Using Open Data To Detect Organized Crime Threats

This work provides an innovative look at the use of open data for extracting information to detect and prevent crime, and also explores the link between terrorism and organized crime. In counter-terrorism and other forms of crime prevention, foresight about potential threats is vitally important and this information is increasingly available via electronic data sources such as social media communications. However, the amount and quality of these sources is varied, and researchers and law enforcement need guidance about when and how to extract useful information from them. The emergence of these crime threats, such as communication between organized crime networks and radicalization towards terrorism, is driven by a combination of political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors. The contributions to this volume represent a major step by researchers to systematically collect, filter, interpret, and use the information available. For the purposes of this book, the only data sources used are publicly available sources which can be accessed legally and ethically. This work will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly in police science, organized crime, counter-terrorism and crime science. It will also be of interest to those in related fields such as applications of computer science and data mining, public policy, and business intelligence.

Organized crime for the European market is a multi-billion dollar business that feeds on, as well as sustains, poverty and poor governmental control. As factors like the economic crisis and the emergence and growth of urban slums will sustain organized crime, this threat is likely to stay with us in the foreseeable future. Against this background, the HCSS report Detecting Elusive Criminals answers the following question: what research strands need to be explored further in order to find solutions for the threat posed to Europe by transnational organized crime?

Organised crime threatens multiple facets of the United States, including the economy and national security. In fact, the Organised Crime Council was reconvened for the first time in fifteen years to address this continued threat. Organised crime has taken on an increasingly transnational nature, and with more open borders and the expansion of the Internet, criminals endanger the United States not only from within the borders, but beyond. This book examines issues for Congress concerning whether the resources the federal government allocated to organised crime matters are adequate and appropriately allocated to counter the threats organised crime poses.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Joint 2018 National Conferences of the Australian Society for Operations Research (ASOR) and the Defence Operations Research Symposium (DORS). Offering a fascinating insight into the state of the art in Australian operations research, this book is of great interest to academics and other professional researchers working in operations research and analytics, as well as practitioners addressing strategic planning, operations management, and other data-driven decision-making challenges in the domains of commerce, industry, defence, the environment, humanitarianism, and agriculture. The book comprises 21 papers on topics ranging from methodological advances to case studies, and addresses application domains including supply chains, government services, defence, cybersecurity, healthcare, mining and material processing, agriculture, natural hazards, telecommunications and transportation. ASOR is the premier professional organization for Australian academics and practitioners working in optimization and other disciplines related to operations research. The conference was held in Melbourne, Australia, in December 2018.

This strategic report is Europol's flagship product providing information to Europe's law enforcement community and decision-makers about the threat of serious and organised crime to the EU. The SOCTA is the cornerstone of the multiannual policy cycle established by the EU in 2010. This cycle ensures effective cooperation between national law enforcement agencies, EU institutions, EU agencies and other relevant partners in the fight against serious and organised crime. Building on the work of successive EU organised crime threat assessments (OCTA), produced between 2006 and 2011, and in line with a new methodology developed in 2011 and 2012, this is the inaugural edition of the SOCTA.

Effective introduction to cyber threat intelligence, supplemented with detailed case studies and after action reports of intelligence on real attacks Cyber Threat Intelligence introduces the history, terminology, and techniques to be applied within cyber security, offering an overview of the current state of cyberattacks and stimulating readers to consider their own issues from a threat intelligence point of view. The highly qualified author takes a systematic, system-agnostic, and holistic view to generating, collecting, and applying threat intelligence. The text covers the threat environment, malicious attacks, collecting, generating, and applying intelligence and attribution, as well as legal and ethical considerations. It ensures readers know what to look out for when looking for a potential cyber attack and imparts how to prevent attacks early on, explaining how threat actors can exploit a system’s vulnerabilities. It also includes analysis of large scale attacks such as WannaCry, NotPetya, Solar Winds, VPNFilter, and the Target breach, looking at the real intelligence that was available before and after the attack. Sample topics covered in Cyber Threat Intelligence include: The constant change of the threat environment as capabilities, intent, opportunities, and defenses change and evolve. Different business models of threat actors, and how these dictate the choice of victims and the nature of their attacks. Planning and executing a threat intelligence programme to improve an organisation’s cyber security posture. Techniques for attributing attacks and holding perpetrators to account for their actions. Cyber Threat Intelligence describes the intelligence techniques and models used in cyber threat intelligence. It provides a survey of ideas, views and concepts, rather than offering a hands-on practical guide. It is intended for anyone who wishes to learn more about the domain, particularly if they wish to develop a career in intelligence, and as a reference for those already working in the area.

