated across time and space in Iraq, and, in particular, of how they established control and influence over a city or region. This process always began with the establishment of a robust underground structure – comprising intelligence and security, extortion and assassination, sharia (Islamic law), administrative, and media groups – before ever establishing an overt military operational structure. By establishing this broad underground base supported by a robust set of functional groups, AQI/ISI was much better positioned to both exert and maintain control and influence in a particular area.

Mirroring the original organizational design outlined in the early days of al-Qaeda’s formation, AQI/ISI designed its structure as a hierarchy in which each level practiced considerable top-down control over subordinates who administered a bureaucratic organization with strict standard operating procedures. AQI/ISI, in late 2008, was a standard multidivisional hierarchy, commonly known as an “M-form,” in which a central management structure with functional bureaus is replicated at multiple lower geographic levels. This structure and organization resulted in a surprisingly bureaucratic and rigid operating model, almost all of which has been carried over to the successor Islamic State group.

The graphic above provides a snapshot of how AQI/ISI was organized in Mosul during 2007 and 2008, at the peak of the group’s power and influence. There were multiple functional emirs who, under the direction of an overall emir at the city level, were responsible for a diverse set of tasks and managed a series of geographically focused functional cells. In addition to the military groups, which were extremely active in conducting violent attacks at that time, there were also several other key functional groups including: 1) security, which also included intelligence cells, and was responsible for tracking and intimidating local security, political, and business leaders; 2) administrative, which often had responsibility for financial matters, and oversaw all logistics, recruiting, and personnel; 3) media, which conducted information operations and produced propaganda; and 4) sharia, which formed relationships with local religious leaders and provided religious justification for the group’s attacks.

AQI/ISI’s well-defined structure and organizing principles ultimately carried over to the group’s operations, which also tended to follow strict rules and procedures. This proves especially useful for analytical purposes, allowing planners to develop historically-based hypotheses for how the group will operate in the future. In one particularlydetailed strategy document, probably written in late 2007 or 2008, an AQI/ISI leader describes a plan for consolidating control over Husaybah, a city in Anbar province. The deliberate and sequential process outlined in this document closely mirrors the standard process that AQI/ISI used throughout countless cities in Iraq, both small and large, to establish control over an area:

• Infiltrate the city and surrounding areas and establish safe-houses, which will be occupied by more senior, experienced members of the group;
• Establish an intelligence network by recruiting local informants who will be managed by a set of trained AQI/ISI intelligence operatives. Conduct surveillance of important buildings and influential leaders, and develop a comprehensive intelligence picture of the city;
• Establish security groups that will conduct an intimidation and assassination campaign against government officials, police and military leaders, influential political and tribal leaders, and business owners;
• Establish extortion and other criminal revenue-generation processes, which enable the group to begin to self-finance;
• Develop administrative and financial groups that enable more robust command and control, logistics, and recruiting;
• Develop relationships with local religious leaders, and establish sharia groups to approve attacks, issue fatwas, and support recruitment;
• Establish media groups to conduct information operations and produce media content;
• Establish regional and specialized military cells to conduct violent attacks.

AQI/ISI successfully repeated this process time and time again as it established control over urban and rural areas throughout Iraq from 2005-2010. Based on extensive on-the-ground reporting from Mosul and other Islamic State-occupied cities, as well as careful analysis from leading experts and scholars, it’s clear that the Islamic State isfollowing this same blueprint today. In Mosul, the group has now had over two years since its initial seizure of the city to further reinforce these enabler groups.

Countering the Islamic State Underground

In anticipation of the impending coalition operations in Mosul, recent reports indicate that the group has already begun to revert underground, ramping up its security efforts through a campaign of intimidation and assassinations. Just last week, the Islamic State executed 56 residents of Mosul who were accused of fomenting rebellion ahead of the looming offensive. The coalition should not mistake the Islamic State’s reversion from overt semi-state to covert terrorist network, which is a deliberate strategic choice, for any sort of lasting defeat of the group. Instead, the coalition should press its initial military gains and launch a comprehensive effort to destroy the Islamic State’s entrenched and resilient underground enabler network. To ensure the success of this critical effort, the anti-Islamic State coalition should do the following.

