Comparing the Socio-Political Ethics of Fighting Terrorism With Extreme Self-Defense in USA

In this study the authors adopted a post-positivist research design philosophy to explore the likelihood that Americans would support extreme self-defense policies like torture, reducing human rights or banning Muslims to fight against global terrorism, especially after 9/11 and in light of the Trump conservative government. The authors grounded their research questions into the literature to form hypotheses in a correlational design strategy which they tested using nonparametric statistics. They collected opinions from 3213 Americans during 2016-2017 about applying extreme self-defense tactics to combat global terrorism and how these opinions contrasted between those holding a conservative versus liberal or other individualistic socio-political ideology. The surprising results were that American citizens did not unanimously endorse banning Muslims (only 30% supported the policy and 6% were undecided) but the majority (51%) of participants sanctioned torture as a self-defense to combat global terrorism.

Logic Tester for the Classification of Cyberterrorism Attacks

The merging of terrorism with the cyber domain introduces the potential for using computers and networked technologies in cyberspace to carry out extremist activities. Despite the current debate on whether cyberterrorism can be regarded as a real threat, this research will propose a method for classifying incidents as either cyberterrorism or cyber attacks. Although there have been no reported cases of Information Communication Technologies causing life-threatening situations or death, this research aims to show that cyberterrorism is not a negligible threat but instead a dangerous risk that should not be overlooked. This research will investigate the merging of terrorism with the cyber domain and present a multi-layered definition for cyberterrorism. This proposed definition is founded on the definition for traditional terrorism and incorporates elements of the international understanding of cyberterrorism. The research future presents a Logic Tester that uses Boolean logic to test the application of the multi-layered definition for cyberterrorism in terms of past international cyber incidents. The merit of the Logic Tester is presented through its application on a number of potential cyberterrorism scenarios, using the definition to classify these as either cyberterrorism or cyber attacks.

Emergent Issues in the World War Against Global Terrorism

The chapter examines the impact of global terrorism on the top most-impacted nations. Global terrorism continues to impact many nations. There are two impacts – actual attacks causing deaths injuries and/or property damage as well as the emerging culture of fear where human rights have regressed – both impact the risk and contingency management community of practice. The critical analysis method is integrated with a meta-analysis of selected studies. Retrospective and inductive analysis techniques are applied. The risk of global terrorism is reviewed and calculated for the most-impacted nations. The recommendations address the emergent risks for contingency planning specialists, practitioners and researchers to consider. Additionally, future research directions are provided.

TerrorWatch

Activities of prominent terrorist groups like Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, Ansaru, and Ansar Dine have left thousands of people dead and properties destroyed for a number of decades in some developing nations. The high level of insecurity occasioned by operations of terror groups has impacted negatively on the socio-economic development of these nations. On the other hand, the use of mobile devices, such as cell phones, has gained prominence in developing nations over the past two decades. Putting side-by-side these two facts, namely, that the menace of terrorism among some developing nations is alarming and that the use of mobile devices is common among citizens of developing countries, this chapter develops a mobile application prototype called TerrorWatch. TerrorWatch is equipped with relevant menus, buttons, and interfaces that will guide a user on what to do when confronted with a terrorist attack or threat. The unified modeling language (UML) was deployed to design the architecture of the application, while the object-oriented paradigm served in the implementation.

A New Fuzzy Rule Interpolation Approach to Terrorism Risk Assessment

Terrorist attacks launched by extremist groups or individuals have caused catastrophic consequences worldwide. Terrorism risk assessment therefore plays a crucial role in national and international security. Fuzzy reasoning based terrorism risk assessment systems offer a significant potential of providing decision support in combating terrorism, where highly complex situations may be involved. Nevertheless, little has been done in developing and applying an integrated hierarchical bidirectional (forward/backward) fuzzy rule interpolation mechanism that is tailored to suit decision support for terrorism risk assessment. This paper presents such an integrated approach that is capable of dealing with dynamic and insufficient information in the risk assessing process. In particular, the hierarchical system implementing the proposed techniques can predict the likelihood of terrorism attacks on different segments of focused attention. The results of an experimental investigation of this implemented system are represented, demonstrating the potential and efficacy of the proposed approach.

