Scientists Use the "Dark Web" to Snag Extremists and Terrorists Online

[Matariki]

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110040

One of the tools developed by Dark Web is a technique called Writeprint, which automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating 'anonymous' content online. Writeprint can look at a posting on an online bulletin board, for example, and compare it with writings found elsewhere on the Internet. By analyzing these certain features, it can determine with more than 95 percent accuracy if the author has produced other content in the past. The system can then alert analysts when the same author produces new content, as well as where on the Internet the content is being copied, linked to or discussed.

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Dark Web is also a major research testbed for understanding the propaganda, ideology, communication, fundraising, command and control, and recruitment and training of terrorist groups. The Dark Web team has used the tools at their disposal to explore the content and impact of materials relating to "virtual imams" on the Internet, as well as terrorist training and weapons manuals.

Dark Web's capabilities are also being used to study the online presence of extremist groups and other social movement organizations. Chen sees applications for this Web mining approach for other academic fields.

"What we are doing is using this to study societal change," Chen says. "Evidence of this change is appearing online, and computational science can help other disciplines better understand this change."

[Matariki]

1. article link courtesy of boingboing, btw

http://www.boingboing.net/

[mmonk]

2. What are other social movements?

[Matariki]

4. exactly.

this has 'creepazoid' written all over it.

[tesla78]

3. Gov Propaganda

That sounds like a great tool to monitor government propaganda.