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Internet Tool Hopes to Capture Online Terrorists
foxnews.com ^ | Nov 11, 2007 | AP

Posted on 11/11/2007 6:17:21 PM PST by RDTF

TUCSON, Ariz. — The quivering images and militant writings are frightening: an exploding Humvee blankets passing cars with dust; a lab technician makes explosives, step by step; hatred oozes from "A guide to kill Americans in Saudi Arabia."

Tens of thousands of Web pages are now devoted to terrorist propaganda designed to attract followers. On the surface, the messages and videos reveal little about their creators. But programmers and writers leave digital clues: the greetings and other words they choose, their punctuation and syntax, and the way they code multimedia attachments and Web links.

Researchers at the University of Arizona are developing a tool that uses these clues to automate the analysis of online jihadism. The Dark Web project aims to scour Web sites, forums and chat rooms to find the Internet's most prolific and influential jihadists and learn how they reel in adherents.

Lab director Hsinchun Chen hopes Dark Web will crimp what he calls "Al Qaeda University on the Web," the mass of Web sites where potential terrorists learn their trade, from making explosives to planning attacks. Experts said they are not aware of any comparable effort, though some said the project may have only limited applications.

The project in the university's Artificial Intelligence Lab will not identify people outside cyberspace "because that involves civil liberties," Chen said, preferring to let law enforcement and intelligence analysts take over from there. Instead, it will help identify messages with the same author and reveal links that aren't obvious.

"Our tool will help them ID the high-risk, radical opinion leaders in cyberspace," Chen said.

Chen said a few agencies are on the verge of using some of his team's techniques but he wouldn't name the agencies.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: gwot; internet; wot
Dark Web research:

http://ai.arizona.edu/research/terror/index.htm

1 posted on 11/11/2007 6:17:23 PM PST by RDTF
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To: Cindy

ping


2 posted on 11/11/2007 6:19:44 PM PST by RDTF ("Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear". Mark Twain)
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To: RDTF

Ah, yes. The only internet protocol is http, and port 80 is all anyone uses.


3 posted on 11/11/2007 6:23:05 PM PST by proxy_user
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To: RDTF

Thank you rdtf for the ping.


4 posted on 11/11/2007 6:24:04 PM PST by Cindy
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To: RDTF
Internet Tool Hopes to Capture Online Terrorists

Al Gore hopes to catch terrorists??

5 posted on 11/11/2007 6:28:46 PM PST by Still Thinking (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: RDTF

Related link:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1924271/posts


6 posted on 11/11/2007 6:35:11 PM PST by Cindy
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To: Cindy

I guess maybe some college kids get past the liberal brain washing and get it, thankfully.


7 posted on 11/11/2007 6:45:43 PM PST by RDTF ("Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear". Mark Twain)
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To: RDTF
The Left is, no doubt, already looking for ways to frustrate this tool.

8 posted on 11/11/2007 6:50:29 PM PST by I see my hands (_8(|)
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To: Still Thinking

*GUFFAW*


9 posted on 11/11/2007 8:33:39 PM PST by Salamander (And don't forget my Dog; fixed and consequent.......)
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To: I see my hands
"The Left is, no doubt, already looking for ways to frustrate this tool."

Only in the way it might squash terrorism. Liberals seem to like the terrorists. Terrorists scare people, stir things up, kill people, etc. but the liberal Democrats use the terrorists' activities as a smokescreen for their own agenda.

In MA over the weekend Deval Patrick, governor, annouced he wants to ban MA citizens from online gambling.

In order to enforce this, he will need a tool similar to the one above to monitor the citizens... hmmmmm

10 posted on 11/12/2007 2:55:33 AM PST by xtinct (I was the next door neighbor kid's imaginary friend.)
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