This document discusses the ethical issues surrounding governments using big data analysis to identify possible terrorist threats. It examines factors that determine whether such use is acceptable, including minimizing privacy intrusions, manipulation of data, and ensuring accuracy. While big data can help counter terrorism through identifying threats, its use also brings risks like overreach, false alarms, and lack of transparency that must be addressed. The line between ethical and unethical use depends on balancing security needs with preventing harm and protecting civil liberties.
Big data analysis of news and social media contentFiras Husseini
This document summarizes research from the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the University of Bristol on analyzing large amounts of news and social media content using computational methods. It discusses several studies, including analyzing over 400 million tweets to track public mood in the UK, extracting narrative networks from over 125,000 news articles about the 2012 US elections, comparing differences between news outlets and their topics/writing styles using machine learning, modeling the EU news media network using clustering and translation techniques, and predicting popular news articles based on their content. The research demonstrates how computational social science can reveal patterns in large datasets that were previously impossible to analyze at scale.
TERRORIST WATCHER: AN INTERACTIVE WEBBASED VISUAL ANALYTICAL TOOL OF TERRORIS...IJDKP
Terrorism is a phenomenon that rose to its peak nowadays. Counter terrorism analysts work with a large
set of documents related to different terrorist groups and attack types to extract useful information about
these groups’ motive and tactics. It is evident that terrorism became a global threat and can exist
anywhere. In order to face this phenomenon, there is a need to understand the characteristics of the
terrorists in order to find if there are general characteristics among all of them or not. However, as the
number of the collected documents increase, deducing results and making decisions became more and
more difficult to the analysts. The use of information visualization tools can help the analysts to visualize
the terrorist characteristics. However, most of the current information visualization tools focus only on
representing and analyzing the terrorist organizations, with little emphasis on terrorist’s personal
characteristics. Therefore, the current paper presents a visualization tool that can be used to analyze the
terrorist’s personal characteristics in order to understand the production life cycle of a terrorist and how
to face it.
What Data Can Do: A Typology of Mechanisms
Angèle Christin .
International Journal of Communication > Vol 14 (2020) , de Angèle Christin del Departamento de Comunicación de Stanford University, USA titulado "What Data Can Do: A Typology of Mechanisms". Entre otras cosas es autora del libro "Metrics at Work.
This document provides an overview of a study examining why some instances of state crime are recognized while others are not. It uses the Syrian government's crimes during the 2011-2012 uprising as a case study. The study employs an adaptive theory approach and multi-level structural framework to analyze recognition of state crime at the international, national, organizational, and individual levels. A literature review covers debates around defining state crime, etiological explanations for state criminality, different types of state crimes, and theories of recognition and denial of state crimes. The case study methodology aims to explore recognition of Syrian state crimes through this theoretical lens.
This document discusses how terrorist groups use the internet for propaganda distribution, recruitment, communication and training. It also examines the challenges facing the US government in monitoring terrorist websites and conducting counterpropaganda activities online. Key issues for Congress include balancing national security with civil liberties concerns, and coordinating counterterrorism strategies across different government agencies.
OCHA Think Brief - Hashtag Standards for emergenciesJan Husar
POLICY AND STUDIES SERIES
These short think pieces are non-papers that present
relatively new ideas that require testing and validation.
The objective of the Think Brief is to generate feedback,
views and advice. The Think Briefs do not necessarily
represent the official views of OCHA
Talk given August 29, 2018 at the 1st Biannual Conference on Design of Experimental Search & Information Retrieval Systems (DESIRES 2018). Paper: https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~ml/papers/lease-desires18.pdf
Data Journalism and the Remaking of Data InfrastructuresLiliana Bounegru
Talk given at the “Evidence and the Politics of Policymaking” Conference, University of Bath, 14th September 2016, on the basis of my PhD research at the University of Groningen and University of Ghent.
http://www.bath.ac.uk/ipr/events/news-0230.html.
Big data analysis of news and social media contentFiras Husseini
This document summarizes research from the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the University of Bristol on analyzing large amounts of news and social media content using computational methods. It discusses several studies, including analyzing over 400 million tweets to track public mood in the UK, extracting narrative networks from over 125,000 news articles about the 2012 US elections, comparing differences between news outlets and their topics/writing styles using machine learning, modeling the EU news media network using clustering and translation techniques, and predicting popular news articles based on their content. The research demonstrates how computational social science can reveal patterns in large datasets that were previously impossible to analyze at scale.
TERRORIST WATCHER: AN INTERACTIVE WEBBASED VISUAL ANALYTICAL TOOL OF TERRORIS...IJDKP
Terrorism is a phenomenon that rose to its peak nowadays. Counter terrorism analysts work with a large
set of documents related to different terrorist groups and attack types to extract useful information about
these groups’ motive and tactics. It is evident that terrorism became a global threat and can exist
anywhere. In order to face this phenomenon, there is a need to understand the characteristics of the
terrorists in order to find if there are general characteristics among all of them or not. However, as the
number of the collected documents increase, deducing results and making decisions became more and
more difficult to the analysts. The use of information visualization tools can help the analysts to visualize
the terrorist characteristics. However, most of the current information visualization tools focus only on
representing and analyzing the terrorist organizations, with little emphasis on terrorist’s personal
characteristics. Therefore, the current paper presents a visualization tool that can be used to analyze the
terrorist’s personal characteristics in order to understand the production life cycle of a terrorist and how
to face it.
What Data Can Do: A Typology of Mechanisms
Angèle Christin .
International Journal of Communication > Vol 14 (2020) , de Angèle Christin del Departamento de Comunicación de Stanford University, USA titulado "What Data Can Do: A Typology of Mechanisms". Entre otras cosas es autora del libro "Metrics at Work.
This document provides an overview of a study examining why some instances of state crime are recognized while others are not. It uses the Syrian government's crimes during the 2011-2012 uprising as a case study. The study employs an adaptive theory approach and multi-level structural framework to analyze recognition of state crime at the international, national, organizational, and individual levels. A literature review covers debates around defining state crime, etiological explanations for state criminality, different types of state crimes, and theories of recognition and denial of state crimes. The case study methodology aims to explore recognition of Syrian state crimes through this theoretical lens.
This document discusses how terrorist groups use the internet for propaganda distribution, recruitment, communication and training. It also examines the challenges facing the US government in monitoring terrorist websites and conducting counterpropaganda activities online. Key issues for Congress include balancing national security with civil liberties concerns, and coordinating counterterrorism strategies across different government agencies.
OCHA Think Brief - Hashtag Standards for emergenciesJan Husar
POLICY AND STUDIES SERIES
These short think pieces are non-papers that present
relatively new ideas that require testing and validation.
The objective of the Think Brief is to generate feedback,
views and advice. The Think Briefs do not necessarily
represent the official views of OCHA
Talk given August 29, 2018 at the 1st Biannual Conference on Design of Experimental Search & Information Retrieval Systems (DESIRES 2018). Paper: https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~ml/papers/lease-desires18.pdf
Data Journalism and the Remaking of Data InfrastructuresLiliana Bounegru
Talk given at the “Evidence and the Politics of Policymaking” Conference, University of Bath, 14th September 2016, on the basis of my PhD research at the University of Groningen and University of Ghent.
http://www.bath.ac.uk/ipr/events/news-0230.html.