Transnational Organized Crime and Gangs: Intervention, Prevention, and Suppression of Cybersecurity provides several first-person examples of the mind set and mentality present in today’s transnational organized crime groups combined with a holistic approach towards prevention and intervention in the cybersecurity space. Transnational organized crime groups have tremendous power and money, which means they have the ability to pay hackers to defeat cybersecurity measures. The dangers posed by organized crime groups are nothing new. For decades, these groups have launched sophisticated attacks against individuals as well as major corporations. Billions of dollars have been stolen every year, and large, continuous hacks of our highly sensitive computer systems. What is new, is the acknowledgement that cybersecurity should be high priority for every individual, company, and government entity. While Department of Homeland Security’s involvement in cybersecurity is a step in the right direction, more measures need to be put in place that facilitates collaboration across industries and government entities. Transnational organized criminal elements will continue to find creative and effective ways to use technology for illegal activity. They will continue doing so unless law enforcement works closer with policymakers to enact uniform laws, regulations, and policies beyond current practices. Transnational Organized Crime and Gangs explores effective programs, policies, technologies and builds a body of knowledge to guide future regulations and resources for our criminal justice leaders of tomorrow.

In 2011 President Obama released the United States Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime (SCTOC). The strategy identified Transnational Organized Crime (TOC) as a national security threat directed the creation of an Interagency Threat Mitigation Working Group (TMWG). The SCTOC tasked the TMWG to identify criminal networks that posed a sufficiently high national security threat to merit a whole-of-government approach to achieve their defeat. Unfortunately, the SCTOC did not include any methodology for differentiating between criminal networks. Organized crime typologies, models, and assessment tools do exist. However, not all these tools are necessarily suitable for the TMWG. The question was, therefore, is there an existing typology or assessment model that can identify the TOC groups that present the national security threat defined in the SCTOC?A literature review of existing organized crime assessments identified the three most common conceptual frameworks used to study organized crime. These frameworks are organization-based, activities-based, and harm-based. The SCTOC discussion of TOC most closely resembles an organization-based conceptual framework. Therefore, all activities-based, and harm-based typologies were ruled out. SCTOC also identified specific selection criteria that helped match the SCTOC with an appropriate organization-based typology. The most appropriate model must be simple, support UN common terms, include key SCTOC variables, and address links to terrorists. A number of organization-based typologies were analyzed.The research found that The United Nations report, "Pilot Survey of Forty Selected Organized Criminal Groups in Sixteen Countries" meets the needs of the Threat Mitigation Working Group (TMWG) best. The UN typology is not designed to score TOC networks, so it is not an obvious choice, but it could be easily modified by the TMWG to rank-order TOC networks. The UN typology has the advantage of following the same conceptual model followed by the SCTOC. It is one of the few assessment tools to consider criminal links to terrorist organizations directly. It is also relatively simple, with clear definitions of all the relevant variables.Contents: 1. Introduction 2. TOC and U.S. National Security 3. Conceptual Frameworks for Describing and Measuring Transnational Organized Crime 4. The United States Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime 5. Assessment and Comparison of Selected TOC Typologies 6. ConclusionUnfortunately, despite international agreement that organized crime is a threat to national and global interests, global cooperation is hampered by the fact that there is very little agreement on how to define or measure transnational organized crime. Even the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) failed to achieve consensus on either a definition for organized crime or the types of crime that constitute that phenomenon. Similarly, the European Union attempt to define organized crime was a failure. Academics around the world complain that "behind this international political consensus on the importance and the threat of organized crime there is, nevertheless, a large and gaping scientific void." Despite all analysis available on TOC, no studies provide meaningful explanations for the seriousness and threat of organized crime, or a sound basis for the measurement of organized crime. The lack of a widely accepted definition impacts coordination between nations and between agencies within the United States government. Without a common definition it is impossible to agree upon methods by which to measure and compare transnational organized crime.