Success is dependent on achieving a granular understanding of the Islamic State’s underground network and “standard operating procedures,” with a particular emphasis on outlining the key leaders and operatives of the group’s intelligence, security, and finance components. Coalition planners should carefully study how the Islamic State’s predecessor reestablished its security, intelligence, and extortion infrastructure in Mosul after the U.S. withdrawal from the city in 2010. In doing so, they can draw upon a fairly extensive set of scholarly analyses of AQI/ISI, including our recent report, as well as what is likely a rich array of classified documents and analyses from the last decade of operations against the group. Without taking the time to carefully construct a full picture of the Islamic State’s network throughout Mosul and wargame the group’s likely courses of action after the initial defeat of its military groups, the coalition risks missing a major opportunity to deliver a lasting defeat.

Armed with a comprehensive understanding of how the Islamic State will likely look to reassert control over the city and a clear picture of the key leaders of each of these enabler groups, the coalition should formulate and execute an effective targeting campaign. Coalition planners and policymakers should build upon the lessons learned from previous successful efforts against AQI/ISI. In particular, the U.S.-led coalition’s expertly orchestrated leadership targeting campaign against AQI/ISI from 2007-2009 was successful because it prioritized the group’s enabler elements and focused on striking at the network layer level, rather than the individual level. Although some level of debate and disagreement remains among scholars and analysts, there is a growing body of academic research that has validated the effectiveness of leadership targeting, especially when orchestrated in a manner that eliminates both mid- and high-level leaders from across multiple functional wings of the group in rapid succession. This approach is neither fast nor simple, relying on accurate and timely intelligence as well as extensive counterterrorism strike resources, but is necessary to achieve enduring effects.

In parallel, the counter-ISIL coalition should stand up a specialized intelligence and enforcement group focused exclusively on detecting and disrupting the group’s illicit financial activities, such as extortion, illegal taxation, and black market sales of oil and other valuable resources. This effort will be complementary to the leadership targeting effort, but requires an inherently different approach and specialty training. The work of this group more closely parallels traditional detective work, much like what the FBI or customs enforcement agencies do on a daily basis to disrupt criminal gangs and drug traffickers. The coalition should build upon the previously successful model of the joint, interagency “threat finance cells” that were created in Iraq and Afghanistan, expanding them to more effectively tie in local partners who can provide valuable intelligence and on-the-ground resources to disrupt the Islamic State’s finance activities. Finding reliable, high-quality local partners to execute these activities can be difficult and uneven, but will be critical for success. If effectively executed and synchronized with leadership targeting efforts, this capability could undercut the Islamic State’s vital capability to self-finance.

Finally, the coalition should support efforts not only to build capacity, but also trust in local political and law enforcement institutions.The social and political landscape in Mosul is complex and likely to be contentious long after the end of the Islamic State. The capacity and credibility of outsiders to forge local solutions is limited. Both the military’s advisory mission and the U.S. Embassy’s efforts to build and maintain strong diplomatic relations at all levels of government will require an earnest, long-term, and well-resourced American commitment.

The clearance of Mosul – the Islamic State’s declared capital in Iraq, and the group’s long-time center of gravity – is vital for the ultimate defeat of the group. Even more important, however, will be what comes next. While policymakers should dedicate significant energy and resources to re-establishing governance and rebuilding the city’s shattered infrastructure and economy, the counter-ISIL coalition must first consolidate and fully exploit its initial military gains. The coalition cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the last decade, allowing the group to survive under the radar only to re-establish influence and control. Careful analysis of the Islamic State’s previous strategic adaptations should inform a comprehensive coalition strategy to destroy the Islamic State’s robust underground enabler networks. As we have learned, this approach will not be easy or quick, but it will be necessary for long-term success against the group.

warontherocks.com/

At least four mid-level leaders of the banned New Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh militant faction, the group behind the July 1 Dhaka terror attack, have sneaked into India, Bangladesh police said.

The police, after raiding different places to arrest leaders and supporters of New JMB group, said that at least four out of 12 mid-level JMB leaders have sneaked into India while others remain out of their radar. The Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh follows the ideology of the Islamic State.

‘They are now staying in India’

“Four of them left the country after the Gulshan attack and have now been staying in India,” a high official of the police’s Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit, requesting anonymity, confirmed to the Dhaka Tribune.

Police also said the New JMB leaders have been recruiting fresh members amid a police crackdown that began after the July 1 Gulshan cafe attack.

Law enforcers have killed over three dozens of New JMB members including its military and operations chief Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, mastermind of the Dhaka cafe attack, and his close associates since the Holey Artisan Bakery attack that claimed the lives of at least 24 persons, mostly foreigners.

