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Impact of terrorism on Computing

Team member: Somnath Banerjee

History of Terrorism
It is difficult to define terrorism precisely, there are many definitions, and the only general agreement about those definitions is violence or the threat thereof. The United States Department of Defense defines terrorism as "calculated use of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."  The events of 9/11, perhaps for the first time, made terrorism a frightening reality in the United States. Terrorism has however existed in some different shapes or form long before the events of 9/11. Some of the terrorist organizations and their activities in different parts of the world are as follows

People’s Will in Russia (1878 – 1881)
The peoples will was a revolutionary organization that wanted democratic reforms in Russia and an end to the autocratic regime of the Tsar. Initially this organization proposed a political struggle to topple the autocracy but later resorted to terrorism in the form of political assassinations.  Their activities culminated with the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. This assassination however caused the Russian regime to ferociously crush this organization, most of its members were executed or exiled and the organization fizzled out.

Molly Maguires in the United States (1870s)
Molly Maguires originated in Ireland as an organization that fought Irish landlords for the rights of the tenants.  This organization operated as a secret society in the United States mainly among the immigrant Irish coal miners. They used methods of extortions, threat and murders against coal mining bosses. Their goal was to correct the perceived injustice and discrimination. This organization was for a while successful in its intimidation tactics. It was disbanded in 1877 after many of its leaders were executed after agents from the Pinkerton detective agency infiltrated the organization.

The Southern Racists in the United States (1950 – 1960)
Racist elements in the southern United States were alarmed by the emerging civil rights movements. They used violence to intimidate those advocating civil rights. These elements burned and bombed black churches that carried on voter registration drives. In 1962, four black churches in Georgia were set on fire. In September 1963 a bomb was hurled at a black church in Alabama. The blast killed four girls attending Sunday school and injured fourteen others. The pressure of law enforcement brought about a decline to the racist violence in the South in the 1960s.

Animal Liberation Front
The animal liberation is an extremist animal rights group that objects to the use of animals in laboratory testing, fur farming and other animal based industries. These groups operate in different parts of the world and commit acts that are supposedly consistent with its goals of animal liberation. Although most of the groups actions have been non violent, in recent years the group has been involved in acts that caused substantial financial damage. In March 1999 two vehicles belonging to the Big Apple Circus were set ablaze causing an estimated seventy thousand dollars in damage. In April 1999 12 research laboratories in two buildings at the University of Minnesota were vandalized with the theft of research animals. The damage caused was estimated to be around two million dollars.


In the face of terrorist attacks, the law enforcement agencies of the affected states institute countermeasures to prevent future attacks. They devise ways to get more information about the perpetrators, their leaders and their sympathizers. In certain cases a new specialized units of law enforcement has been created in order to deal with terrorist threats. One such example is the creation of the Okhrana a Secret Police force of the Russian empire to deal with Peoples Will.

Some counterterrorism measures

Gathering Intelligence
This is perhaps the most important in thwarting terrorist activities. The importance of good intelligence, the knowledge of enemy’s intention is pivotal in warfare. As terrorism can be considered a type of warfare good intelligence is also important for counter terrorism. Traditional forms of intelligence gathering consisted of infiltrating groups with informers, reading correspondence of terrorist sympathizers, surveillance of suspects and offering rewards and other incentives to members of terrorist organizations in exchange for information.

Analyzing Intelligence
The raw intelligence collected has to be analyzed in order to be useful and actionable. The analysis consists of sifting though correspondence, phone records, recorded conversation, and surveillance videos. This has to be cross linked with known terrorist groups and their sympathizers and a determination needs to be made whether the material is worth pursuing or is useless.

Covert Actions
Covert actions consist of illegal kidnappings, torture and interrogation of terror suspects or terror sympathizers. These actions are taken outside the normal legal system. Another form of covert action is deception which is used to discredit the enemy. The British have employed covert action in Northern Ireland where they made it look like the IRA was responsible for certain violent activity. An important aspect of certain covert actions is plausible deniability. The government agency that carried out the covert action should make sure that the covert operation is not attributable to it.

Measures to address the causes of the conflict
This option has not received attention as the primary focus has been to find and eliminate terrorists. Negotiations and address of concerns of the disaffected sections of the society can be a good idea for the long term solution to a problem. This process is being tried in Northern Ireland have achieved limited success.