Event detection in twitter using text and image fusioncsandit
In this paper, we describe an accurate and effective event detection method to detect events from
Twitter stream. It detects events using visual information as well as textual information to improve
the performance of the mining. It monitors Twitter stream to pick up tweets having texts and photos
and stores them into database. Then it applies mining algorithm to detect the event. Firstly, it detects
event based on text only by using the feature of the bag-of-words which is calculated using the term
frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) method. Secondly, it detects the event based on
image only by using visual features including histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) descriptors,
grey-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), and color histogram. K nearest neighbours (Knn)
classification is used in the detection. Finally, the final decision of the event detection is made based
on the reliabilities of text only detection and image only detection. The experiment result showed that
the proposed method achieved high accuracy of 0.93, comparing with 0.89 with texts only, and 0.86
with images only.
MASINT (Measurement and Signature Intelligence) uses scientific and technical methods to collect strategic and tactical intelligence. It builds models to aid decision-making but can be complicated to apply quickly. In 2004, President Bush established the Commission on Intelligence Capabilities to review intelligence functions after 9/11. The commission found 74 areas needing reform, and 71 were addressed in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. This act established a director of national intelligence and improved information sharing. MASINT now plays a role in countering global terrorism by tracking networks and using enemies' own technology against them.
CATEGORIZING 2019-N-COV TWITTER HASHTAG DATA BY CLUSTERINGijaia
Unsupervised machine learning techniques such as clustering are widely gaining use with the recent increase in social communication platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Clustering enables the finding of patterns in these unstructured datasets. We collected tweets matching hashtags linked to COVID-19 from a Kaggle dataset. We compared the performance of nine clustering algorithms using this dataset. We evaluated the generalizability of these algorithms using a supervised learning model. Finally, using a selected unsupervised learning algorithm we categorized the clusters. The top five categories are Safety,
Crime, Products, Countries and Health. This can prove helpful for bodies using large amount of Twitter data needing to quickly find key points in the data before going into further classification.
Information Literacy, Privacy, & Risk: What Are the Implications of Mass Surv...g8briel
In light of new revelations about government warrantless wiretapping and electronic surveillance what role do librarians have in educating our patrons about digital privacy and security issues? Given that digital privacy is further complicated by for-profit Internet companies services, such as those provided by Facebook and Google, are our users savvy enough to understand threats to their information in this increasingly complex digital landscape? This presentation will explore issues related to current events and information security with an eye towards the implications for information literacy standards; brief examination of tools used to enhance information privacy; and discuss how librarians might play a role in helping users become more information aware.
This document discusses lessons learned from the CTI League's Disinformation Team in responding to disinformation incidents related to COVID-19. It outlines key aspects of disinformation response including identifying common COVID-19 narratives, understanding motivations like money and geopolitics, and evolving tactics used by disinformation actors. It also describes the incident response process involving triaging incidents, conducting analysis to understand the situation, and considering options for countermeasures. Collaboration is emphasized as critical to effectively countering this complex, global problem.
This document discusses distributed defense against disinformation through cognitive security operations centers (CogSecCollab). It proposes a multi-pronged approach involving platforms, law enforcement, government, and other actors to address the complex problem of online disinformation. Key aspects include establishing disinformation security operations centers to conduct threat intelligence, incident response, risk mitigation, and enablement activities. The centers would use frameworks like AMITT to analyze disinformation techniques, track narratives and artifacts, and share intelligence. A variety of tactics are outlined, including detecting, denying, disrupting, and deceiving disinformation actors, as well as developing counter-narratives. Machine learning and automation could help with tasks like graph analysis, text analysis, and
This document provides a summary of Lindsey Leitera's Senior Major Project analyzing rhetorical motives in information liberation texts from Richard Stallman to Edward Snowden. It traces the evolution of debates around political ideology, enlightenment ideals, identity, and transparency from 1983 to 2013. Key events discussed include Stallman's "GNU Manifesto", debates between hackers and entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, the emergence of hacktivism with Anonymous and WikiLeaks, and national security whistleblowing by Edward Snowden. The project uses rhetorical analysis of manifestos, essays, and other texts to understand how a "Hacker Ethic" of free information sharing has manifested over time and influenced digital activism and issues of cyber security, technology policy
The Philosophy of Big Data is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of big data; the definitions, meaning, conceptualization, knowledge possibilities, truth standards, and practices in situations involving very-large data sets that are big in volume, velocity, variety, veracity, and variability
Big Data, Psychografics and Social Media Advertising - Alessandro SistiData Driven Innovation
What if we could use big data analytics to investigate correlation between personality traits of consumers and their behavior on social network? Using such predictive models fostered by the use of Data Management Platform, innovative companies can deliver micro-targeted social media advertising. This speech analizes t the use of big data over the last us presidential campaign: president Trump won the battle against Clinton delivering more than 175.000 variants of targeted social media messages, using this innovative communication campaign on Facebook.
Digital Breadcrumbs- Investigating Internet Crime with Open Source Intellige...Nicholas Tancredi
This document discusses how open source intelligence (OSINT) tools and techniques can help law enforcement investigate internet crimes. It provides examples of how social media analysis and dark web investigations have helped identify suspects and combat issues like child pornography. The document also references statistics and studies on topics like drug markets on the dark web and how social media is exploited for criminal activities. It advocates for law enforcement to make use of social media searches and data mining frameworks to facilitate cybercrime investigations and intelligence gathering.
Amplification and Personalization: The impact of metrics, analytics, and algo...Nicole Blanchett
This document discusses the impact of metrics, analytics, and algorithms on public discourse and democracy. It covers several topics:
1) How metrics and analytics are changing newsroom practices and content strategies across different platforms and countries.
2) How personalization based on digital footprints and psychometrics can influence the spread of misinformation.
3) The role amplification through social media and mainstream media plays in spreading misinformation, and how coordinated campaigns contribute to this issue.
4) Approaches for improving discourse, such as considering a broader perspective, evaluating information sources, and providing context rather than amplifying misleading claims.
This document summarizes a research article about social media data mining and public agency. It discusses how social media data mining is currently used to create "known publics" by large corporations and governments, but raises concerns that this results in less privacy, increased surveillance, and social discrimination. However, the document argues that data mining could be democratized to create "knowing publics" by making data mining more transparent and accessible to the public, and using it in a way that allows publics to understand themselves and act collectively. The document imagines how, if done this way, data mining could empower publics with greater agency over how their data is represented and understood.
A Semantic Graph-based Approach for Radicalisation Detection on Social MediaCOMRADES project
This document presents a semantic graph-based approach for detecting radicalization on social media, specifically Twitter. The approach extracts semantic concepts and relations from tweets and represents them as graphs. Frequent subgraph mining is used to identify patterns that distinguish pro-ISIS and anti-ISIS stances. Classifiers are trained using these "semantic features" and are shown to outperform classifiers using only lexical, sentiment, topic and network features. The top entities and relations discussed differ between pro-ISIS and anti-ISIS users.
Basic information concepts of management of Information Systemtenzin choeying
This document discusses basic concepts of information and information systems. It defines information as meaningfully interpreted data that provides useful messages. An information system gathers and disseminates data to users. A management information system specifically processes organizational data to provide useful information to management for decision making. The document also distinguishes between data, which are unprocessed facts, and information, which is interpreted, organized data that has meaning and value. Finally, it discusses common techniques for collecting data like surveys, secondary sources, tests, and interviews.