Identities of the 12 mid-level leaders, including a woman, were found after interrogating several arrested members of the group and examining the laptop of Tamim Chowdhury recovered from his den in Narayanganj, police said.

The four who have fled to India are identified as Sohel Mahfuz alias Hatkata Mahfuz, Ripon, Khalid and so-called “big brother” Junayed Hasan Khan.

The others who are believed to be in Bangladesh include Iqbal, Manik, Mamun, Azadul Kabiraz, Badal and female wing leader Jebunnahar Shila.

Apart from these 12 leaders, the investigators are looking for three top-tier leaders — Gulshan attack coordinator Nurul Islam Marjan, IT wing in-charge Basharuzzaman alias Abul Bashar alias Chocolate and trainer Jahangir alias Rajib Gandhi.

Whither the chief?

However, the investigators have not been able to trace the chief of the New JMB, who is identified as Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif by the IS.

The matter of fresh recruitment came to light after the latest raid on a New JMB den at Patartek of Gazipur last week. Some of the seven militants killed during the raid were recruited after the Gulshan attack, police added.

Monirul Islam, chief of the CTTC unit, said that they had already taken different initiatives to stop New JMB’s recruitment, “but it cannot be done by the police alone. The relatives also need to be aware of the changing behaviour of their near ones,” the Dhaka Tribune quoted him as saying.

Another high official of the CTTC unit said that they had not been able to arrest the top leaders of New JMB since they do not use any technological devices. “So we have to work manually — interrogating arrestees and observing a certain area for a long time.”

Sanowar Hossain, additional deputy commissioner of the CTTC unit, suspects that after the death of Tamim in Narayanganj and Faridul Islam alias Akash in Patartek raids, the New JMB’s operations wing leadership would now go to Marjan, a former student of Chittagong University linked to Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh.

thehindu.com

The Islamic State (IS), on an average, uploads four terror-related videos every 30 minutes on the Internet to radicalise youths, anti-terror agencies have observed. Sources said IS influence has spread in nearly 13 states in the country, including Maharashtra, where the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has succeeded in keeping a close watch on suspicious online activities and shutting them down.

Modus operandi
A senior ATS officer told mid-day that this year the state ATS has managed to block 356 video clips and several terror-related articles, mostly linked to the IS, with the help of computer emergency response teams. “This was done in order to prevent youths getting influenced by the IS’s extremists views,” the officer added. Last year, the agency had blocked 94 terror-related websites.

Most videos are of provoking speeches by their senior leaders, handlers and hardliners. A core team of IS’s tech experts works 24×7 on this. It identifies target cities in various countries, where excess penetration would yield result.

The officer said, “First, the terror elements randomly upload videos on popular social networking sites. They then prepare a list of those netizens who ‘like’ the links. By the time anti-terror agencies identify and block these, IS’s online soldiers already have a list of potential victims, who are then contacted individually via different online platforms, which are unlikely to show on our radar, making it more challenging for us.”

Tracking terror
According to the ATS, members of the recently busted Parbhani group of IS foot soldiers were using Twitter, Telegram, Skype and Chatsecure and were radicalised by the group’s Syria-based handler Farooq.

Last December, an IS e-book ‘Muslim Gangs E-book 1’ had become a major cause for concern for Indian intelligence agencies. The book was a training manual for potential recruits. It taught how to make different types of bombs.

Anti-terror agencies from Hyderabad, Delhi and southern states are keeping a strict watch on suspicious online elements.

ndtv.com

Before Ahmad Khan Rahami planted bombs in New York and New Jersey, he bought bomb-making materials on eBay, linked to jihad-related videos from his public social-media account and was looked into by law enforcement agents, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

If only the authorities had connected the dots.

That challenge — mining billions of bits of information and crunching the data to find crucial clues — is behind a push by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies to harness “big data” to predict crimes, terrorist acts and social upheaval before they happen. The market for such “predictive analytics” technology is estimated to reach $9.2 billion by 2020, up from $3 billion in 2015, according to research firm MarketsandMarkets.

It’s the stuff of a science-fiction movie like “Minority Report,” in which Tom Cruise played a Washington cop who used technology to arrest people before they carried out crimes. It’s also a red flag for privacy advocates already fighting U.S. spy programs exposed by Edward Snowden and the FBI’s demands that Apple Inc. help it hack into encrypted mobile phones.