Different facets of terrorism

While terrorism is not a recent phenomenon the modern technological advances have created opportunities for terrorists to cause mayhem and create panic. The terrorist attacks have become increasingly lethal and caused more damage. According to the FBI 267 actual or suspected terrorist incidents occurred in the United States between 1980 and 1980 killing 23 people and injuring 105. In contrast there were 60 such incidents between 1990 and 1999 that killed 182 and injured nearly 2000.  The goal of terrorists is obvious, to kill, cause economic damage and spread terror. Here are some of the ways that the terrorists could strike


Cyber
The importance of computers and computer networks in western economies is overwhelming. The Internet has become a major factor in the life of individuals as well as government and non governmental institutions. Any impairment of internet disruption is likely to have a significant impact on the economy. Computer networks play a significant role in the control of power grids, in air traffic control systems and financial systems among others. The electric power generation companies rely on a system called supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) that are used to collect information and regulate power generation. The SCADA systems are used to link the power generating companies into a national power grid and also have links to the Internet. An attack that halts some of the Internet nodes could compromise the power network. There is a further possibility that terrorists will be able gain access to the SCADA systems, they may then control these systems at their will.
The Internet provides connectivity but at the same time opens the possibility of malicious code disabling or hijacking computer systems. The various forms of worms, viruses, and root kits have the potential to cause nuisance, economic damage and theft of strategic information that could be used by terrorists. Computer scientists have demonstrated the ability to bring down the New York Stock exchange and the social security administration.
An important advantage for cyber terrorists is the anonymity and untraceability of their actions. The cyber terrorists can create nuisance by disrupting portions of the Internet for publicity and bragging rights. They can also deface well known public web sites with their agenda and propaganda.
Another aspect of cyber terrorism could be gaining access to computers that control food processing. If the terrorists are able to get sufficient access to these computers then they can at least theoretically alter the quantity of nutrients in these food products. Such action could affect the health of millions of people across the nation.



Biological
Another dimension of technological advances is the emergence of biological terrorism. Biological weapons are probably the most serious weapons of mass destruction. Infectious diseases are the number one killer worldwide. A weaponized form of an infectious disease could spread quickly, however unlike a bomb; the disease could spread without signs that will attract attention to it. Different nations have biological weapons program and terrorists do not need to reinvent wheel, they need to just buy, snatch or steal the weaponized biological agents. Although offensive biological weapons program was stopped in the United States in 1969, it continued to foster in places like the former Soviet Union. Some estimates put the number of personnel in the biological weapons factories in the former Soviet Union at nearly hundred thousand, even if a few individuals were to land in the terrorist net the consequences would be dreadful. Some ways to categorize biological agents
·   Scale of casualties: such as less than 1000, between 1000 and 10000 and above 10000
·     Type of the agent: whether the agent is contagious or not. Contagious and non contagious agents may be further classified as currently treatable or non treatable.
Time is critical element in treatment of people affected by a biological agent. The intervention period is only a couple of days and it is important that treatment is provided within this window, otherwise it would result in fatality.

Chemical
There are many chemical agents that are of potentially value to terrorists. Chemical agents are relatively easy to procure and require much less expertise than assembling a biological or nuclear weapons. In the case of Oklahoma City bombing the two perpetrators could assemble a bomb out of ammonium nitrate an agricultural fertilizer and nitro methane a motor racing fuel. The chemical agents can be classified into blistering agents, nerve agents, choking agents etc. Some chemical agents that could be potentially used by terrorists against large sections of the population are
·   VX gas a colorless, odorless liquid that can spread through air and water causing convulsions, paralysis and death.
·   Mustard gas, when inhaled this can cause long lasting blisters
·   Sarin gas, this is a nerve agent that attacks the central nervous system
Sarin was used in the Japanese subway terrorist attack by an obscure cult. Chemical agents are often the method of choice for the terrorist groups. These agents are easy to procure or steal, require far less sophistication in assembling into a weapon (compared to nuclear or biological agents) and cost far less money.

