Investigative Pattern Detection Framework for Counterterrorism

Law-enforcement investigations aimed at preventing attacks by violent extremists have become increasingly important for public safety. The problem is exacerbated by the massive data volumes that need to be scanned to identify complex behaviors of extremists and groups. Automated tools are required to extract information to respond queries from analysts, continually scan new information, integrate them with past events, and then alert about emerging threats. We address challenges in investigative pattern detection and develop an Investigative Pattern Detection Framework for Counterterrorism (INSPECT). The framework integrates numerous computing tools that include machine learning techniques to identify behavioral indicators and graph pattern matching techniques to detect risk profiles/groups. INSPECT also automates multiple tasks for large-scale mining of detailed forensic biographies, forming knowledge networks, and querying for behavioral indicators and radicalization trajectories. INSPECT targets human-in-the-loop mode of investigative search and has been validated and evaluated using an evolving dataset on domestic jihadism.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

"Rights, constitutionalism and European integration: The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU"

The argument put forward here is that the Charter represents a significant step in the evolvement of a new European political identity. With the Charter, Europe has joined a transnational movement of new rights constitutionalism. The Charter imports to the European legal tradition elements of what the comparative legal scholar, Many Ann Glendon, once referred to as "rights talk." Glendon took a dim view of "rights talk," which she defined as a uniquely American propensity to reconceptualize value issues as legal entitlements. It is an unfortunate tendency, in her view, because issues which really are about the balancing of different interests - say of women's interests against men's - become matters of legal judgment and the judgments of judges and lawyers rather than elected officials. The Charter represents a significant innovation in European constitutional thinking because it conceptualizes basic European values as "rights" and does so through the vehicle of constitutionalism. Charter advocates repeatedly discussed the Charter as part of the process of the constitutionalization of Europe but never as an effort at constitutionalism. There is a difference between constitutionalization and constitutionalism, and the Charter may well fail at the first and succeed at the latter. In what follows, I will discuss this distinction and why it matters, and then turn to a discussion of the Charter process and content

Guido Baglioni and Colin Crouch (eds.), European Industrial Relations. The Challenge of Flexibility, London: Sage Publications, 1990, 368 s.

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Tweeting the jihad: social media networks of Western foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq

Twitter streams from the insurgencies in Syria and Iraq may give the illusion of authenticity, but to what extent is access and content controlled? Abstract Social media have played an essential role in the jihadists’ operational strategy in Syria and Iraq, and beyond. Twitter in particular has been used to drive communications over other social media platforms. Twitter streams from the insurgency may give the illusion of authenticity, as a spontaneous activity of a generation accustomed to using their cell phones for self-publication, but to what extent is access and content controlled? Over a period of three months, from January through March 2014, information was collected from the Twitter accounts of 59 Western-origin fighters known to be in Syria. Using a snowball method, the 59 starter accounts were used to collect data about the most popular accounts in the network-at-large. Social network analysis on the data collated about Twitter users in the Western Syria-based fighters points to the controlling role played by feeder accounts belonging to terrorist organizations in the insurgency zone, and by Europe-based organizational accounts associated with the banned British organization, Al Muhajiroun, and in particular the London-based preacher, Anjem Choudary