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Handbook of Computational Approaches to Counterterrorism pp 323–359Cite as

CrimeFighter Investigator: Criminal Network Sense-Making

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Abstract

Criminal network investigation involves a number of complex knowledge management tasks such as collection, processing, and analysis of information. Synthesis and sense-making are core analysis tasks; analysts move pieces of information around, they stop to look for patterns that can help them relate the information pieces, they add new pieces of information and iteration after iteration the information becomes increasingly structured and valuable. Synthesizing emerging and evolving information structures is a creative and cognitive process best performed by humans. Making sense of synthesized information structures (i.e., searching for patterns) is a more logic-based process where computers outperform humans as information volume and complexity increases. CrimeFighter Investigator is a novel tool that supports sense-making tasks through the application of advanced software technologies such as hypertext structure domains, semantic web concepts, known human-computer interaction metaphors, and a tailorable computational model rooted in a conceptual model defining first class entities that enable separation of structural and mathematical models.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Structure domains (or simply structures) play a vital role in the design and development of CrimeFighter Investigator. The Hypertext research community has developed a number of structure domains over the years: navigational structures allow arbitrary pieces of information (entities) to be linked (associated); spatial structures were designed to deal with emergent and evolving structures of information which is a central task in information analysis; taxonomic structures can support various classification tasks. See [42] for further details.

  2. 2.

    We have found three studies evaluating user acceptance of intelligence and security informatics technology (COPLINK [24], COPLINK Mobile [23], and POLNET [76]) all based on the Technology Acceptance Model [14]. However, none of these studies ask the users to what degree they trust the information provided by the systems and how that affects their acceptance of the technology.

  3. 3.

    Computer security expert Clifford Stoll spent a year studying at a Chinese observatory with Professor Li Fang. Li studied star observations and used a Fourier transform, the standard tool of astronomers everywhere, to hunt for periodic motions. Li, however, did the Fourier transform completely by hand! Stoll decided to show Li how his new Hewlett Packard HP-85 could be used to calculate some 50 coefficients for the polar wandering in under a minute. The task had taken Professor Li 5 months. When presented to the computer’s results, Li smiled and said: “When I compare the computer’s results to my own, I see that an error has crept in. I suspect it is from the computers assumption that our data is perfectly sampled throughout history. Such is not the case and it may be that we need to analyze the data in a slightly different manner”. Stoll realized that Li had not spent 5 months doing rote mechanical calculations. Instead, he had developed a complex method for analyzing the data that took into account the accuracy of different observers and ambiguities in the historical record [56].

  4. 4.

    “Andiwal” is the Pashto (Afghani language) word for “friend”.

  5. 5.

    Structural models are typically embedded in mathematical models. See for example [8].

  6. 6.

    The network nodes and attributes used in this example are inspired by the Greek criminal network November 17 (see [45] for more details).

  7. 7.

    Only the products above a cut-off value of 2,14 are included. The cut-off value is calculated as the total possible links in the gold standard divided by the existing links.

  8. 8.

    If we chose to apply the predict covert network structure algorithm then the evidence could also be information about individuals not in the network. These individuals would be added if a link (relation) to them is predicted from within the gold standard network.

  9. 9.

    The Danish CTU is “invented” for this scenario and is not related to the Danish Security and Intelligence Service’s Center for Terror Analysis or other Danish counterterrorism units.

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Acknowledgements

This work builds upon previous publications by the authors in hypertext and security informatics conference proceedings [40–42].

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  1. The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moeller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark

    Rasmus Rosenqvist Petersen & Uffe Kock Wiil

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  1. Rasmus Rosenqvist Petersen
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  2. Uffe Kock Wiil
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Correspondence to Rasmus Rosenqvist Petersen .

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  1. , Computer Science Department, University of Maryland, AV Williams Building, College Park, 20854, Maryland, USA

    V.S. Subrahmanian

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Petersen, R.R., Wiil, U.K. (2013). CrimeFighter Investigator: Criminal Network Sense-Making. In: Subrahmanian, V. (eds) Handbook of Computational Approaches to Counterterrorism. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5311-6_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5311-6_16

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