Nuclear
If terrorists could possess a nuclear bomb and able to detonate it in US Soil a huge number of deaths would result instantly. A full fledged nuclear bomb may be unavailable to terrorists without state sponsorship. However there other scenarios in which a nuclear attack could occur. A dirty bomb contains radiological waste from nuclear reactors. These could be packaged inside conventional explosives. Radiological waste is found in nuclear reactors around the world and may not be difficult to procure from the reactors of the former Soviet Union. A dirty bomb would not kill so many people as a nuclear bomb (worst case estimates are about two thousand people) but it would cause mass hysteria and panic. The financial consequences on the economy would be disastrous. A dirty bomb explosion may lead to criminal law and order situations in different parts of the Unites States. It may be noted that in spite of all the heightened security, a sophisticated nuclear material was obtained by the murderers of the ex Russian spy[1].




Research Institutions

The increased visibility of terrorism in the past decade, culminating in the events of 9/11 has led to initiatives that explore the role of technology as deterrence to such events. The development of the broad field of Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) and the more focused terrorism informatics could be attributed to such efforts. In order to deal with the threat of terrorism the Department of Homeland Security has identified the three objectives
(i)    preventing future terrorist attacks
(ii)  reducing the nations vulnerability
(iii) minimizing damage and recovering from attacks that occur

These objectives have galvanized research in fresh areas as well as rediscovery or tailoring of disciplines for counter terrorism. Law enforcement agencies such as Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and research agencies such Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have undertaken research to create automated systems for counter terrorism. We discuss the roles of several agencies in facilitating computer science research to deal with the threat of modern terrorism.


FBI
FBI was created in 1908-1910 to serve as an investigation agency dealing with corruption and crime in the United States. The challenges of terrorism saw the FBI take the responsibility of tackling this menace. The car bomb attack at the World Trade Center in 1993 was the first major terrorist attack in the United States that the FBI investigated. FBI was successful in bringing the conspirators of this bomb attack to justice. Another terrorist event of even greater proportion was the bombing of the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. This explosion resulted in the death of 168 people. The FBI investigations into this bombing led to swift capture and conviction of the conspirators. In order to understand the volume of information that the agency has to deal with, for the Oklahoma case the FBI agents conducted 28,000 interviews and collected around 1 billion pieces of information. In order to effectively use and manage information FBI has set up the information technology office under a chief information office (CIO). There are four divisions under the Information technology department
·   Office of IT Policy and Planning: Responsible for policy, planning and providing strategic guidance.
·   Information Technology Systems Development: Responsible for creating enterprise level IT capabilities through research development and system engineering
·   IT Program Management:  Responsible for the management of IT projects.
·   IT Operations: Responsible for maintaining the global information technology infrastructure.
FBI is closely involved with cyber security. FBI set up the Computer Investigations and Infrastructure Threat Assessment Center (CITAC) to respond to physical and cyber attacks against US infrastructure in 1996. In 1998 this was replaced by the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC). FBI has used advanced computer systems for solving violent crimes and these systems are also being put to use for counter terrorism efforts. One such system is CODIS, the combined DNA index system. This system enables crime labs across the country to compare and exchange DNA profiles electronically. CODIS has three tiered database architecture with databases at the national, state and local levels connected by a network. The system has 1.6 million DNA profiles in its database. The DNA profiles act as genetic fingerprints that can identify criminals, terrorists and victims. CODIS can help to speed up investigations and link incidents with terrorists.

NSA
The National Security Agency was established in 1952 and is in charge of creating, encrypting and providing intelligence to the government and the military. As part of its role as the center of excellence in cryptology and electronic communication systems, NSA has been successful in groundbreaking research in many different areas of computing such as quantum computing, networking technologies and computer systems security. NSA has recognized the threat of terrorism and is engaged in research to deal with the challenges to the information infrastructure. One of the principal research areas at NSA is dedicated to secure operating systems. Security is a primary concern for the users and providers of Internet based services. NSA believes there are certain limits to security that application programs can provide, and is therefore conducting research on securing the operating system. NSA has enhanced the Linux operating system into a secure Linux. This version of Linux has a strong mandatory access control mechanism that is integrated into the subsystems of the Kernel. Secure Linux has the ability to secure processes within the operating system from each other. This version of Linux has mandatory access control policies that give user level programs and system level programs just the level of access to do their jobs but no more. NSA is also part of the biometrics consortium and is conducting advanced research in biometrics.