The idea is to make sense of the vast and disparate streams of data from sources including social media, GPS devices, video feeds from street cameras and license-plate readers, travel and credit-card records and the news media, as well as government and propriety systems.

‘Fundamental Fuel’

“Data is going to be the fundamental fuel for national security in this century,” William Roper, director of the Defense Department’s strategic capabilities office, said at a conference in Washington last month.

For the first time, the White House released a strategic plan on Wednesday to advance research and development of artificial intelligence technology, including to predict incidents that may be dangerous to public safety.

Weeks before Rahami allegedly carried out the attacks in September, he bought circuit boards, electric igniters and ball bearings — all of which are known bomb-making materials, according to charging documents from the FBI.

In previous years, he was flagged by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the FBI after he made trips to Pakistan and after his father told police he was a terrorist, before recanting the remark.

Previous Story: FBI Check Found No Terrorist Ties in ’14

Law enforcement agents could have been tipped off that Rahami was moving toward an attack had all of those data points been culled together in one place, said Mark Testoni, chief executive officer and president of SAP National Security Services Inc., a U.S.-based subsidiary of German software company SAP SE.

“This is a big data world now,” said Testoni. He said his company has developed a computer platform for doing predictive analytics that is being used in a limited way by a Defense Department agency and by a national security agency. He declined to name the government customers or specify what they are doing.

The technology to predict events is only in its infancy, Testoni said. National security and law enforcement agencies also have different rules when it comes to obtaining and using data, meaning there are walls between what can be accessed and shared, he said. U.S. law enforcement agencies, for example, need a court warrant to access most data.

Big Brother

Privacy advocates express concern about the “Big Brother” implications of such massive data-gathering, calling for more information and public debate about how predictive technology will be used.

“There’s often very little transparency into what’s being brought into the systems or how it’s being crunched and used,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, senior counsel to the National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “That also makes it very hard to go back and challenge information that might be incorrect.”

Computer algorithms also fail to understand the context of data, such as whether someone commenting on social media is joking or serious, Levinson-Waldman said.

Testoni’s company and others such as Intel Corp. and PredPol Inc. are among a handful of firms pioneering the use of predictive analytics and artificial intelligence for clients from local police departments to U.S. national security agencies.

More than 60 local police departments in the U.S. have started making use of a service sold by PredPol, which calls itself “The Predictive Policing Company,” to forecast where crimes might occur based on past patterns, said co-founder Jeff Brantingham.

What, Where, When

Its system, developed in collaboration with the Los Angeles Police Department, uses only three types of data: what type of crime occurred, when and where, Brantingham said.

Then, a software algorithm generates the probability of crime occurring in different locations, presented as 500-foot-by-500-foot squares on a computer display or a printed map. With that insight, police departments then can make decisions about how best to apply their resources, such as sending cops to a high-risk area, or which security cameras to monitor, Brantingham said.

PrePol’s system doesn’t make predictions about who will commit a crime, so it stops short of a system that might identify a terrorist in the making.

“Interdicting places is, by and large, an approach that is more in line with protecting civil liberties than interdicting people,” Brantingham said.

Even with such limits, privacy and civil liberties groups oppose the use of predicting policing technology as a threat to the Constitution’s promises of equal protection and due process.

‘Fortune-Teller Policing’

“This is fortune-teller policing that uses deeply flawed and biased data and relies on vendors that shroud their products in secrecy,” Wade Henderson, president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Instead of using predictive technology to correct dysfunctional law enforcement, departments are using these tools to supercharge discrimination and exacerbate the worst problems in our criminal justice system.”

eBay, Amazon

Vast databases that companies have created for online commerce and communications could help law enforcement and national security agencies build predictive systems if they are allowed to tap into them. Technology companies have terms of service that set out how much personal information can be kept and sold to outside companies such as advertisers, and most resist handing over such data to the government unless a court orders them to do so.

Predictive analytics are already being used by companies like eBay Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Netflix Inc. to crunch their users’ Internet activity to forecast what they might be interested in. Companies like Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. have access to over a billion social-media accounts. The storehouse of data on Americans will only grow with digital feeds from Internet-connected appliances and wearable devices.

Social media, in particular, is a valuable tool in tracking potential terrorist attacks, said Eric Feinberg, founding member of the Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center, which is a private company. His firm has patented technology that can scan for hashtags across different social media platforms and in different languages for communications that indicate terrorist planning.

