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Overview

Background
Since their introduction, social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flicker have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. These sites help strangers connect based on shared interests, political views, or activities. Unfortunately, social networking sites have provided an unintended benefit to terrorist organizations who are exploiting these technologies to enhance their communication strategies and coordinate attacks. It is now clear that the ability to automatically analyze how terrorist groups are using Internet technologies is of fundamental and strategic importance in the global war on terror.

Innovative Technology
Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a novel framework for complex quantitative analysis of usage of internet sites, specifically YouTube, by terrorist groups. This framework, known as A.T.T.U.N.E. (Automatic Terrorists’ Technology Usage Networked Environment), effectively addresses several important questions: (1) How internet-savvy is each terrorist group? (2) Are members of the group actively using specific social networking sites? (3) Can we link spikes in a group’s social network usage to events involving a group? (4) Can we determine whether a social network user is affiliated with a terrorist organization?

Advantages
- Effectively tracks social networking activities related to terrorist groups
- Assists analysts monitoring the behavior of terrorist groups

Applications
- Evaluate terrorist organizations’ internet usage and how their savviness evolves over time
- Identify social network users who spread the message of terrorist organizations
- Forecast future terrorist actions

Contact Info

UM Ventures
0134 Lee Building
7809 Regents Drive
College Park, MD 20742
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (301) 405-3947 | Fax: (301) 314-9502