#Army Dragnet Targets #Terrorists on #SocialNetworks

The U.S. Army is trying to do something about online radicalization, like the Nigerian who tried to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner despite the seemingly impossible task of tracing them down using conventional methods. Look for innovative ways to track terrorists over the Internet in the five years, despite the anonymous nature of online usage. R.C.J.


At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute using IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer, efforts to model how terrorists recruit ordinary citizens over the social networks have hopes of unveiling the steps by which ordinary citizens are radicalized online, so that these trends can be detected and countered before tragedy ensues. The World Wide Web permits anyone with a browser to access any computer system on the globe anonymously. As a result, citizens have quick, fear-free access to information, but at the cost of leading users to anonymous "sessions" that could be conducted by recruiters for terrorist organizations. As a result, online communities have become a free-for-all where plots are hatched, organized and executed all under the watchful eye of traditional security organizations, but with no easy way for law enforcement officials to track down and arrest potential terrorists before, during or after the fact. Now, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory aims to improve the situation by funding Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in a 10-year, $35 million probe at its newly established Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC)...
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