The Christchurch Shootings – A Terrorist Attack in the Communication Age

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The Christchurch Shootings have reiterated the need for law enforcement agencies, public bodies, the private sector and broader society to pay careful attention to the threat of alt-right radicalisation and terrorism. In particular, the cyber dimensions of terrorism before, during and after attacks.

Alt-right terrorism in recent years has shown a notable trend of perpetrators stating their motives and targets online prior to attacks. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to say that the publication of manifestos and intent to harm on open online fora should provide ample warning to deter attacks. Although the web provides an enormous source of data that can be harnessed to forecast attacks, a key difficulty lies in determining which threats to take seriously. This is particularly the case in alt-right online culture. The widespread use of trolling and spam tactics coupled with an ever-changing nomenclature based on irony, innuendo and coded language makes threat detection and assessment a major challenge for law enforcement agencies.

Another key issue to resurface is combatting the spread of terrorist content on social media. Although videos capturing the moments of terrorist attacks are common, these are typically filmed by victims or bystanders. What distinguishes Christchurch is that the shooter live-streamed one of the mosque attacks to Facebook. The 17 minute video filmed from a body-mounted GoPro, stylistically reminiscent of a first-person videogame, was flagged 12 minutes after the stream ended. By then, it had been viewed over 4,000 times. The footage of the massacre then spread rampantly on social media channels. Facebook, Twitter YouTube and Reddit among others faced significant challenges in identifying and removing millions of replicated videos from their sites. Uploaders were able to exploit weaknesses in current automatic detection software and bypass these systems by making minor edits to the original footage.

As terrorism is the tactical use of force against victims to influence third parties, it requires public attention to be effective. The knee-jerk spreading of their messages through media reporting and public discourse may in turn lead to further radicalisation and terrorism. Like other forms of terrorism, alt-right violent extremism has shown trends of radicalising contagion effects and copycat attacks. Indeed, the Christchurch shooter cited Anders Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway Attacks, as a key source of inspiration. Resultantly, adopting effective communication strategies is critical to counter-terrorist efforts.

The approach of the New Zealand government and many news agencies was to anonymise the perpetrator of the attacks and amplify social solidarity and the experiences of victims. This strategy has gone some way in dampening his public profile. However, not all public officials and media have shown the same restraint. In addition to some media outlets showing non-graphic clips of the video, portions of the attacker’s manifesto have been widely published in print and online. While the manifesto undoubtedly contains useful insights into the attacker’s motives and radicalisation process, large portions draw on trolling and meme culture. It is very likely that this was a deliberate strategy to bait public discourse and gain greater engagement and exposure. As Mr. Mohan, chief product officer for YouTube, stated in an interview with The Washington Post, ‘this was a tragedy that was almost designed for the purpose of going viral’.

The Christchurch Shootings edge us another step towards understanding and addressing the challenges of combating terrorism in the communication age. Early warning and crisis management capabilities require further innovation to keep up with evolving trends and tackle extremist content online before, during and after attacks. Additionally, the Christchurch shootings illustrate the importance of strengthening linkages between governments, law enforcement, private sector and wider society to effectively respond to such crises. Moreover, deploying communication strategies that dampen rather than publicise terrorist messages avoids playing into the hands of perpetrators and blunts a key weapon in the arsenal of terror.

 

Author: David Pannocchia
Date: 24 April 2019

MIICT Focus Groups: Interviews and Workshops in Spain, Cyprus and Italy

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The MIICT Project started on the 2nd of April 2019 a series of focus group sessions and interviews at three pilot locations as part of participants and stakeholders requirements elicitation.

  • Spain: from the 2nd till the 4th of April 2019
  • Cyprus: from the 10th till the 12th of April 2019
  • Italy: from the 15th till the 17th of April 2019

In each country three types of stakeholders are targeted through the focus group sessions and interviews. The first are members of the migrant community, including refugees, to establish an understanding of the challenges they face interfacing with key public services. The second are public service providers to establish an understanding of the challenges they have experienced and observed while working with migrant and refugee communities and offering them key public services. The third and last are subject matter experts and representatives from other interest groups, such as NGO’s to elicit broader challenges associated with the integration of migrant and refugee communities, in particular those associated with access to key public services through the use of ICTs.