12.NP: Anti-terrorism measures - Censoring the web, making us less secureKirsten Fiedler
The document outlines the history of anti-terrorism measures taken by the EU since 2001. It then discusses the proposed Anti-Terrorism Directive, including concerns about its vague definitions, blocking and censorship of websites, weakening of encryption standards, and criminalization of attacks on information systems. It notes debates in the EU Council and Parliament regarding these issues. In conclusion, it suggests actions citizens can take to voice their concerns about the directive's impact on privacy, security and civil liberties.
Smart City Strategy: Platform, Data, PeopleJin-Hyeok Yang
This document discusses Hwaseong Dongtan, Korea's first operational smart city located 40km south of Seoul. It provides an overview of the smart city components and budget, and analyzes the benefit-cost ratio from 2008 to 2018. It also discusses challenges around finance, services, and changes over time. Lessons learned focus on promoting private investment, regulation, evaluation, and stakeholder involvement. The document concludes by looking at new strategies around platforms, data, and citizen engagement to make cities smarter.
Route to PA Project Meeting Dublinked Presentation 03.12.2015Dublinked .
Dublinked is developing a new open data platform and website to enhance transparency, citizen engagement, and data-driven innovation in Dublin. The platform will integrate new visualization and social networking tools from the Route to PA Horizon 2020 project. Dublinked will launch the new platform in February 2016 after user testing and will focus on curating data and improving APIs to appeal to key user groups like government, researchers, developers and citizens. Dublinked will also work with Smart Dublin to identify urban challenges and engage citizens and stakeholders through workshops to develop solutions using open data.
The document provides an analysis of global terrorism trends based on over 60,000 terrorist incidents over the past 5 years. Some key points:
- There were nearly 11,000 terrorist attacks in the past year, a 15% decrease from the previous year largely due to fewer attacks in Iraq.
- Iraq and Pakistan remained the top two countries affected by terrorism. Afghanistan, Israel, and India also experienced high levels of attacks.
- The number killed and injured decreased over the past year, while the number of hostages rose sharply due to several major hostage incidents.
- Suicide terrorism declined overall since its 2006 peak but remains prevalent in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The document discusses the benefits of exercise for both physical and mental health. Regular exercise can improve cardiovascular health, reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, enhance mood, and reduce stress levels. Staying physically active is an important part of an overall healthy lifestyle.
CyberTerror-CyberCrime-CyberWar! - Crucial Role of CyberSecurity in "War on T...Dr David Probert
Now we see the evolution of Hybrid Warfare, Cybercrime and Terrorism. To mitigate to Terror Attacks we urgently need to integrate Real-Time Cybersecurity Solutions with Physical Surveillance in Business, Campus, Cities And Nationwide! In this presentation we discuss both Historic & Current Cyber Threats and practical options to minimise the risks of future Terror Attacks through Integrated Physical-Cybersecurity Solutions. We briefly review the United Nations/ITU, NATO and NIST Cybersecurity Frameworks, and the threats on Critical National Information Infrastructure. Finally we suggest the TOP Actions for Chief Security Officers (CSO) to mitigate Attacks within their own Security Operations. This invited presentation was given @ the International East-West Security Conference at the Marriott Courtyard Hotel in Prague - June 2016.
OSGi for European and Japanese smart cities - experiences and lessons learnt ...mfrancis
OSGi Community Event 2016 Presentation by Levent Gurgen (CEA)
Internet of Things (IoT) is the digital skin of the physical world. It has specific requirements such as dynamicity to self-adapt to the continuously changing physical context. The world is heterogeneous and the objects should interoperate to collaborate, thus interoperability is essential. Openness and short learning curve are other requirements so that innovators (e.g. startups) can rapidly build applications with reduced time-to-market and avoid vendor lock-in. Reuse of software and hardware is also particularly important since billion of devices are expected to be deployed in the coming decades and those devices should be multi-purpose and reusable by applications from different domains and not be specific to a given domain.
OSGi has – since 15 years ago – the answers to those requirements of today’s IoT. Its powerful run-time environment for the dynamicity, its service-oriented approach hiding heterogeneity, its modularity making the reuse extremely simple, and last but not least, its open approach giving the potential to democratize the IoT.
The talk will illustrate the benefits of OSGi for IoT with concrete deployed examples, in particular in smart city domain in Europe and Japan via the collaborative projects such as ClouT and FESTIVAL.
Event detection in twitter using text and image fusioncsandit
In this paper, we describe an accurate and effective event detection method to detect events from
Twitter stream. It detects events using visual information as well as textual information to improve
the performance of the mining. It monitors Twitter stream to pick up tweets having texts and photos
and stores them into database. Then it applies mining algorithm to detect the event. Firstly, it detects
event based on text only by using the feature of the bag-of-words which is calculated using the term
frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) method. Secondly, it detects the event based on
image only by using visual features including histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) descriptors,
grey-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), and color histogram. K nearest neighbours (Knn)
classification is used in the detection. Finally, the final decision of the event detection is made based
on the reliabilities of text only detection and image only detection. The experiment result showed that
the proposed method achieved high accuracy of 0.93, comparing with 0.89 with texts only, and 0.86
with images only.
MASINT (Measurement and Signature Intelligence) uses scientific and technical methods to collect strategic and tactical intelligence. It builds models to aid decision-making but can be complicated to apply quickly. In 2004, President Bush established the Commission on Intelligence Capabilities to review intelligence functions after 9/11. The commission found 74 areas needing reform, and 71 were addressed in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. This act established a director of national intelligence and improved information sharing. MASINT now plays a role in countering global terrorism by tracking networks and using enemies' own technology against them.
CATEGORIZING 2019-N-COV TWITTER HASHTAG DATA BY CLUSTERINGijaia
Unsupervised machine learning techniques such as clustering are widely gaining use with the recent increase in social communication platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Clustering enables the finding of patterns in these unstructured datasets. We collected tweets matching hashtags linked to COVID-19 from a Kaggle dataset. We compared the performance of nine clustering algorithms using this dataset. We evaluated the generalizability of these algorithms using a supervised learning model. Finally, using a selected unsupervised learning algorithm we categorized the clusters. The top five categories are Safety,
Crime, Products, Countries and Health. This can prove helpful for bodies using large amount of Twitter data needing to quickly find key points in the data before going into further classification.
Information Literacy, Privacy, & Risk: What Are the Implications of Mass Surv...g8briel
In light of new revelations about government warrantless wiretapping and electronic surveillance what role do librarians have in educating our patrons about digital privacy and security issues? Given that digital privacy is further complicated by for-profit Internet companies services, such as those provided by Facebook and Google, are our users savvy enough to understand threats to their information in this increasingly complex digital landscape? This presentation will explore issues related to current events and information security with an eye towards the implications for information literacy standards; brief examination of tools used to enhance information privacy; and discuss how librarians might play a role in helping users become more information aware.
This document discusses lessons learned from the CTI League's Disinformation Team in responding to disinformation incidents related to COVID-19. It outlines key aspects of disinformation response including identifying common COVID-19 narratives, understanding motivations like money and geopolitics, and evolving tactics used by disinformation actors. It also describes the incident response process involving triaging incidents, conducting analysis to understand the situation, and considering options for countermeasures. Collaboration is emphasized as critical to effectively countering this complex, global problem.
