{"id":335,"date":"2015-01-20T22:23:28","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T22:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raqqa-sl.com\/en\/?p=335"},"modified":"2015-01-20T22:23:28","modified_gmt":"2015-01-20T22:23:28","slug":"team-social-media-experts-able-keep-track-uk-jihadis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raqqa-sl.com\/en\/?p=335","title":{"rendered":"How a team of social media experts is able to keep track of the UK jihadis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A team of analysts at King\u2019s College in London is building an exhaustive database of western Islamic State fighters \u2013 through Twitter and Facebook<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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A Facebook posting by Collin Gordon, one of the 700 or so western fighters for Isis in the database at King\u2019s College London. He is thought to have died last month with his brother, Gregory, during fighting in Dabiq.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another Briton had died in Syria, and back in London investigators were busy \u201cscraping\u201d through his online peer network for clues about fellow Islamic State (Isis)<\/a> foot soldiers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was little surprise that Rhonan Malik knew two Canadian brothers, Gregory and Collin Gordon. After all, Twitter rumours suggested that all three had been killed in the same December air strike. More intriguing was the prodigious Facebook<\/a>presence of Collin Gordon which indicated that, shortly before becoming a jihadist, he had been \u201cquite the party boy\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On a labyrinthine upper floor of King\u2019s College London is the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR), the first global initiative of its type, whose offices are frequently contacted by counter-terrorism officers, hungry for information on the continuing flow of Britons to the ranks of Isis.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At 4.30pm on Thursday the centre\u2019s researchers were assiduously examining social media \u201caccounts of value\u201d, noting the ongoing ripples of jubilation following the Charlie Hebdo <\/em>and Paris attacks.<\/a> A pseudonymous jihadist from Manchester, Abu QaQa, had said that the shootings had persuaded Isis and al-Qaida supporters to bury their differences.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s saying we should be happy that jihad was made against the crusaders. It doesn\u2019t matter that AQ and IS have been fighting each other \u2013 if it brings attacks against the west he\u2019ll support it,\u201d said Joseph Carter, research fellow at the ICSR.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So far the centre\u2019s database has amassed profiles of about 700 western foreign fighters who have joined either Isis or groups such as al-Qaida\u2019s Syrian offshoot, the al-Nusra Front. Each individual is categorised according to 72\u00a0data points, such as their birthplace or previous employment. At one point the database held the particulars of up to 90 Britons, a figure that has dwindled to around 50, largely as a consequence of coalition air strikes against Isis positions \u2013 Malik is believed to be at least the 35th Briton killed in Syria<\/a> during 2014 \u2013 while a handful have simply vanished without trace from social media.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition, the centre is compiling a new database tracking 70 western women \u2013 almost half of them British \u2013 who have settled inside Isis territory and whose social media postings offer a take on daily life inside the Syrian city of Raqqa, the caliphate\u2019s self-proclaimed capital.<\/strong><\/p>\n

These dispatches reveal how dozens of women are mourning husbands lost in battle, most in the continuing attritional campaign to seize the Syrian border town of Kobane. Crucially they also expose the inaugural faultlines of dissent that western intelligence experts know must be exploited if the Isis caliphate is to be dismantled.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Melanie Smith, another ISCR research fellow, said: \u201cThere\u2019s been some grumblings recently. Some of the British women have been complaining because it\u2019s the depths of winter and there\u2019s no electricity. The water\u2019s been so cold they can\u2019t do their washing and their kids are getting sick.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shiraz Maher, senior fellow at the centre \u2013 who probably has a rounder picture than most people of the average Isis recruit, having orchestrated conversations<\/a>with 50 foreign fighters in Syria, primarily using Facebook and Twitter \u2013 said: \u201cFrom an intelligence perspective, social media allows us to gauge their mood and gives opportunities to perhaps create or exploit dissent. Before social media you would have needed to have recruited spies.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Thursday, it emerged that David Cameron would prefer to eschew recruiting more agents in favour of pressurising President Barack Obama to force internet firms such as Twitter and Facebook to cooperate more with Britain\u2019s intelligence agencies<\/a> and help Britain\u2019s GCHQ eavesdropping centre.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The shootings in Paris also prompted Cameron to propose giving UK intelligence services the power to break the encrypted communications of suspected terrorists, as well as indicating that the \u201csnooper\u2019s charter\u201d \u2013 nickname for the draft communications data bill proposed by the home secretary, Theresa May, which would require internet service providers and mobile-phone companies to maintain records of users\u2019 browsing activity and emails, as well as phone calls and text messages \u2013 should be reintroduced.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet the team at King\u2019s College, led by Professor Peter Neumann, says that blanket surveillance is not effective unless you have the skills to decode the information acquired. Neumann said that the centre had built an enviable repository of online data from open sources \u2013 tricks that the security services are keen to learn and replicate, although the ICSR refuses to hand over data to the intelligence agencies. He added that the databases were compiled using legal means, with no hacking of accounts or even the use of fake online profiles.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are using information that is openly accessible to anyone who wants to look. Over the years we\u2019ve become quite clever, but none of what we\u2019re doing involves hacking and obviously we do not have special powers granted to us by the authorities,\u201d said Neumann, who advocates a more targeted approach to intelligence-gathering rather than reliance on mass surveillance techniques.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel, for example, the NSA<\/a> [US National Security Agency] collects everything but doesn\u2019t often have the capacity to make sense of it. We have a much more limited amount of material, but we\u2019re able to exploit that to maximum effect,\u201d said Neumann, who is also a senior adviser to the UN Security Council on foreign fighters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So adept at penetrating the networks of western Isis recruits has the centre become, Neumann believes that, if he had had a bigger team two years ago, it would have been able to expose the identity of the British extremist linked to the deaths of six westerners, including the most recent murder of US aid worker Peter Kassig. Instead the centre is adamant only that the media is wrong to name the man as Londoner Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIf we had more capacity, then it\u2019s very likely we would have identified him without secretive methods. Almost certainly that guy would have had some presence on Facebook,\u201d said Neumann.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Following the jihadists\u2019 online footprint, though, is becoming increasingly fraught, with fewer Isis recruits overtly on social media than before. \u201cThe era of everyone talking freely has been tempered. They [jihadists] are more careful, while Facebook and Twitter<\/a> are more proactive at taking material down \u2013 from both ends the information is getting a little bit narrower,\u201d said Neumann.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back on the trail of Malik\u2019s online peer group, Joseph Carter, the centre\u2019s lead technician in penetrating the often complex jihadist networks, has uncovered more details. Familar names crop up, characters from across the world: Abu Sa\u2019ad Tnt, from Trinidad and Tobago; the dead Belgian Abou Mehdi; and a well-known Swedish foreign fighter, Khaled SigSauer. More will follow until, eventually, new faces emerge \u2013 the freshest recruits to the battlefields of the Middle East<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source :\u00a0theguardian<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A team of analysts at King’s College in London is building an exhaustive database of western Islamic State fighters – through Twitter and Facebook   A Facebook posting by Collin<\/p>\n

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