DARPA
The Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA) operates under the Department of Defense. Although the goal of ARPA is the development of new technology for the military, some of the technologies developed by ARPA such as ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet have become ubiquitous. The Defense tag the D of DARPA have been added and dropped several times and it has been officially ARPA or DARPA. DARPA was established during the cold war when a need was felt for fundamental innovations in technology in the face of competition from the former Soviet Union. In 1962 the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) was created, this office has had a major role in computer science research. DARPA has instituted many projects that crate advanced systems for automated intelligence gathering. These systems will help in counter terrorism efforts. One of the IPTO programs is Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE). This program envisions a system to analyze information in a variety of languages and formats.  The system will produce distilled information that will be useful to the intelligence analyst and provide it in response to English language queries. The GALE system is designed to provide the following
·                     Transcription of speech to English language
·                     Translation of non English text to English
·                     Distillation of English text to create useful information

The system should also be able to process any naturally occurring speech including broadcast news, newsgroups, weblogs, telephone conversations etc.

Information Technology and Counter Terrorism Research Areas
In advanced nations including the United States, Information technology forms a key component of the national infrastructure. Computers control the functioning of power plants including the nuclear ones. Computers also drive the air traffic control systems, financial institutions, corporate operations and healthcare and social security systems. Most if not all of these computers are networked with a telecommunication infrastructure and connected to the Internet. Information technology also plays a crucial role in emergency response, to acts of terrorism. In the face of terrorist attacks quick information dissemination is the key. Equipment and trained personnel has to reach key sites. Medical teams have to be assembled, the involvement of biological elements if any need to be identified, vaccines need to be procured, delivered and administered. Information Systems have to respond rapidly to these needs.

Information technology can also be used to prevent attacks. Intelligence or in other words pertinent information is the key to a preemptive response to terrorism. While vast amounts of information (100s of billions of pieces) is gathered by the security agencies crunching all this to point to perhaps an hundred or so that a human can look at is a challenging task. Intelligence analysis is a huge task and only research in computing can lead to useful solutions. Some of the promising directions for computing with regard to counter terrorism are outlined in the following sections.


Cyber security and Network Infrastructure Protection
There are different perceptions with regard to the nature of cyber threat. [2]Green contends that terrorists have not killed anyone using a computer and are unlikely to do so in the future. The non occurrence of cyber killings does not mean that terrorists do not exploit the Internet to their advantage. Many organized crime syndicates exploit the Internet for identity theft, credit card fraud and money laundering. Terrorism can be considered as a type of organized crime and has been known to use the Internet as a means of fund raising to fuel its activities. Terrorists can also use identity theft to assume identities of legitimate citizens; this may enable them to access sensitive information or secure locations. The Internet is also being used by terrorists for recruitment and propaganda. Some analysts have claimed that a “digital Pearl Harbor” attack would cause significant damage to the United States but would cost lot of time and money to execute[3]. The United States naval college partnered with Gartner Research to conduct the simulation testing US responses to attacks on telecommunication, Internet, financial systems and the power grid. Their conclusion was such an attack would cost two hundred million dollars, will need top computer experts of a country and take five years of preparation time.
The 9/11 attacks resulted in unprecedented singular loss of communication infrastructure. Although far less spectacular, some criminals have been able to commit significant local damage[4] to network infrastructure. One of the stated goals of Al Qaeda is hitting the US economy through all possible means and a large scale network disruption even for a short duration is certain to have a negative impact on the economy. According a report in the Economist [5] US spies have uncovered an Al Qaeda training centre in Pakistan that was training hackers to break into computer systems of US dams, power grids and nuclear facilities.
The potential of a catastrophic network attack have led to different research initiatives in the study of complex networks. Real world networks that comprise the Internet demonstrate a high level of clustering where nodes locate preferentially close to nodes that already have a level of connectivity. These nodes are generally referred to as hubs. Some researchers have modeled real world networks as scale free networks[6]. The topology of networks in terms of well connected hubs poses problems in terms of network connectivity when a few major hubs are rendered dysfunctional by terrorist action. This would isolate many nodes in the network. Some studies have concluded that a scale free network model remains connected even when eighty percent of nodes are randomly removed from the network but when the top five percent of the nodes are removed the average path length increases exponentially.