An Overview of the Impact of Racial Hate and Its Manifestation of Homegrown Terrorism in America

Since the 2008 election of the first African American President of the United States, Barack Obama, racial hatred has been on the rise. During the 2016 presidential election, right-wing extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Ultra-Right groups have become more vocal resulting in civil rights organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center reporting a significant rise in hate crimes and threats. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump helped to stoke the fears of these hate groups with his incendiary campaign rhetoric of hate mostly against immigrants. This chapter provides a historical overview of racial hate and its manifestation of homegrown terrorism in America. Additionally, this chapter examines how hatred and fear became the source of lynching and race riots in America from the 18th to the 21st century. Understanding the past and present history of hatred directed at racial, ethnic and gender groups can help to bring a factual and more truthful point of view that can help reduce the recurrence of homegrown terrorism.

An Internet-Mediated Pathway for Online Radicalisation

This chapter proposes an Internet-mediated radicalisation model, RECRO. It consists of five phases: (1) the Reflection phase details the triggers, needs, and vulnerabilities that an individual may have which increase one's receptiveness towards alternative belief systems; (2) the Exploration phase details the period where the individual begins making sense of the information put forth by violent extremists; (3) the Connection phase details the influence of like-minded individuals and the online community on the individual's new worldview; (4) the Resolution phase details the period during which the individual gains the momentum to translate one's radical beliefs into action; and finally (5) the Operational phase details the period during which the individual is ready to commit violence to further one's radical objectives. This model provides a basis for understanding and informing judgements about an individual's level of involvement, and paves the way for future empirical work.

Internet Use and Violent Extremism

This chapter introduces a new approach to the risk assessment for violent extremism that is focused on cyber-related behaviour and content. The Violent Extremist Risk Assessment (VERA-2) protocol, used internationally, is augmented by an optional cyber-focused risk indicator protocol referred to as CYBERA. The risk indicators of CYBERA are elaborated and the application of CYBERA, conjointly with the VERA-2 risk assessment protocol, is described. The combined use of the two tools provides (1) a robust and cyber-focused risk assessment intended to provide early warning indicators of violent extremist action, (2) provides consistency and reliability in risk and threat assessments, (3) determines risk trajectories of individuals, and (4) assists intelligence and law enforcement analysts in their national security investigations. The tools are also relevant for use by psychologists, psychiatrists, communication analysts and provide relevant information that supports Terrorism Prevention Programs (TPP) and countering violent extremism (CVE) initiatives.

Functioning of Terrorism

This chapter explores the ways in which terrorist groups operate in today's world. The chapter focuses on the operation of terrorism and the different elements that play a role in this operation, including terrorist groups' missions and their significance in recruitment, what they hope to achieve, their cause, their organizational structure and leadership, the recruitment of terrorists online and offline, including the framing of messages to specific audiences, the reasons why people join their movements, the involvement of women in these operations, and the relationships among organizations. This chapter presents a solid overview of these topics while borrowing examples from a range of organizations to illustrate the different elements of terrorist operations. It highlights specific examples of historically significant events from various parts of the world that mark changes in overall terrorist operations. These include the migration from a centralized operation structure to a decentralized structure in organizations such as al-Qaeda, where its sub-organizations are ideologically aligned but loosely connected. To understand terrorism today, the chapter looks at how terrorist groups have operated historically and examines current developments and trends that will influence the future of terrorist operations.

Methods and Tools of Big Data Analysis for Terroristic Behavior Study and Threat Identification

Paper aimed to consider of approaches to big data (social network content) utilization for understanding of social behavior in the conflict zones, and analysis of dynamics of illegal armed groups. Analysis directed to identify of underage militants. The probabilistic and stochastic methods of analysis and classification of number, composition and dynamics of illegal armed groups in active conflict areas are proposed. Data of armed conflict – antiterrorist operation in Donbas (Eastern Ukraine in the period 2014-2015) is used for analysis. The numerical distribution of age, gender composition, origin, social status and nationality of child militants among illegal armed groups has been calculated. Conclusions on the applicability of described method in criminological practice, as well as about the possibilities of interpretation of obtaining results in the context of study of terrorism are proposed.