This document discusses distributed defense against disinformation through cognitive security operations centers (CogSecCollab). It proposes a multi-pronged approach involving platforms, law enforcement, government, and other actors to address the complex problem of online disinformation. Key aspects include establishing disinformation security operations centers to conduct threat intelligence, incident response, risk mitigation, and enablement activities. The centers would use frameworks like AMITT to analyze disinformation techniques, track narratives and artifacts, and share intelligence. A variety of tactics are outlined, including detecting, denying, disrupting, and deceiving disinformation actors, as well as developing counter-narratives. Machine learning and automation could help with tasks like graph analysis, text analysis, and
This document provides a summary of Lindsey Leitera's Senior Major Project analyzing rhetorical motives in information liberation texts from Richard Stallman to Edward Snowden. It traces the evolution of debates around political ideology, enlightenment ideals, identity, and transparency from 1983 to 2013. Key events discussed include Stallman's "GNU Manifesto", debates between hackers and entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, the emergence of hacktivism with Anonymous and WikiLeaks, and national security whistleblowing by Edward Snowden. The project uses rhetorical analysis of manifestos, essays, and other texts to understand how a "Hacker Ethic" of free information sharing has manifested over time and influenced digital activism and issues of cyber security, technology policy
The Philosophy of Big Data is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of big data; the definitions, meaning, conceptualization, knowledge possibilities, truth standards, and practices in situations involving very-large data sets that are big in volume, velocity, variety, veracity, and variability
Big Data, Psychografics and Social Media Advertising - Alessandro SistiData Driven Innovation
What if we could use big data analytics to investigate correlation between personality traits of consumers and their behavior on social network? Using such predictive models fostered by the use of Data Management Platform, innovative companies can deliver micro-targeted social media advertising. This speech analizes t the use of big data over the last us presidential campaign: president Trump won the battle against Clinton delivering more than 175.000 variants of targeted social media messages, using this innovative communication campaign on Facebook.
Digital Breadcrumbs- Investigating Internet Crime with Open Source Intellige...Nicholas Tancredi
This document discusses how open source intelligence (OSINT) tools and techniques can help law enforcement investigate internet crimes. It provides examples of how social media analysis and dark web investigations have helped identify suspects and combat issues like child pornography. The document also references statistics and studies on topics like drug markets on the dark web and how social media is exploited for criminal activities. It advocates for law enforcement to make use of social media searches and data mining frameworks to facilitate cybercrime investigations and intelligence gathering.
Amplification and Personalization: The impact of metrics, analytics, and algo...Nicole Blanchett
This document discusses the impact of metrics, analytics, and algorithms on public discourse and democracy. It covers several topics:
1) How metrics and analytics are changing newsroom practices and content strategies across different platforms and countries.
2) How personalization based on digital footprints and psychometrics can influence the spread of misinformation.
3) The role amplification through social media and mainstream media plays in spreading misinformation, and how coordinated campaigns contribute to this issue.
4) Approaches for improving discourse, such as considering a broader perspective, evaluating information sources, and providing context rather than amplifying misleading claims.
This document summarizes a research article about social media data mining and public agency. It discusses how social media data mining is currently used to create "known publics" by large corporations and governments, but raises concerns that this results in less privacy, increased surveillance, and social discrimination. However, the document argues that data mining could be democratized to create "knowing publics" by making data mining more transparent and accessible to the public, and using it in a way that allows publics to understand themselves and act collectively. The document imagines how, if done this way, data mining could empower publics with greater agency over how their data is represented and understood.
A Semantic Graph-based Approach for Radicalisation Detection on Social MediaCOMRADES project
This document presents a semantic graph-based approach for detecting radicalization on social media, specifically Twitter. The approach extracts semantic concepts and relations from tweets and represents them as graphs. Frequent subgraph mining is used to identify patterns that distinguish pro-ISIS and anti-ISIS stances. Classifiers are trained using these "semantic features" and are shown to outperform classifiers using only lexical, sentiment, topic and network features. The top entities and relations discussed differ between pro-ISIS and anti-ISIS users.
Basic information concepts of management of Information Systemtenzin choeying
This document discusses basic concepts of information and information systems. It defines information as meaningfully interpreted data that provides useful messages. An information system gathers and disseminates data to users. A management information system specifically processes organizational data to provide useful information to management for decision making. The document also distinguishes between data, which are unprocessed facts, and information, which is interpreted, organized data that has meaning and value. Finally, it discusses common techniques for collecting data like surveys, secondary sources, tests, and interviews.
12.NP: Anti-terrorism measures - Censoring the web, making us less secureKirsten Fiedler
The document outlines the history of anti-terrorism measures taken by the EU since 2001. It then discusses the proposed Anti-Terrorism Directive, including concerns about its vague definitions, blocking and censorship of websites, weakening of encryption standards, and criminalization of attacks on information systems. It notes debates in the EU Council and Parliament regarding these issues. In conclusion, it suggests actions citizens can take to voice their concerns about the directive's impact on privacy, security and civil liberties.
Smart City Strategy: Platform, Data, PeopleJin-Hyeok Yang
This document discusses Hwaseong Dongtan, Korea's first operational smart city located 40km south of Seoul. It provides an overview of the smart city components and budget, and analyzes the benefit-cost ratio from 2008 to 2018. It also discusses challenges around finance, services, and changes over time. Lessons learned focus on promoting private investment, regulation, evaluation, and stakeholder involvement. The document concludes by looking at new strategies around platforms, data, and citizen engagement to make cities smarter.
Route to PA Project Meeting Dublinked Presentation 03.12.2015Dublinked .
Dublinked is developing a new open data platform and website to enhance transparency, citizen engagement, and data-driven innovation in Dublin. The platform will integrate new visualization and social networking tools from the Route to PA Horizon 2020 project. Dublinked will launch the new platform in February 2016 after user testing and will focus on curating data and improving APIs to appeal to key user groups like government, researchers, developers and citizens. Dublinked will also work with Smart Dublin to identify urban challenges and engage citizens and stakeholders through workshops to develop solutions using open data.
The document provides an analysis of global terrorism trends based on over 60,000 terrorist incidents over the past 5 years. Some key points:
- There were nearly 11,000 terrorist attacks in the past year, a 15% decrease from the previous year largely due to fewer attacks in Iraq.
- Iraq and Pakistan remained the top two countries affected by terrorism. Afghanistan, Israel, and India also experienced high levels of attacks.
- The number killed and injured decreased over the past year, while the number of hostages rose sharply due to several major hostage incidents.
- Suicide terrorism declined overall since its 2006 peak but remains prevalent in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The document discusses the benefits of exercise for both physical and mental health. Regular exercise can improve cardiovascular health, reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, enhance mood, and reduce stress levels. Staying physically active is an important part of an overall healthy lifestyle.
CyberTerror-CyberCrime-CyberWar! - Crucial Role of CyberSecurity in "War on T...Dr David Probert
Now we see the evolution of Hybrid Warfare, Cybercrime and Terrorism. To mitigate to Terror Attacks we urgently need to integrate Real-Time Cybersecurity Solutions with Physical Surveillance in Business, Campus, Cities And Nationwide! In this presentation we discuss both Historic & Current Cyber Threats and practical options to minimise the risks of future Terror Attacks through Integrated Physical-Cybersecurity Solutions. We briefly review the United Nations/ITU, NATO and NIST Cybersecurity Frameworks, and the threats on Critical National Information Infrastructure. Finally we suggest the TOP Actions for Chief Security Officers (CSO) to mitigate Attacks within their own Security Operations. This invited presentation was given @ the International East-West Security Conference at the Marriott Courtyard Hotel in Prague - June 2016.
