ISIS in America: A Sociohistorical Analysis

During the summer of 2014, the terrorist organization Islamic State (commonly referred to as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) garnered international attention after its unprecedented territorial acquisitions and violence in the Middle East. Today, ISIS vies with al-Qaeda for leadership of the global Islamic Extremist movement and has extended its violence all over the world, including the United States. U.S. based supporters generally choose to engage with the ideology in one of three categories: as a foreign fighter, domestic plotter, or domestic non-plotter. Despite this threat, there is very little quantitative research concerning U.S. ISIS supporters and the incidents they plan. Utilizing data from the American Terrorism Study (ATS), the current study compares ISIS perpetrators across the three support type categories, as well as ISIS and al-Qaeda and Associated Movements (AQAM) affiliated persons and incidents in the United States. I conducted Chi Square and Conjunctive Analysis of Case Configurations to determine significant differences. The analysis indicated significant difference across ISIS support types with regard to gender and age of the individuals, and suggested common patterns in the types of individuals who choose to leave the U.S. or stay and engage in violence. Additional analysis indicated significant differences in the residency status and race between ISIS and AQAM perpetrators. Finally, results showed that, although ISIS and AQAM incidents have different configurations concerning targets, weapons, and group size, their success rates are relatively the same. In conclusion, there are important differences between ISIS and AQAM affiliated persons and incidents that may merit considering them as separate entities rather than together under the umbrella of Islamic Extremist

The ISIS Project: Real Experience with a Fault Tolerant Programming System

The ISIS project has developed a distributed programming toolkit and a collection of higher level applications based on these tools. ISIS is now in use at more than 300 locations world-wise. The lessons (and surprises) gained from this experience with the real world are discussed

The ISIS project: Fault-tolerance in large distributed systems

The semi-annual status report covers activities of the ISIS project during the second half of 1989. The project had several independent objectives: (1) At the level of the ISIS Toolkit, ISIS release V2.0 was completed, containing bypass communication protocols. Performance of the system is greatly enhanced by this change, but the initial software release is limited in some respects. (2) The Meta project focused on the definition of the Lomita programming language for specifying rules that monitor sensors for conditions of interest and triggering appropriate reactions. This design was completed, and implementation of Lomita is underway on the Meta 2.0 platform. (3) The Deceit file system effort completed a prototype. It is planned to make Deceit available for use in two hospital information systems. (4) A long-haul communication subsystem project was completed and can be used as part of ISIS. This effort resulted in tools for linking ISIS systems on different LANs together over long-haul communications lines. (5) Magic Lantern, a graphical tool for building application monitoring and control interfaces, is included as part of the general ISIS releases

Fast casual multicast

A new protocol is presented that efficiently implements a reliable, causally ordered multicast primitive and is easily extended into a totally ordered one. Intended for use in the ISIS toolkit, it offers a way to bypass the most costly aspects of ISIS while benefiting from virtual synchrony. The facility scales with bounded overhead. Measured speedups of more than an order of magnitude were obtained when the protocol was implemented within ISIS. One conclusion is that systems such as ISIS can achieve performance competitive with the best existing multicast facilities--a finding contradicting the widespread concern that fault-tolerance may be unacceptably costly

The ISIS Twitter census: defining and describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter

Presents a demographic snapshot of ISIS supporters on Twitter by analysing a sample of 20,000 ISIS-supporting Twitter accounts, mapping the locations, preferred languages, and the number and type of followers of these accounts. Overview Although much ink has been spilled on ISIS’s activity on Twitter, very basic questions about the group’s social media strategy remain unanswered. In a new analysis paper, J.M. Berger and Jonathon Morgan answer fundamental questions about how many Twitter users support ISIS, who and where they are, and how they participate in its highly organized online activities. Previous analyses of ISIS’s Twitter reach have relied on limited segments of the overall ISIS social network. The small, cellular nature of that network—and the focus on particular subsets within the network such as foreign fighters—may create misleading conclusions. This information vacuum extends to discussions of how the West should respond to the group’s online campaigns. Berger and Morgan present a demographic snapshot of ISIS supporters on Twitter by analyzing a sample of 20,000 ISIS-supporting Twitter accounts. Using a sophisticated and innovative methodology, the authors map the locations, preferred languages, and the number and type of followers of these accounts. Among the key findings: From September through December 2014, the authors estimate that at least 46,000 Twitter accounts were used by ISIS supporters, although not all of them were active at the same time.  Typical ISIS supporters were located within the organization’s territories in Syria and Iraq, as well as in regions contested by ISIS. Hundreds of ISIS-supporting accounts sent tweets with location metadata embedded.  Almost one in five ISIS supporters selected English as their primary language when using Twitter. Three quarters selected Arabic. ISIS-supporting accounts had an average of about 1,000 followers each, considerably higher than an ordinary Twitter user. ISIS-supporting accounts were also considerably more active than non-supporting users. A minimum of 1,000 ISIS-supporting accounts were suspended by Twitter between September and December 2014. Accounts that tweeted most often and had the most followers were most likely to be suspended. Much of ISIS’s social media success can be attributed to a relatively small group of hyperactive users, numbering between 500 and 2,000 accounts, which tweet in concentrated bursts of high volume. Based on their key findings, the authors recommend social media companies and the U.S government work together to devise appropriate responses to extremism on social media. Approaches to the problem of extremist use of social media, Berger and Morgan contend, are most likely to succeed when they are mainstreamed into wider dialogues among the broad range of community, private, and public stakeholders

Countering ISIS in Southeast Asia: the case for an ICT offensive

This paper discusses the Islamic State\u27s success in using social media and other communications technologies to recruit fighters from Southeast Asia and Australia. Introduction Southeast Asia has direct experience of returning extremists. Indonesian veterans of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan laid the foundations for a spate of terrorist attacks including the Bali bombings that killed 202 people. The same conflict drove the creation of Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines as well as enduring links to Al Qaeda. The rise of ISIS represents the latest chapter in a war against extremism former head of the army, Peter Leahy, has said will likely involve Australia ‘for the rest of the century.’ However, ISIS represents a particularly virulent and concerning threat. First, with its de facto control of significant portions of Iraq and Syria ISIS is a different type of terrorist group. As then-US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel put it: ‘They’re [ISIS] beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded.’ Second, communications technology and low cost travel have created the potential for wider and deeper regional connections than those formed by militants fighting in Afghanistan in the 80s. Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf fighters used links forged in Afghanistan to stay connected (one reason Jemaah Islamiyah fighters find sanctuary with the Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines), but returning ISIS fighters could take regional cooperation to new levels. Communications technologies give ISIS recruiters a messaging platform across the region and low cost travel is making transport to the Middle East far easier than it was in the 1980s. This is increasing the number of fighters stemming from the region as well as broadening the range of countries they are coming from. As the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict put it, ISIS is creating a potent mix: ‘The appeal of ISIS is different, a combination of religious prophecies involving Sham (greater Syria); the string of victories in Iraq in June that gave a sense of backing a winner; the resonance of the concept of the caliphate; and sophisticated use by ISIS of social media.’ Third, unlike the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a direct participant in the conflict (Australia) is located in the immediate region, making it an enduring focus for returning extremists. Steps are being taken to shape the military outcome in Iraq and Syria. Increasingly vigorous legal, policing and intelligence efforts are also being made to prevent the departure of more would-be-militants and manage their ongoing presence in the region as well as the return of trained extremists. However, the nongovernment sector also has much to offer in terms of understanding how ISIS is exploiting technology and communications, and turning these tools against them to discredit its appeal. This report looks at the scale of the problem, its regional nature, the threat to Australia and the nature of the response so far. It concludes with an integrated, regional proposal to undermine the appeal of ISIS to would be-militants

Ion mass spectrometer experiment for ISIS-2 spacecraft

The International Satellite for Ionospheric Studies (ISIS) program of NASA was the longest duration program in NASA history. A number of satellites were flown under this program, the last being called ISIS-2, which was launched on April 1, 1971 and operated successfully for over 13 years. An experiment called the Ion Mass Spectrometer (IMS) was flown on the ISIS-2 spacecraft. It operated for 10 years providing a large data base of positive ion composition and ion flow velocities along the orbit of the satellite, the latter being circular at 1400 km with a 90 degree inclination. The data were processed and reside in the National Space Sciences Data Center