Participants are also invited to take part in workshops in their pilot country to co-design public service transformations using ICTs. Cognitive and context mapping are used to create mind-maps of abstract processes that relate to the experiences of participants. Based on this, initial storyboarding will be conducted to describe, on a step-by-step basis experiences, including frames that define problem areas where the project development can facilitate improvements and implement change.

The mentioned activities – focus groups, interviews and workshops – are aligned with the MIICT methodology, which wholly embodies a participatory design approach, encompassing the principles of co-design and co-creation into the core of the project. All aspects of the project follow a three-phased approach of Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation that take the challenges and ideas identified by engaging with the very audience they are designed for, empowering them to work alongside us to co-create and develop deep insights into new and improved services and giving them the agency to engage and pilot the developed ICTs in the INSPIRATION phase.

To find out more visit the MIICT website

CENTRIC’s Next Journey – INVEST

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New Serious Games project, INVEST, kicked off in the CENTRIC office last month. The kick off meeting was a success, and showed great promise for the project and future collaboration with our technical advisor on the project. The meeting involved introductions, summarising project aims and identifying how best to move forward with the project. The next stage of the project will focus on recruiting end users and gathering end user requirements for the system. INVEST aims to create a virtual reality based serious game to train LEA’s and first responders. The current objective of the game is to provide a cost effective, multi-agency (collaborative), public order training platform. The project will put emphasis on the validation of the game as a viable training tool. Although this is the current direction of INVEST, the project is still in the early stages and could be subjected to changes once the project joins with end users who can help to advise and direct the project towards area’s that they feel would benefit the most.

Successful MIICT Project Kick off conference in Sheffield

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The MIICT Project kicked off in Sheffield last month and the meeting was a huge success for everyone involved. The event involved many fascinating talks from migration experts, practitioners, developers and researchers from across Europe who all provided an excellent introduction to the project.

miict

The MIICT project kick off conference – November 2018

MIICT (ICT Enabled Services for Migration) was conceived with the goal of designing, developing and deploying tools that address the challenge of migrant integration. In service of this goal, the project undertakes to co-create improved ICT-enabled services with migrants, refugees, public sector services, NGOs (Non-Governmental-Organisations) and other interest groups. By involving research-users at the centre of our approach we address the need to improve and customise the interfaces used to access key public services so that they better address the requirements of migrants and refugees. To achieve this MIICT has undertaken the development of a system to capture the specific socio-cultural, economic and legal contexts of migrants; information that can be shared with public authorities. In order to promote inclusion and reduce the potential for discrimination and bias, the system acts as a firewall, meaning only information pertinent to the specific task of the public authority is visible, removing elements such as gender, ethnicity and age in circumstances where they have no relevance, removing opportunities for discrimination and unconscious bias.

Previous research has established that issues of integration, discrimination, employment (and unemployment), incapacity support and education rank highly among migrants of varying demographics; including different age groups, genders, education levels and immigration status. Factors such as autonomy, perception, culture and history, as well as institutional constraints shape the dynamics and experiences of migrants and highlight the complexity of the migration process. This complexity is also said to indicate diversity in the migration and integration process as a result of the almost infinite combination of factors that may impact upon migrants’ experiences; influenced by the relationships between the economic, social, political and cultural factors that exist across a given juncture.

Using a co-design approach, MIICT will design, develop and deploy bespoke solutions that address; a) the management of migrant integration, b) the customisation of services to match migrants’ needs, and c) the need for sustained and improved inclusion of migrants. This evidence-based and inclusive software solution aims to improve labour market access, matching individuals with jobs and development opportunities based upon their specific and unique contexts.

MIICT is grounded in the principles of co- design. Through the participation of multi-disciplinary stakeholders MIICT will design, develop and deploy processes to ensure the identification of needs and requirements from both the perspectives of migrants, public sector services and NGOs. The collaboration of cross-disciplinary expertise from academia, industry and the private-sector in the development of digital-services will realise improved service delivery, demonstrated through a rigorous piloting and evaluation process conducted across the EU. MIICT aims to provide migrants and refugees with access to key public services, public agencies and NGOs with ICT enabled services and the necessary agency to take advantage of those services.

To find out more visit the MIICT website.