OSGi for European and Japanese smart cities - experiences and lessons learnt ...mfrancis
OSGi Community Event 2016 Presentation by Levent Gurgen (CEA)
Internet of Things (IoT) is the digital skin of the physical world. It has specific requirements such as dynamicity to self-adapt to the continuously changing physical context. The world is heterogeneous and the objects should interoperate to collaborate, thus interoperability is essential. Openness and short learning curve are other requirements so that innovators (e.g. startups) can rapidly build applications with reduced time-to-market and avoid vendor lock-in. Reuse of software and hardware is also particularly important since billion of devices are expected to be deployed in the coming decades and those devices should be multi-purpose and reusable by applications from different domains and not be specific to a given domain.
OSGi has – since 15 years ago – the answers to those requirements of today’s IoT. Its powerful run-time environment for the dynamicity, its service-oriented approach hiding heterogeneity, its modularity making the reuse extremely simple, and last but not least, its open approach giving the potential to democratize the IoT.
The talk will illustrate the benefits of OSGi for IoT with concrete deployed examples, in particular in smart city domain in Europe and Japan via the collaborative projects such as ClouT and FESTIVAL.
This document discusses plans for a digital cluster in Thailand focused on digital technology and smart cities for healthcare and surveillance. It proposes bringing together multidisciplinary research collaborations on an open digital platform and AI platform to leverage large-scale data and real-world computing. Example projects highlighted include a mobile surveillance system, smart hospital technologies like bed posture classification, car sharing analysis, and an EV driver assistance system. Potential partners mentioned include hospitals, universities, tech companies and organizations in Thailand, Japan and elsewhere. The goal is high impact research, new businesses and capacity building through open sharing of standardized data, resources and knowledge.
Choosing technologies for a big data solution in the cloudJames Serra
Has your company been building data warehouses for years using SQL Server? And are you now tasked with creating or moving your data warehouse to the cloud and modernizing it to support “Big Data”? What technologies and tools should use? That is what this presentation will help you answer. First we will cover what questions to ask concerning data (type, size, frequency), reporting, performance needs, on-prem vs cloud, staff technology skills, OSS requirements, cost, and MDM needs. Then we will show you common big data architecture solutions and help you to answer questions such as: Where do I store the data? Should I use a data lake? Do I still need a cube? What about Hadoop/NoSQL? Do I need the power of MPP? Should I build a "logical data warehouse"? What is this lambda architecture? Can I use Hadoop for my DW? Finally, we’ll show some architectures of real-world customer big data solutions. Come to this session to get started down the path to making the proper technology choices in moving to the cloud.
This slide has the brief overview regarding the Terrorism In Pakistan.
It's Types,Background,Causes,Effects Measures to stop terrorism & at the end Conclusion.
Made by the great effort plus contains the high quality visual Effects.
Introduction to Microsoft’s Hadoop solution (HDInsight)James Serra
Did you know Microsoft provides a Hadoop Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)? It’s called Azure HDInsight and it deploys and provisions managed Apache Hadoop clusters in the cloud, providing a software framework designed to process, analyze, and report on big data with high reliability and availability. HDInsight uses the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) Hadoop distribution that includes many Hadoop components such as HBase, Spark, Storm, Pig, Hive, and Mahout. Join me in this presentation as I talk about what Hadoop is, why deploy to the cloud, and Microsoft’s solution.
Building Smart Cities: The Data-Driven Way (Created For The Big 5 Construct 2...SocialCops
This document discusses how cities can become smarter through the use of data and sensors. It provides examples of how some cities have already started using sensors and data to improve services like traffic management, waste collection, and water usage. The solution proposed is a centralized platform that connects citizens, government agencies, and their data to help solve community problems. It suggests collecting data from citizens and government sources, analyzing the data, and connecting everyone through a common platform to improve services, track projects, and close loops with citizen feedback. The platform could also help the construction industry by collecting and analyzing data from construction sites to track progress, understand business factors, and predict risks.
The document discusses the debate between individual privacy rights and government surveillance efforts aimed at national security. It notes that while increased surveillance can help protect citizens from security threats like terrorism, it may infringe on citizens' privacy rights. The debate centers around finding a balance between these competing interests. The document also mentions how technology has led to more personal information being stored digitally, making it accessible to authorities, and how this issue deeply affects many people given modern technology usage.
This document discusses terrorism informatics and privacy concerns related to data mining for counter-terrorism efforts. It provides context on how governments have turned to data mining vast databases containing citizens' information to identify patterns related to terrorism. However, this approach has raised significant privacy issues. The document examines arguments for and against the effectiveness of data mining for national security purposes. It also explores proposed frameworks for balancing security and privacy in ways that introduce accountability and prevent overreach when governments collect and analyze people's personal data for counter-terrorism data mining programs.
Big Data: A Twenty-First Century Arms RaceDotmappers1
We are living in a world awash in data. Accelerated interconnectivity, driven by the proliferation of internet-connected devices, has led to an explosion of data—big data.
The big-data-a-twenty-first-century-arms-raceHop Trieu Sung
We are living in a world awash in data.
Accelerated interconnectivity, driven by
the proliferation of Internet-connected
devices, has led to an explosion of data—big data. A
race is now underway to develop new technologies
and implement innovative methods that can handle
the volume, variety, velocity, and veracity of big data
and apply it smartly to provide decisive advantage
and help solve major challenges facing companies
and governments.
Epistemic communities are informal networks of knowledge-based experts who influence decision-makers in defining issues they face, identifying different solutions, and evaluating results. Epistemic communities have the greatest influence in conditions of political uncertainty and visibility, usually following a crisis or triggering event. Counterintelligence is primarily considered an analytical discipline, focusing on the study of intelligence services. The basis of all counterintelligence activities is the study of individual intelligence services, an analytical process to understand the behavior of foreign entities (formal mission, internal and external policy, history and myths within the entity, the people who compose it).
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.22837.52962
This interview summarizes the work of UN Global Pulse, an initiative that explores how big data and real-time analytics can help with sustainable development efforts. The director, Robert Kirkpatrick, discusses Global Pulse's mission to accelerate the use of data science to protect populations from shocks. They derive data from sources like social media, mobile phone metadata, and other digital traces to gain insights into issues like food security, public health, and economic trends. Kirkpatrick highlights challenges like building analytical capacity, maintaining responsible data partnerships, and addressing issues of data access and privacy at scale. He provides examples of projects in Indonesia that use social media to study food prices and vulnerabilities.
Running head ETHICS AND ENCRYPTION BACKDOORS1ETHICS AND ENC.docxtodd271
Running head: ETHICS AND ENCRYPTION BACKDOORS
1
ETHICS AND ENCRYPTION BACKDOORS
2
Ethics and Encryption Backdoors
The governments of Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States have recently made clear their intentions of forcing technology providers to provide lawful access to the encrypted communications of users (Saarinen, 2018). The proposal is part of the efforts of the involved governments to combat terrorism and crime, especially through the internet. The governments are looking forward to voluntary cooperation from the targeted companies, but there have been intentions to pursue legislative and enforcement measures if the companies impede the efforts (Saarinen, 2018). However, the efforts bring rise to the issue of personal and privacy rights of people, and the commitment of the member states to protect these rights (Saarinen, 2018). The creation of backdoors in the services and applications by the companies are the most likely loopholes to the intentions of the governments. This would be the perfect way of these governments introducing communication interception capabilities for the purposes of law enforcement. Nonetheless, this has been criticized by many security and cryptography experts to be a dangerous move. This paper uses the utilitarian, deontological, communitarian theories and to provide an explanation on why the move by the five governments is ethical.