“Our software is about pattern analysis,” Feinberg said. “We focus on the communications stream.”

‘Open Source Indicators’

The U.S. government is working on initial efforts to gain insight into global social and political trends.

A program under the intelligence community’s research arm called Mercury seeks to develop methods for continuous and automated analysis of intercepted electronic communications “in order to anticipate and/or detect political crises, disease outbreaks, terrorist activity and military actions,” said Charles Carithers, spokesman for the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.

The agency also previously funded the Open Source Indicators program, which “developed methods for continuous, automated analysis of publicly available data in order to anticipate and/or detect significant societal events,” such as mass violence and riots, mass migrations, disease outbreaks and economic instability, Carithers said.

CIA Forecasts

The CIA draws a distinction between using technology to anticipate events, versus predict them. The agency is using sophisticated algorithms and advanced analytics, along with publicly available data, to forecast events. The initial coverage focuses on the Middle East and Latin America.

“We have, in some instances, been able to improve our forecast to the point of being able to anticipate the development of social unrest and societal instability to within three to five days out,” said Andrew Hallman, the agency’s deputy director for digital innovation.

In its annual report in June, the Defense Science Board said, “Imagine if national leaders had sufficient time to act in emerging regional hot spots to safeguard U.S. interests using interpretation of massive data including social media and rapidly generate strategic options.”

“Such a capability may soon be achievable,” the board said. “Massive data sets are increasingly abundant and could contain predictive clues — especially social media and open-source intelligence.”

Poindexter’s Legacy

If U.S. intelligence agencies develop an advanced system to predict terrorist acts they might call it “Total Information Awareness.” Except that name has already been used, with unhappy results.

Retired Admiral John Poindexter created the “Total Information Awareness” program for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2002 to find and monitor terrorists and other national security threats using data and technology.

The program became so controversial, especially over concerns that privacy rights would be violated, that Congress canceled funding for Poindexter’s office in 2003.

Having been there and done that, Poindexter now says predicting terrorism is possible but would require a lot of data, such as banking information, analysis of social media, travel records and classified material.

The system also has to include strong privacy protections that the public can review, said Poindexter, who said he was working on such a “privacy protection application” when his program was canceled.

“You have to develop public trust in the way this is going to work,” said Poindexter, who continued developing the technology after leaving government through Saffron Technology Inc., a cognitive computing company that Intel bought in 2015 for an undisclosed price. Intel declined to comment.

“The government’s priorities should be to solve the privacy issue and start ingesting massive amounts of data into memory bases,” Poindexter said. “You have to get the public on board with the idea that we can collect and search information on terrorist planning that doesn’t have an adverse impact on innocent people.”

bloomberg.com

A store-bought ISIS drone packed with explosives that killed two Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq this month is raising fears the terror group could attack U.S. troops there and American civilians here at home, with lone wolves launching airborne IEDs to bypass security checkpoints and deliver deadly blasts to crowded events.

“The truth is it’s just a matter of time before someone figures this out,” former Boston police Commissioner Edward F. Davis told the Herald. “The bottom line with these things are as the drones get more sophisticated and more powerful, it’s all about payload.

“The danger is real, and there are companies that are working on anti-drone strategies, but they aren’t fully baked yet,” said Davis, who noted Boston police were involved in the 2011 case of an Ashland jihadi-wannabe who planned to bomb the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol with remote-controlled planes.

RAND Corp. terror analyst Colin Clarke said weaponized drones, which have also been used by the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, are the “tip of the iceberg” for where terror groups can go with the latest technology.

“Why should a pizza be delivered by a drone, but not a bomb?” Clarke said.

“These guys have the time and they have the patience and they, frankly, have the know-how to put together some pretty lethal improvised weaponry,” Clarke said. “If anything, I’m surprised it took them so long to do it.”

Military officials yesterday confirmed that an ISIS bomb-laden drone in northern Iraq blew up earlier this month after Kurdish fighters had shot it out of the sky and were taking it back to camp for inspection.

U.S. military spokesman Col. John Dorrian said ISIS surveillance drones are nothing new — many have been shot down by American forces and none has injured or killed a U.S. soldier.

Dorrian said the drone IED attack is far from an “existential threat” to U.S. forces or anything with “strategic impact,” and he stressed the military is moving more anti-drone equipment into the area.

