While we mourn the tragic terrorist attack in Paris I wonder what technologies are used by governments and intelligence agencies to guard the country against anti-social and terrorist elements. We wonder what kind of intelligence information is shared by security agencies within the country & with with friendly countries? We wonder if GPS and Mobile CDR data is used to monitor suspicious individuals and known links and also to identify the localities frequented by criminal elements. Terrorist do not appear out of thin air, they live in apartments, they frequent the target areas to plan attacks and they carry cellphones. By use of software and intelligence it should be easy to predict and prevent attacks like Mumbai & Paris.
One idea is that security agencies of each city can create a 'Smart Tracking Dashboard' that shows all new mobile numbers that 'ENTER' the city on given day (This data can be filtered from the Call Data Record). New mobile or IMEI numbers would indicate people who are outsiders and monitoring movement of such mobile near high security area & sensitive locations would help security agencies identify any pattern which would help them focus on certain individuals who may have to be investigated or questioned in order to prevent any incident. To give an example David Hadley was carrying a US mobile and did a recce of all areas that were later targeted by the 26/11 terrorist. A proactive monitoring would have helped the police identify a pattern that "tourist A has been visiting some sensitive locations multiple time over a period of days" which is unlike a normal tourist who would only visit the location once. This is just a simple example but there are multiple events that can be built into the software system by defining a set of events that need to be monitored. What we get is a Smart Tracking Dashboard.
The next important thing apart from building Smart Dashboards is to built a system that enables sharing intelligence across Departments & agencies in Real Time. This will remains to be the critical aspect of predicting and preventing threat elements from causing harm to society. Wider intelligence data will enable better predictions of threats within the country and across friendly countries.
One idea is that security agencies of each city can create a 'Smart Tracking Dashboard' that shows all new mobile numbers that 'ENTER' the city on given day (This data can be filtered from the Call Data Record). New mobile or IMEI numbers would indicate people who are outsiders and monitoring movement of such mobile near high security area & sensitive locations would help security agencies identify any pattern which would help them focus on certain individuals who may have to be investigated or questioned in order to prevent any incident. To give an example David Hadley was carrying a US mobile and did a recce of all areas that were later targeted by the 26/11 terrorist. A proactive monitoring would have helped the police identify a pattern that "tourist A has been visiting some sensitive locations multiple time over a period of days" which is unlike a normal tourist who would only visit the location once. This is just a simple example but there are multiple events that can be built into the software system by defining a set of events that need to be monitored. What we get is a Smart Tracking Dashboard.
The next important thing apart from building Smart Dashboards is to built a system that enables sharing intelligence across Departments & agencies in Real Time. This will remains to be the critical aspect of predicting and preventing threat elements from causing harm to society. Wider intelligence data will enable better predictions of threats within the country and across friendly countries.
Key takeways for our security agencies
1) If there are people who are suspected of terrorist activities or sympathizers of certain terror groups then security agencies will have to use IMEI and mobile data to monitor their movement and activities using sophisticated , smart and self learning software
2) Today no country has an option of not monitoring terror suspects for what ever reasons and lawys have to be modified to allow surveillance
3) Global terrorism mandates intelligence sharing across countries. If a 'suspected or known terrorist' leaves country A to visit country B, then there should be proactive notifications sent to country B so that they can be monitored, Many incidents cab be prevented if we have smarter way to monitor the city.
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