The position taken by the governments is ethical. Their main aim is the protection of the people against cybercrime and terrorism that might be instigated through the internet in the current technological era. Utilitarian theory is one of the theories that was formulated by Jeremy Bentham, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill. The proposition of the theory is that the most basic criterion that should be used for judging an action is the utility of that action (Harry, 2013). The action or activity that has the greatest amount of utility, good, happiness, well-being or benefit to the highest number of people is the most appropriate action to be taken (Harry, 2013). In accordance with the utilitarian theory, the decision of these governments would have the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people. The primary concern is with the illegal access of information by unauthorized people. However, the governments will establish mechanisms to protect against illegal access. The main focus of the governments is the avoidance of crime which usually leads to loss of lives and destruction of property, like 911 attacks. This can result in the widespread panic to the people of a country. Thus, the decision is ethical as it will result in the greatest benefit to many citizens of the involved countries because of the avoidance of the consequences of terrorism and cybercrime.
Additionally, we should consider the deontological theory that was proposed by Immanuel Kant. This theory suggests that there are rights and duties to act in a specific .
Big data analytics: from threatening privacy to challenging democracySamos2019Summit
Big data analytics pose threats to individual and group privacy that can undermine key aspects of democracy. The use of big data for political targeting and messaging allows extensive profiling, prediction of views and behaviors, and manipulation of opinions. Over time, this can fragment political messages, obstruct open debate, and chill political expression through surveillance and the risk of being inaccurately profiled. Protecting privacy is important for maintaining fair elections and pluralism of ideas.
Assessing The Role Of Social Media And Digital Technology In Violence ReportingHannah Baker
This document assesses the role of social media and digital technology in violence reporting. It discusses how social media has transformed how information about violence is captured, analyzed, and acted upon. However, it also notes that social media data comes with limitations and biases that must be considered. The document evaluates the relative strengths and weaknesses of using social media for violence reporting compared to other methods. It aims to understand how reliable social media data is for analyzing and reporting violence, as well as the practical and ethical challenges of collecting and using such data.
Predictive policing uses mathematical and analytical techniques to identify potential criminal activity based on data collection and analysis of past crime trends. Law enforcement agencies collect data on repeat offenders, victims, and crime locations to analyze criminal patterns and make predictions about where increased police presence may be needed to prevent future crimes. The effectiveness of these strategies is then reevaluated to improve methods for reducing criminal activity.
(Lim Jun Hao) G8 Individual Essay for BGSJun Hao Lim
The key issues at the crux of the Snowden affair are government surveillance and its impact on citizens' privacy and democracy. The main stakeholders are governments who conduct surveillance in the name of national security, citizens whose data is being collected, and large corporations that assist with data collection. Citizens should be concerned because ubiquitous surveillance could threaten democratic ideals and turn countries into police states, especially if data falls into the wrong hands. While surveillance may be necessary to combat terrorism, current methods have flaws and do not respect citizens' right to privacy or representation.
Clustering analysis on news from health OSINT data regarding CORONAVIRUS-COVI...ALexandruDaia1
Our primarly goal was to detect clusters via gensim libraries in news data consisting ofinformation regarding health and threats. We identified clusters for the periodscorresponding: i) Jannuary 2006 until the end of 2019, as December 2019 is considered thefirst month in which information about CORONVIRUS COVID-19 was made public; ii)between the 1st of Jannuary 2019 and 31st December 2019; and iii) between the 31st ofDecember 2019 and the 14th of April 2020. We conducted experiments using naturallanguage on open source intelligence data offered generously by brica.de, a providerspecialized in Business Risk Intelligence & Cyberthreat Awareness.
The ability to provide the public with information regarding ter.docxtodd801
The ability to provide the public with information regarding terrorist groups, acts, and threats is critical to managing fear and anxiety. The importance of a carefully crafted message cannot be overstated. The government has many possible dissemination tools and sometimes the tool can dramatically affect the reception of the message. Proof of this became evident during the 2008 U.S. Presidential election where fundraising from the internet dwarfed conventional fundraising methods. The internet proved a more viable tool to communicate with the public. When communicating terrorist related information, it is critical to reach the target audience with the targeted message.
As you consider the different methods used to communicate terrorism information with the public, discuss the following:
Assignment Guidelines
In 6 paragraphs, address the following:
What are the most common communication mediums available to the government? Explain.
What do you think are the pros and cons of each? Explain.
What unconventional communication methods might the government leverage? Explain.
Why might these be appropriate tools for information dissemination? Explain.
The Department of Homeland Security currently uses a “Threat Level” system to communicate with the public regarding terrorism. Is this method effective?
How has the continued state of “yellow” or elevated alert desensitized the American public to the threats from terrorism? Is this justified?
What changes would you make to this system? Explain.
Post a new topic to the Discussion Board that contains your responses to the above questions.
Comment on at least two other students' posts.
.
Why Study Ethics in Law Enforcement discusses how law enforcement professionals should study ethics to prepare them for difficult choices they may face in their careers. Ethics can be defined as determining moral duties. Studying ethics exposes officers to situations they may encounter and helps prevent unethical actions that could occur when under stress. The nurse example shows how understanding ethics can help analyze situations to prevent issues like unlawful arrests. Overall, studying ethics is important for law enforcement to handle situations properly and uphold their duties in a moral manner.
This is an invited talk I presented at the University of Zurich, speakers' series 2.10.2017. The presentation is based on the following paper: Brandtzaeg, P. B., & Følstad, A. (2017). Trust and distrust in online fact-checking services. Communications of the ACM. 60(9): 65-71
This document summarizes the key legal and ethical issues surrounding governments' use of detection technologies for counter-terrorism purposes. It discusses the importance of privacy and how it is protected by various international laws and frameworks. Detection technologies raise privacy concerns due to the potential for widespread and indiscriminate surveillance. For technologies to be used legally, their use must have a legitimate aim, be proportional and necessary responses to security threats, and include safeguards against potential overreach or function creep. The ultimate human rights impact depends on how technologies are applied in practice.
Big Data & Privacy -- Response to White House OSTPMicah Altman
Big data has huge implications for privacy, as summarized in our commentary below:
Both the government and third parties have the potential to collect extensive (sometimes exhaustive), fine grained, continuous, and identifiable records of a person’s location, movement history, associations and interactions with others, behavior, speech, communications, physical and medical conditions, commercial transactions, etc. Such “big data” has the ability to be used in a wide variety of ways, both positive and negative. Examples of potential applications include improving government and organizational transparency and accountability, advancing research and scientific knowledge, enabling businesses to better serve their customers, allowing systematic commercial and non-commercial manipulation, fostering pervasive discrimination, and surveilling public and private spheres.
On January 23, 2014, President Obama asked John Podesta to develop in 90 days, a 'comprehensive review' on big data and privacy.
This lead to a series of workshop on big data and technology at MIT, and on social cultural & ethical dimensions at NYU, with a third planned to discuss legal issues at Berkeley. A number of colleagues from our Privacy Tools for Research project and from the BigData@CSAIL projects have contributed to these workshops and raised many thoughtful issues (and the workshop sessions are online and well worth watching).