 

 

Auggmed Validation Study

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Over the weekend Auggmed 21st & 22nd April, Auggmed conducted a validation study at the West Yorkshire Police training facility in Carrgate.

This very busy weekend involved training 80 trainee police officers, either through the Auggmed platform in Virtual reality or a live scenario using actors, or a combination of these two forms of training. The officers were being trained on how to deal with a suspicious package for the first time. Each officer has been asked to complete three assessments: one before the training, one directly after the training, and one two months after training in order to test knowledge retention.

Data collected from this study will be analysed at a later date and will be used to perform a comparison between the different forms of training.

Case study: vulnerable victims’ data

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The Information Commissioner’s Office has fined Humberside Police £130,000 for failing to take appropriate and effective steps to secure the video interview of the victim of an alleged rape. The case involved unencrypted discs, containing sensitive personal data, which were left in an envelope in an officer’s desk and went missing.

The force had an Information Security Policy in place but failed to put it into practice and also failed to maintain an audit trail of the data. These two requirements come under extra scrutiny with the GDPR.

The case reiterates the need for accountability and data protection by design and by default. The training of individual staff is of utmost importance.

Details of this latest case can be found here.

Data Protection Practitioners’ Conference 2018

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On 9th April, the ICO held a data protection conference in Manchester. The full agenda and a recording of the auditorium sessions can be seen via this link to the ICO web page: https://ico.org.uk/global/data-protection-practitioners-conference-2018

Some of the key outputs of the conference include:

  • Recognition that because of the culture shift involved in adapting to the GDPR requirements, time is needed to achieve the highest level of compliance. The ICO understands this and will initially focus on support and awareness-raising rather than punitive fines.
  • Be careful when using consent; it is not always the best or most appropriate legal foundation.
  • Consider the most effective way of presenting information to data subjects.
  • Ensure that reviews and assessments of data handling activities are recorded in the appropriate way to achieve accountability and transparency.

The discussions and advice from the conference will be incorporated into the ‘Focus On’ guides; these will be available on this website from 18th April 2018.

Successful AUGGMED Final Pilot

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The final pilot of Auggmed took place in the Port of Piraeus Port, Greece, on the 23rd of March. The aim of this pilot was to trial its Mixed Reality functionality. The platform has undergone many iterations throughout its lifespan, conducting pilots with end users along the way to obtain their feedback and improve the platform. The project had already conducted two trials with end users prior to this final pilot in Piraeus.

Auggmed aims to create a multimodal serious games platform for training first responders, with specific focus on training situational awareness and decision making. The platform aimed to develop three different modes: desktop; touch screen; Virtual Reality (VR); and Mixed Reality (MR). At the first stage of the project, the desktop and touch screen mode was trialled on West Yorkshire Police, the scenario used for the trial aimed to train firearms officers on how to respond to a firearms attack. The second stage of the project implemented VR, it was piloted at FGC head quarters in Barcelona. This pilot aimed to train the FGC security personnel on how to deal with a suspect package and SEM paramedics on emotional resilience and triage tagging in a post explosion scenario. The scenarios for each pilot were created specifically for the end users and were centred around their requirements.

Six scenarios were developed for the final pilot, these scenario’s involved searching the port for suspicious packages and weapons attacks. The security personnel needed to work together to respond to the situation in the best way possible. Whilst in Piraeus, Auggmed gained the attention of the local police, who showed interest in the platform, they were encouraged to participate in the scenario’s during the pilot, to allow them the opportunity to train and work together with the security personnel of the port, this was something they wouldn’t normally get the chance to do. Multi-agency training is one of the key advantages of the Auggmed platform, so this was an ideal opportunity to obtain feedback about this feature.

CENTRIC’s role in the pilot involved showing trainee’s how to use the platform and assisting with any technical issues. Overall the pilot was a success, and Auggmed received plenty of good feedback which can be used in the final review of the project.

 

Processing children’s data – draft guidance

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Today (28th February 2018) marked the end of the consultation period for the Information Commissioner’s draft guidance in respect of processing children’s data under the GDPR. A final version will be published in due course, taking into account the results of the consultation. Nevertheless, the principles and requirements will not change substantially. This comprehensive and clear guide is a useful resource.