Terrorist Right Prints

There is some extremely interesting research going on by a team of 2 dozen Asian, Middle Eastern and European students at the University of Tuscon.  Called the "Dark Web" project, it's a web program that automatically 'combs' the internet in search of militant leaders and their followers.  According to an article in Science News, "New mathematical tools that combine Web-crawling techniques, sophisticated algorithms and human expertise are gaining access to the "dark side" of the Web, where extremists discuss and plot terrorist acts.

The program identifies leaders and their followers through chat forums.  The researchers are able to establish levels of importance among the chatroom users throughout the chatrooms.  Hsinchun Chen, head of the "Dark Web" project, said that 20,000-30,000 features are used to identify the potential terrorists: word length, syntax, usage...until each person on the watch list has what is referred to as a 'right print', which is almost as unique as a fingerprint.  Chen went on to report that an "infection rate for becoming a suicide bomber is 2 in 10,000 (Ehrenberg, 2012).  The information gathering here is amazing! Some identified terrorists are as young as 12 and 13 years old.  Each chatroom author is identified, given a level of dangerousness, level of authority within the chatroom and all of his contacts are identified.  It's an almost unbelievable program.

As with everything we, as a society, come up with to combat terrorism, civil rights leaders are worried about us infringing on rights.  It seems that in Germany, one such 'terrorist' by the name of Holm was discovered through this web-scanning process.  Holm spent a short time in jail (until it was determmined that there was no proof to hold him) and was under constant surveillance.  He believes he is still under constant surveillance.  Here's my theory on that.  If there is nothing to watch, they will stop watching you.  If you go into chat rooms and discuss ordinary, day-to-day life big brother has neither the time nor inclination to identify you.  You are simply one of the masses.

I'm okay with big brother watching me because I know it's not me he's watching: it's me he's protecting.  From a faceless set of eyes that I, alone, can not identify as a threat.

References

Ehrenberg, R. (2012, March 10). Scientists surf Web's dark side: mathematical tools collect information on extremists. Science News, 181(5), 8. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.db24.linccweb.org/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA283156713&v=2.1&u=lincclin_spjc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w