Open Source Intelligence

By Conor Rees Online extremist activity is not a new phenomenon. Terrorist and Violent Extremist (TVE) use of the Internet has been increasingly well researched since the turn of the millennium. This development of knowledge has led to improved understandings of why TVE’s use the Internet for reasons including recruitment, spreading propaganda, and fundraising (Weiman, ...

By Anne Craanen and Charley Gleeson Terrorist use of the internet is a complex and multi-faceted threat which requires an equally nuanced response. Terrorists use a wide ecosystem of tech platforms for a variety of purposes, composed of external (public propaganda dissemination) and internal (operational maintenance) communications. Our analysis shows that within the ecosystem of ...

VOX-Pol’s Dr. Maura Conway delivered a keynote address at last week’s FOSINT Conference (26 – 27 August 2015), which was co-located with ASONAM 2015 at Telecom-ParisTech in Paris, France. FOSINT, which stands for ‘International Symposium on Foundations of Open Source Intelligence and Security Informatics,’ is focused on web intelligence and security, crime data mining, cybercrime analysis, open source situational ...

by Eliot Higgins In recent years, content shared via social media from conflict war zones has allowed us to gain a far deeper understanding of the on-the-ground realities of specific conflicts than previously possible. This presents a real opportunity for providing robust evidence which can underpin foreign and security policymaking about emerging, or rapidly escalating, ...