The drone is the “natural evolution of terror attacks,” said Northeastern University terrorism expert Max Abrahms.

“There’s a growing threat that the terrorists are going to be lethal from the sky and this is a natural evolution of where we are headed technologically in the world,” Abrahms said. “I can imagine, especially in cases where we try to harden soft targets like stadiums, where people instead of going through an X-ray machine can just fly in there.”

bostonherald.com

The Islamic State group’s latest mission? Launching a game show to test its members’ grasp of the Quran.

The militant organization recently began passing out pamphlets about the contest, which will be modeled after British music competition “The X-Factor” and evaluate followers’ Quran chops, the Daily Star reported exclusively Tuesday. Whoever can remember the most passages from the holy text will be declared the winner and, as a prize, receive about $470.

But at least one security source was wary of the whole setup.

“I would be extremely reluctant to enter any kind of competition under ISIS,” the anonymous official told the Star. “The winner may be lauded as a religious expert, but I would not like to speculate on what may happen to anyone whose knowledge of the Quran was found to be less than exemplary.”

Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time “The X-Factor” has been linked to ISIS. The TV show has come up in a number of satirical stories about the militant group. The fighters have also been taking over widely used hashtags — like those about “The X-Factor” — as a way to sneakily promote their activities on social media, according to the Mirror.

Lauren Murray, a one-time contestant on “The X-Factor,” told the Star last year that people on the internet became so wrapped up in the game that they threatened her with ISIS violence. “People are saying ‘I hope ISIS come to your house and shoot you in the head. I hope you die’,” she said at the time.

ISIS has organized events like the game show before. This past summer, the extremists put on an Olympics-style tournament for youth, the Sun reported. Boys played tug-of-war and musical chairs.

The alleged “X-Factor” imitation could be connected to the reported lack of Islam knowledge most ISIS recruits have upon joining the group. Leaked documents reviewed by the Associated Press in August showed that, when people come to ISIS, they’re asked to rate how well they know the religion. About 70 percent said they knew just the essentials. At least two recruits bought books like “Islam for Dummies” online before heading to Syria, the AP reported.

Just how integral the Quran itself is to daily ISIS life is unclear. Didier Francois, a journalist who was held captive by fighters for months, told CNN discussions centered not around religion but politics.

“It was more hammering what they were believing than teaching us about the Quran. Because it has nothing to do with the Quran,” Francois said last year. “We didn’t even have the Quran; they didn’t want even to give us a Quran.”

ibtimes.com

Daesh’s propaganda machine, largely credited with effectively attracting fresh recruits, has been weakened by military setbacks in Iraq and Syria, a US study said Tuesday.

The jihadist group’s photo and video dissemination has been cut drastically year over year, research by the West Point military academy’s Combating Terrorism Center revealed.

While 700 pieces of media were produced by Daesh in August of 2015, numbers began declining late last year, with only 200 put out during the same month in 2016, the researchers said.

“It is clear that the organization has been forced to cut back these activities in response to the increasing amount of counterterrorism pressure brought to bear against the organization,” said the study.

It also noted there were fewer images depicting a well-running jihadist “caliphate” in the form of schools, libraries, police and public services.

“This decline suggests that the group is struggling to maintain the outward appearance of a functioning state,” the study said.

Meanwhile, videos showing the execution of spies have increased significantly, demonstrating either “paranoia” amid increasing pressure or challenges from within that are causing a public display of brutality.

The view that Daesh’s online outreach is weakening is shared by a number of experts in the field, said JM Berger, a US specialist known for his studies on jihadists’ Twitter presence.

Daesh’s propaganda arm has been decimated by coalition strikes and has found a tough time amid a crackdown by social networks, he said.

“They have less media available now, it is more difficult to find, and the content itself is considerably less optimistic and less varied,” he told AFP.

“All of this is likely to continue to depress their recruitment efforts, although it doesn’t completely mitigate the problem,” he said.

tolonews.com

The risk of a terrorist attack against a nuclear power plant or militants eventually making a “dirty bomb” must be taken very seriously, the head of the UN’s atomic watchdog has warned, noting a growing threat of cyberattacks which have caused “disruptions” in the past.

In one of the most worrisome incidents which took place about four years ago, an individual tried to smuggle a small amount of highly enriched uranium to build a so-called “dirty bomb,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Yukiya Amano revealed to Reuters without mentioning details or the location of the incident.