My colleagues at the Berkman Center, David O'Brien, Alexandra Woods, Salil Vadhan and I have submitted responses to these questions that outline a broad, comprehensive, and systematic framework for analyzing these types of questions and taxonomize a variety of modern technological, statistical, and cryptographic approaches to simultaneously providing privacy and utility. This comment is made on behalf of the Privacy Tools for Research Project, of which we are a part, and has benefitted from extensive commentary by the other project collaborators.
Dati: La "quinta" rivoluzione dell'information technology - intervento di Mario Rasetti, Fondazione ISI, al Lunch Seminar "Big Data e Internet of Things" del 29 giugno 2015, organizzato dal CSI-Piemonte
1. BIG DATA ANALYSIS AND TERRORISM 1
BIG DATA ANALYSIS AND TERRORISM
Amanda Laura Fanshawe Tapp
Wicked Problems: Society, Culture and Economy
Professor Leenknegt
December 09, 2015
2. BIG DATA ANALYSIS AND TERRORISM 2
Topic: To what extent is it acceptable from an ethical point of view for governments to
use big data analysis in order to identify possible terrorist threats? Which factors
determine this?
“Is it alright to cast one Christian to the lions, if it will provide considerable pleasure
to many Romans?” (Etzioni 1991, 587)
In today’s society, knowledge is power. In the “network society” we are in now, in which
key social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed
information networks, big data analysis could essentially control everything (Castelles
2005, 218). Since 9/11, there has been a change. The fear of terrorism has changed
society: we are now in an era of information feudalism, where there is an increasing
concentration of ownership of information. When information and knowledge is power, it
is important to look at the ethical aspect of big data analysis and how far it should go in
terms of its use in countering terrorist attacks by governments and other organizations.
Big data analysis, as all things, may be used to cause human suffering but also to prevent
human suffering. Factors including manipulation, biased analysis, and incorrect data
causing dire consequences and fraud, all help determine to what extent it is ethical for
governments to use big data analysis to counter terrorism. More attention needs to be
given to risk-management in order for big data analysis to continue protecting people
from terror, and also helping increase research for disease and other humanitarian goals.
According to Bathla and Midha, big data analysis may be defined as such: “The
collection of large and complex data sets that are difficult to process using conventional
data processing tools […] coming from social networking sites, scientific experiments,
mobile conversations, sensor networks and various other sources” (Bathla and Midha
2015, 1). Big data analysis has been used in multiple ways for the greater good of society
in terms of helping with terrorist attacks. By “greater good” I mean by helping protect the
citizens, and maintain peace for the overall population. One example of this is the
Facebook Safety Check feature. It was activated by using large amounts of data about its
users for a humanitarian goal and was able to identify people close to accidents of
terrorism or natural disasters (Astel 2015, 4). It was able to “reduce the burden of
communications by offering a fast and simple way to reassure large numbers of people at
the same time” (Astel 2015, 9).
Big Data Analysis and the Fight Against Terrorism
Big data analysis helps fight the war against terrorism in multiple ways, as it is
using the terrorist’s own weapon against them, thus promoting peace and in other words,
being used ethically. For example, big data and data analytics are used widely by Israeli
military and intelligence agencies to track down enemies of the Israeli State (Engelen
2015, 1). Former head of the Israeli Security Agency’s IT unit Ronen Horowitz agrees,
saying that the “flood of unstructured data in the form of video, images, text and
speeches” had been “utilized to the Israeli military to track down and kill enemies”
(Engelen 2015, 2). He also said: “quite a few dead terrorists are looking at us from the
sky owing to Big Data capabilities” (Engelen 2015, 4). The police force now analyze
3. BIG DATA ANALYSIS AND TERRORISM 3
Twitter and text messages as part of their activities, which is called predictive policing.
This has been proven to decrease incidences of terrorism but only if we can “minimize
the risk of misuse and undesired side effects” (Engelen 2015, 4). This shows how big
data analysis can be used towards terrorism by governments in an ethical sense.
By “ethical” I refer to a definition many government-run programs, including the
National Science Foundation and the NIH Ethics Program, use. Many government
organisations have a similar set of principles of codes and policies for research that they
follow. Professor Resnik in the US department of Health and Human Services listed them
as such: Honesty, Objectivity, Carefulness, Openness (sharing data), Responsible
mentoring and publication, and Human Subjects Protection (Resnik 2011, 2). Factors
such as saving lives, deterrence of terrorism and fear, damages of the economy as well as
invasion of privacy, betrayal of trust, manipulation of data, fraud, and the possible
illegality of the act of collecting the data itself each affect the ethical extent to which big
data analysis helps in countering terrorism.
Unethical Uses of Big Data Analysis in Relation to Terrorism
On the contrary, big data analysis may easily be used unethically unintentionally or
intentionally. It could also be seen as an infiltration into personal privacy and can be
easily manipulated (Tene and Polonetsky 2013, 270). “Like any other type of research,
data analytics can cross the threshold of unethical behaviour” in the “surveillance
society” we are in today where no one is exempt from scrutiny (Tene and Polonetsky
2013, 256). As Watchdog’s Big Brother UK Warning put it, we are in a “psychologically
oppressive world in which individuals are cowed to conforming behavior by the state’s
potential panoptic gaze” (BBC 2004). Raw data might not be equal to sensitive data, just
as “inaccurate, manipulative or discriminatory conclusions” may be drawn from
“perfectly innocuous, accurate data” (Tene and Polonetsky 2013, 270). For example,
these are merely possible terrorist attacks, thus the government might be incurring the
possibility of multiple costs with the probability of it being a false alarm. Big data
analysis is an interpretive process, and it is also subject to error, as the observer may also
affect the results in multiple ways. The analytics’ bias and perspective creates bias and
may affect results. Perhaps if there is more data given to finding data percentages to the
times big data analysis had a success rate and managed to stop potential terrorist attacks
in comparison to false terrorist attacks, and then focusing on improving these statistics,
this could also be another factor that determines to what extent it is ethical for
governments to use big data analysis to identify possible terrorist threats. Ultimately the
goal to use big data analysis in the most ethical way is to put more efforts into increasing
the effectiveness of big data analysis while minimizing the costs of the process.
Due to the variety of possible consequences big data analysis may lead to, more
attention needs to be given to the prevention of these costs. Tene and Polonetsky outline
the moral argument for the costs of big data analysis. They argue that the fundamental
question is: Who has the right to access big data sets, for what purposes, in what contexts,
and with what constraints (Tene and Polonetsky 2013, 272). Without answering these
questions properly, there will be and already are irreversible consequences. As all things,
there are benefits and costs to big data analysis. We mustn’t just weigh them in
comparison to each other, but look at where the line could be drawn. After all, what if it
4. BIG DATA ANALYSIS AND TERRORISM 4
becomes two Christians cast to the lion for the pleasure of many Romans, or three
Christians, or more? At what point is it not OK? Who decides? And what if it was for the
safety of the Romans (not just for their pleasure), as it is today- for the security of the
people from the threat of the Islamic State?