Sensors and Screening Technologies
The challenges in detecting materials that are potential terror weapons have led to the development of sensors and screening technologies. However even before looking for technology solutions, we need it have a clear idea about what it is that we are looking for. For a dirty bomb that may contain a nuclear material like Cesium we might be looking at a two feet tall cylinder weighing several tons. For biological weapons it might be even more challenging task, like the detection of anthrax in a small envelope within a huge mail sorting facility. Detecting weapons in the vast amount of goods that cross into the United States is a hard problem, the containers alone number sixteen million, this is worse than the proverbial needle in a haystack. Fortunately however nuclear detectors have been created that can sense proximity to nuclear material. These detectors are being used at land, railroad borders at the airport and even at the seaports lodged on a floating unit. Compact and portable detectors for detecting radiation are also being developed and some are already out there on the field and being used by law enforcement agents. Another type of radiation sensors are being put on mobile vans that roam around the neighborhoods of a city. These mobile sensors are linked by wireless networks to a command center that can then monitor radiation presence in a wide geographical area.
Biological sensors are also being put in sensitive public areas. These monitor the air quality and inform a command center if it sniffs anything suspicious.


Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery  
Knowledge discovery techniques have been used to extract information from large data sets. These techniques have been used in different application domains such as banking and finance and consumer behavior analysis. Some of the traditional discovery techniques are association rules mining, classification and prediction and cluster analysis. Text mining can be used to derive key relationships in sorting through voluminous intelligence reports, third party research, tips from informers and public. An important aspect of counter terrorism is ‘linking the dots’. Finding association between apparently unrelated things is an important aspect of knowledge discovery. Association rule mining is being used to focus on interesting patterns that would then be further investigated[7]. Association mining may also discover new relationships among crime data. Association mining for crime association can further classified into incident or entity association mining. Incident association mining attempts to link criminal incidents based on the unique or distinctive features of the crime, this may be considered as a crime ‘fingerprint’. Entity association mining relates the perpetrators of a crime with the accomplices, supporting organizations, weapons and sympathizers. Entity mining relates entities to variety of crimes that may appear to be unrelated. This type of mining has been used by the FBI in Oklahoma City bombings investigation. While advances have been made in mining structured data, there are challenges with respect to unstructured data such as speech, images and video. Recent research into multimedia data mining could be helpful in counter terrorism efforts using association mining by providing face recognition and placing people at places.
An important usage of data mining is in detecting money laundering activities. Money laundering is not a recent phenomenon. Its roots can be traced back to the gangsterism prevailing in the 1920s. During that time innovative methods were used to disguise money obtained from racketeering. The present volume of money laundering is estimated between five hundred and eighty four billion dollars and one and half trillion dollars. A provision in the United States Patriot Act, Title III froze the US assets of any organization involved in money laundering. The act also requires United States financial authorities to alert law when they find suspicious transactions. The investigation of money laundering involves reading and analyzing thousands of documents. Data mining can help in this tedious manual task by creation of models that can be further analyzed by humans[8].

Bio Terrorism Informatics
The emergence of biological terrorism, most famously in the shape of the post 9/11 Anthrax attacks has led to many research initiatives to study potential measures to prevent and contain the effects of this threat. The need for preemption necessitates comprehensive real time monitoring and threat detection. In order to quickly detect an environmental or disease pattern, medical officials across the country need to have a standard way of reporting any abnormal activity. Detection of potential signs of bioterrorism is quite challenging as it is easy to confuse among varying, preexisting and overlapping conditions. This is especially true during the early stages of an infectious disease when detection would be particularly helpful. Responding to bio terrorism or potential incidents of bioterrorism also means precise information dissemination on a massive scale. There is also an important preparatory and training aspect. For a bio terrorism preparedness system maximizing effectiveness while reducing costs is an important goal.
The need for bioterrorism preparedness has led to the use of modeling techniques to study the impact of transmission of infectious diseases after a bioterrorism attack. A conventional model is the Susceptible Infected Recovered (SIR) model. This model computes the theoretical number of people infected with a contiguous disease over time in an epidemic. A newer model to study the progress of an epidemic resulting from weaponized biological diseases is BioWar[9]. University of South Florida[10] has an active research group to design bioterrorism surveillance systems[11]. They use a full fledged healthcare data warehouse to identify irregular disease patterns. Data warehousing provides historical information as well as real time data.
The Center for Biological defense is also developing next generation bio sensors that rely on multi sample analysis to correctly detect the presence of target agents[12].