Speaking in Germany, Amano noted that terrorist groups, such as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), pose a serious threat to nuclear power stations.

Furthermore, cyberterrorism against nuclear power installations has become a real threat nowadays, Amano said, revealing that at least one cyberattack disrupted a nuclear power plant in the last three years.

“This is not an imaginary risk,” Amano told Reuters and a German newspaper. “This issue of cyberattacks on nuclear-related facilities or activities should be taken very seriously. We never know if we know everything or if it’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Without providing any more details about the incident, Amano said the cyberattack had caused “some disruption” at the plant. The facility in question did not have to shut down its operations, but was forced to take “some precautionary measures.”

“This actually happened and it caused some problems,” he said.

This is not the first time that UN and world leaders have warned that terrorists might target nuclear facilities or aim to obtain radioactive material to make a “dirty bomb.”

The new nuclear threat dimension gained major traction after Belgian media reported that suicide bombers involved in the Brussels attack spree on March 22 originally planned to attack a nuclear installation. It was also reported that IS had been using a high-tech lab in Mosul for building bombs and chemical weapons and training recruits in bomb-making since its capture in 2014.

While the theft of nuclear material has occurred over the last two decades, the rise of international terrorism increases the chances of its deployment in a “dirty bomb.”

“The fact there has never been a major terrorist attack involving radioactive material does not mean it could not happen,”Amano warned earlier.

According to the IAEA Incident and Trafficking Database (ITDB) of nuclear material, from 1995-2015, a total of 2,889 incidents have been confirmed by the watchdog.

“Of these 2,889 confirmed incidents, 454 incidents involved unauthorized possession and related criminal activities, 762 incidents involved reported theft or loss and 1,622 incidents involved other unauthorized activities and events,” IAEA said.

Incidents involving highly enriched uranium were registered on 13 occasions, plutonium on three, and plutonium-beryllium neutron sources on five occasions.

“A small number of these incidents involved seizures of kilogram quantities of potentially weapons-usable nuclear material, but the majority involved gram quantities. In some of these cases, there were indications that the seized material was a sample from a larger unsecured stockpile,” the watchdog noted.

rt.com

In a leaked email sent on August 17, 2014 by Hillary Clinton to her current campaign manager, John Podesta, who back then was counselor to Barack Obama, she admitted that Qatar and Saudi Arabia “are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

The email, which was sent just days after the US launched it “temporary” air campaign in Syria, which has now extended over two years, represents an eight-point plan laying out ideas how to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Clinton’s email said that the United States should engage in “military operations against these very irregular but determined forces” by “making proper use of clandestine/special operations resources, in coordination with airpower, and established local allies” such as Kurdish forces.

Having confirmed the role of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Hillary then states that “we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia” and recommends to step up US commitment to the Kurdish Regional Government or KRG. “The Qataris and Saudis will be put in a position of balancing policy between their ongoing competition to dominate the Sunni world and the consequences of serious U.S. pressure.  By the same token, the threat of similar, realistic U.S. operations will serve to assist moderate forces in Libya, Lebanon, and even Jordan, where insurgents are increasingly fascinated by the ISIL success in Iraq.”

Just as notable was Hillary’s warning that ISIS will spread should the US not forecefully engage the terrorist organization to halt its spread: “if we do not take the changes needed to make our security policy in the region more realistic, there is a real danger of ISIL veterans moving on to other countries to facilitate operations by Islamist forces.  This is already happening in Libya and Egypt, where fighters are returning from Syria to work with local forces. ISIL is only the latest and most violent example of this process.  If we don’t act to defeat them in Iraq something even more violent and dangerous will develop.  Successful military operations against these very irregular but determined forces can only be accomplished by making proper use of clandestine/special operations resources, in coordination with airpower, and established local allies. There is, unfortunately, a narrow window of opportunity on this issue, as we need to act before an ISIL state becomes better organized and reaches into Lebanon and Jordan.”

Considering that the ISIS state has already reached deep inside Europe, one wonders why the US is more fixated on halting the Russian encroachment, and defense of the Assad government, in Syria than pursuing its stated course.

Despite reports that the US is seeking to probe the actions of its mid-east ally, so far there has been no change in US posture and earlier today US officials confirmed there has been no change to US military/logistical support to Saudis after the White HOuse announced an “immediate review.”

As a reminder, Qatar has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and Saudi Arabia has donated upwards of $25 million dollars to the Foundation.

zerohedge.com