The Line Between Ethical and Unethical
Without big data analysis, organizations such as Anonymous would not be able to
fight against ISIS and the Islamic State. The hacktivist group declared war on ISIS and
uses big data analysis to counter terrorism. Their biggest operation is currently OpISIS,
which began after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Within seventy-two hours after the Paris
attacks, it was reported they took down thousands of ISIS-related Twitter accounts
(Muller 2015, 1). According to their Facebook page We Are Anonymous, “In the age of
information, ignorance is a choice.” They also tweeted that they took down 5,500 Twitter
accounts of #ISIS on the 17th of November. Destroying the terrorists main form of
communication which they also use to convince more people to join is a clear example of
big data analysis being used for the good of humanity: to protect people from terror. If
governments were to use big data analysis in the same way to identify possible terrorist
threats by also looking at twitter accounts and so on, it would be using big data analysis
in an ethical way no matter to what extent. However, once they go further- once they
begin infiltrating other parts of people’s personal lives beyond to counter terrorism or
they manipulate or create bias information (unintentionally or not), this is when it is no
longer acceptable, from an ethical point of view, to use big data analysis to identify
possible terrorist threats.
Minimizing Consequences of Big Data Analysis
Despite the possible consequences of big data analysis, it is undeniable that “every
society needs information” (Rahman and Ramos 2013, 114). Governments using big data
analysis to protect its citizens is a means to protect the public, not individuals.
Researchers are committed to finding information for social desires, for society’s
interests, but we must not ignore its misuses. As we are in an information era and society
is reliant on big data analysis, we must focus only on how to minimize the costs it can
cause. Costs include denying access to smaller/less wealthy users, selling data to other
companies and adopting vague privacy agreements (Rahman and Ramos 2013, 114). As
long as there is more attention given to minimizing the misuses of big data analysis, it is
ethical to use big data analysis to counter terrorism. The general lack of transparency
towards supervisory authorities prevents individuals from exercising control over their
data (Cuijpers 2015). Facebook states that it is “free and always will be”. This is false, as
individuals pay with personal information unknowingly which Facebook then sells
(Smith 2013, 2). The General rule in the DDPA is that “data may only be processed fair
and lawful” (Cuijpers 2015). Here we must question when is it “fair” and when is it
“lawful”? Who decides? These questions must be asked and given more attention to
when dealing with the ethical dilemma of big data analysis in terms of countering
terrorism. Big data analysis used to counter terrorism is used for humanitarian purposes
including protecting the people, but there could be more efforts put into risk-management
5. BIG DATA ANALYSIS AND TERRORISM 5
to minimize consequences. For example, data subjects must be properly informed, big
data analysis could be infiltrated into the education system for the general population to
have more of an understanding of it, more monitoring of companies holding information,
and there could be more analytics to help prevent biases.
The Philosophical Debate of Big Data Analysis
From a communitarianism perspective, it is a battle between the virtues of man
versus the virtues of a citizen. Kantian ethics states, “act on the maxim that you wish to
have become a universal law” (CSUS 4). Using big data analysis to counter terrorism is
not acceptable, ethically speaking, if there is no attention given to who is affected on a
global scale, to whom the information is being distributed to, and if there are no efforts
being made to minimize costs, such as looking at who is responsible if the analysis is
incorrect, etc. Ethical Relativism states as such: “no fixed principles universally apply to
any situation that may arise” (Pistilli and Willis 2013, 14). Similarly, there is no single
“right” answer for what extent it is acceptable to use big data analysis to counter
terrorism, or the debate between transparency and privacy, but by putting in all efforts to
minimize the costs, this is perhaps most ethical thing to do for society as a whole.
“Without big data, you are blind and deaf in the middle of a freeway” (Moore
2012). Big data analysis allows us to make sense out of this brave new digital world. It
allows us to provide security and to prepare for terrorist attacks; it allows us to use the
Islamic State’s own weapon against them. However, it can easily be unethically used:
manipulation, fraud, being used by corporations for un-humanitarian purposes (e.g.:
ISIS), biased analysis, and a general lack of knowledge by the public about the amount of
surveillance they are under. With more attention given to the prevention of these
consequences and costs and to acknowledging big data analysis itself in education
systems more, this will allow big data analysis to be used at its best and most ethical
possible manner. We are in an age of technology but also in an age of terror, and big data
analysis benefits us greatly, so long as we are able to harness its powers correctly and in
the most ethical way possible.
6. BIG DATA ANALYSIS AND TERRORISM 6
Bibliography
Astel, Omri. “Terrorist Attacks Reveal the Humanitarian Value of Big Data,” Astelo
(2015). Accessed November 28, 2015, http://astelo.com/contentolgy/Terrorist-Attacks-
Reveal-The-Humanitarian-Value-Of-Big-Data-.
Bathla, Rajender and Nishi Midha. “Big Data Analytics with Map Reduce and Hadoop,”
International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software
Engineering, Vol. 5, Issue 9, (2015).
Castelles, Manuel. The Network Society: From Knowledge to Policy. Washington: Center
for Translantic Relations, 2005.
Chivers, Tom. “Wikileaks’ 10 Greatest Stories,” The Telegraph (2010). Accessed
November 28, 2015.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8070253/Wikileaks-10-
greatest-stories.html
Cuijpers, Colette. “Wicked Problems: Data, Privacy, Ethics”. Wicked Problems: Society,
Culture and Economy, 800157, Tilburg University, October 13, 2015.
“Edward Snowden: Leaks that Exposed US Spy Programme.” BBC News (2014).
Accessed November 26, 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-23123964
Etzioni, Amitai. “Ethics, Development and the Need for a New Paradigm,” Journal of
Regional Policy, No. 3-4/91. Vol. 11: 587-599. Accessed November 27, 2015.
Hill, Kashmir. “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father
Did.” Forbes (2012). Accessed November 27, 2015.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-
was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
“Kantian Ethics.” California State University, Sacramento. Accessed November 29,
2015.
Knowledgent Cares. “Applying Big Data to One of the Worlds Biggest Problems:
Alzheimer’s Disease.” Knowledgent Cares firm website. Accessed November 27, 2015.
http://knowledgent.com/whitepaper/applying-big-data-to-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-
problems-alzheimers-disease/
Moore, Geoffrey. “Importance of Big Data.” Hadoop Summit, 2012.
Muller, Sasha. “What is Anonymous? Inside the Group Plotting to Attack Islamic
7. BIG DATA ANALYSIS AND TERRORISM 7
State/ISIS.” A Fresh Take on Technology (2015). Accessed November 30, 2015.
http://www.alphr.com/security/1000275/what-is-anonymous-inside-the-group-plotting-
to-attack-islamic-stateisis
Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 20 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Pistilli, Matthew and James Willis. “Ethics, Big Data, and Analytics: A Model for
Application.” Educause Review (2013). Accessed November 29, 2015.
Rahman, Hakikur and Isabel Ramos. “Ethical Data Mining Applications for Socio-
Economic Development.” IGI Global Book Series Advances in Data Mining and
Database Management (2013).
Resnik, David. “What is Ethics in Research & Why is it Important?” National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences (2011).
Scahill, Jeremy. “The Assassination Complex.” The Drone Papers: The Intercept (2015).
Accessed November 28, 2015. https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-
complex/
Smith, Oliver. “Facebook Terms and Conditions: Why You Don’t Own Your Online
Life.” The Telegraph (2013). Accessed December 7, 2015.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/9780565/Facebook-terms-and-
conditions-why-you-dont-own-your-online-life.html
Tene, Omer and Jules Polonetsky. “Big Data For All: Privacy and User Control in the
Age of Analytics,” Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property Vol. II
Issue 5 (2013). Accessed November 29, 2015.
Vedder, Anton. “Wicked Problems: Data, Privacy, Ethics”. Wicked Problems: Society,
Culture and Economy, 800157, Tilburg University, November 3, 2015.