Machine Translation

Machine Translation is the application of computers to translate text from one language to another. This is complicated by the language characteristics such as idiom, tone, inflection and dialects. The huge volumes of text and speech in a variety of languages pose interesting challenges in search and information extraction. A variety of tools and technologies are being developed to address this problem.
Another interesting and challenging problem is that of name recognition. Many variations of an individuals name are created when they are changed from their original script to Roman characters. It could be very difficult to transliterate names that have regional variations in spelling, titles and nomenclature. Some vendors are beginning to offer products to facilitate the storage, retrieval and search of names from across the globe[13].
The shortage of Arabic experts have prompted companies such as Basic Systems[14] to create tools that allow users to search Arabic source with English query texts. This tool uses a technique called multilingual information retrieval. It is based on Unicode that assigns a number to every character. Other companies such as Language Weaver provide automated language translation using statistical techniques[15] . The paucity of linguists and analysts in languages such as Arabic has also prompted organizations such as DARPA to look for automating language analysis tasks. DARPA has embarked on a massive project called Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) to provide automated translation of both text and speech[16].  DARPA is also developing the Translingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization (TIDES) program[17]. This will allow English speakers to effectively search across information from multiple languages.





Social Network Analysis
Terrorism relies on networks of cells for their activities. These networks are amorphous in nature and resilient to attack and disruption. Social Network analysis is a new computational technique to study these complex networks. This technique can be used to analyze the dynamics of terrorist organizations and aid the investigative agencies in dismantling the terror infrastructure. A terrorist network can be treated as a social network. Individuals in such a network may join one another through relations based on kinship, friendship or mentor. This type of network is also very dynamic in nature. Members may join, leave or be eliminated at any point of time. The roles of members may change with acquisition or loss of power, subgroups may form and dissolve, the loyalties may change. The network may evolve from a hierarchical structure to a flat one or vice versa.
A social network can be viewed as a graph in which nodes represent members and links represent the relationships between members. The different approaches to Social Network Analysis can be classified into descriptive, statistical and simulation methods. With descriptive methods the structural elements of the network are measured and compared using various metrics over time to describe the interplay between nodes, links and groups within the network. Statistical methods attempt to describe the dynamics in the network as well as investigate the causes behind those dynamics. The statistical methods are based on the Markov model where the future state is dependent on the current state. The process of transition from one state to another is governed by conditional probabilities that affect this transition. In simulation methods members of a social network are viewed as agents who exhibit behavior based on certain criteria. The collected behavior of all members shapes the evolution of the network.
Social networks can be analyzed with the help of certain measures such as degree, betweeness and closeness. Degree of a node measures how active a node is, it is the number of links a node has. Individuals with high degree are the hubs which may indicate their stature as leader.  Betweeness measures the extent to which a node lies between other nodes and may indicate that the member at that particular node is a facilitator or intermediary in the terrorist communication chain. Closeness of a node is defined as the sum of the geodesics (shortest path between two nodes) between a particular node and all other nodes in the network[18].
Social Network Analysis helps the FBI in tracking criminals and terrorists. The software used by FBI ties an individual to his or her social network, money trails and phone conversations. FBI used this technology to locate Saddam Hussein[19]. This technology also helped FBI to narrow the search for the sniper who terrorized the DC area.

Security policies and privacy
Following 9/11 many security measures including the Patriot Act were implemented by the United States government. These measures have significant implications for personal privacy. These have sparked a fierce debate. A New York Times article says that government is infringing on the privacy of citizens[20]. Government officials, on the other hand argue that security takes precedence over privacy. Government surveillance has a long history. The need to balance privacy of individuals versus the well being of all citizens has been a challenge. In their article Strickland et al [21] has the following to say about political surveillance “These activities disclose a cyclical pattern of cause and effect – an actual threat to state security and order is first perceived, followed by increased law enforcement intelligence activities, eventually leading to perceived civil rights abuses and calls for or implementation of greater oversight”.  There needs to be reasonable causes and evidence before targeting particular individuals. Intelligence gathering and data mining must ensure anonymity, any necessary exceptions to which should be approved by a court order. Profiling as used to search middle eastern/asian males in the aftermath of the London bombings should be avoided. Certain government programs such as DARPA’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) have been shut down under pressure from privacy advocates. Some researches distinguish between identity and behavior. Security needs should allow the tracking of behavior but not identity. As an example security cameras in retail stores can monitor shoppers and alert security in cases of shop lifting or other criminal behavior, however in addition to monitoring behavior, if these cameras were augmented by face recognition software then it is an infringement on privacy.
With regard to concerns for privacy rights it is helpful to look at the case of Danny Lee Kyllo versus the United States[22]. Some federal agents with an infrared detector found portions of his house were hotter than the rest of his house or the neighborhood. They suspected that Kyllo grew marijuana and heat was emanating from the halide lamps. Kyllo argued that the thermal imagery of his home violated his Fourth amendment rights. The court ruled in favor of Kyllo that it was unconstitutional for the police to use thermal imaging from outside the house without a search warrant. Interestingly this happened fourth moths before 9/11 and the court ruled 5-4, had it been after, the balance might have tipped the other way. This case is relevant to the case of myriad detection devices that are being put into use to detect nuclear, chemical and biological agents. There might not be the time to obtain a warrant to check a container that triggered of a radiation detecting device or a home where a biosensor might have picked up the sent of sarin nerve gas. In such a case the courts might decide that there was sufficient hazard to the community for the authorities to step in after a sensor has picked up something positive. The practicalities of living in a terrorism infested era might need a fine balance between community protection and arbitrary witch-hunt.

Conclusions

Rules of the game have not changed through history
The fundamental methods of counter terrorism remain the same as they were hundred or two hundred years back. The same techniques of gathering intelligence, infiltration, analyzing intelligence and creation of specialized agencies are being used. However the scale of terrorism has changed, whereas before there were few groups now there are hundreds. Similarly in modern terrorism the perpetrators and their sympathizers are many compared to a few handful in the past centuries, whereas in the past it was confined to a narrow geographical location (such as a few counties in Pennsylvania ) now it has spread all over the world. The money involved has also grown manifold. In order to deal with this growth the power of computing has to be unleashed for counter terrorism. It is inconceivable now that a single agent (like James McParlan of the Pinkerton detective agency who infiltrated the Molly Maguires) can infiltrate an organization like the Al Qaeda and secure the conviction of all the top leaders of that organization.

Research in Computing will not go to waste
The research in computing that has been motivated by terrorism will not go to waste if and when terrorism ends. Terrorism is a criminal activity, only in a grander scale. Computing tools developed for terrorism can be used for other purposes. Techniques for detecting money laundering can be used to detect money laundering associated with the narcotics trade. Social network analysis can be used to locate criminals and reveal gang activity; in addition it might find uses in psychiatry. Machine learning can be used for auto translation between languages. Cyber security research would be useful to every corporation from protecting their assets from viruses, worms, and cyber criminals. Terrorism has perhaps fuelled research and development into computing in the form of additional budgets, but the product of this research will benefit all users of the technology irrespective of terrorism.


Computing is no substitute for collection of good intelligence
Computers can help in sifting through billions of pieces of information. They can help in connecting the dots, in transcription and translation in visualization and information dissemination. However in order for the computers to do their job they need to be fed good intelligence. Computers can provide the right guidance, provided that there are some pieces of useful intelligence in the billion pieces of information that has been entered about a suspect. If this is not the case then computers may paint an incorrect picture and even misdirect the investigation. The usage of advanced computing and sophisticated systems should not make the agencies complacent, the agencies should not lose sight of the value of professional fieldwork conducted by the agents.




Bibliography

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13. Integrating Flexible Support for Security Policies into the Linux Operating System Peter Loscocco, National Security Agency, Stephen Smalley, NAI Labs




[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6190144.stm
[2] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0211.green.html
[3] http://news.com.com/2100-1017-949605.html
[4] http://www.kirotv.com/news/2601577/detail.html
[5] http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2246018
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network
[7] http://www.fcw.com/article94641-05-29-06-Print
[8] http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=956851
[9] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/3468/33597/01597399.pdf
[10] http://www.bt.usf.edu/index.html
[11] http://www.tampachamber.com/page.asp?pageid=97
[12] http://usfnews.usf.edu/page.cfm?id=70
[13] http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/globalname/
[14] http://www.basistech.com/
[15] http://www.languageweaver.com
[16] http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061109-8186.html
[17] http://www.darpa.mil/IPTO/programs/tides/index.htm
[18] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
[19] http://www.fbi.gov/page2/aug05/links081805.htm
[20] http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=travel&res=9F05EFD61431F93AA35752C1A9649C8B63
[21] http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/112738245/PDFSTART
[22] http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/kyllo-vs-us.htm
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