PROPHETS
The Prevention of Radicalisation Online through the Proliferation of Harmonised ToolkitS (PROPHETS) is an EU funded Horizon 2020 project looking at how individuals become radicalised, and what kind of technology and tools may help to reduce related cybercrime. The main goal is to prevent serious crimes by building resilience in people and society. PROPHETS will deliver its strategic outcomes through seven critical objectives that encompass extensive research exploring the key factors that underpin cybercriminal and online terrorist behaviour. In particular, PROPHETS’ focus is on the psychological processes that transform vulnerable or influential internet users into participating in or enabling cybercrime and cyberterrorism. PROPHETS is working to develop and create a real-world impact and will look to realise each of its objectives through the research-to-reality paradigm that will deliver clear impacts and societal benefits specific to each objective.
The outputs of the project include:
- Policy making toolkit: This toolkit reviews relevant legislation (human rights, criminal law, data protection etc.) for law enforcement working in the prevention, investigation and mitigation of cybercrime. It recommends policy approaches to existing and emerging threats and translates technically complex areas of interest into an understandable information set for research-users.
- Weak indicator extraction: This outcome will help alert LEAs to concerns around radical actions through online monitoring, classification and clustering, which collectively determine potential threats and early warnings. Alongside this it has the facilitate corroborate weak indicators that help to increase the predictive capacity and support effective decision making by LEAs with regard to potential radicalisation.
- Enhanced monitoring and situational awareness tool: This tool detects user communities (forums/social media) engaging in interactions relevant to the PROPHETS’ domains to identify key communication actors disseminating information. Weak indicator extraction is also used in these methods to detect communities.
- Real time expert notification portal: The largest product to be developed is a portal that will bring in expert advice from vetted and approved individuals to help law enforcement with ongoing investigations. The portal includes a crowdsourcing function, producing a community that aims to improve intelligence within Europe into understanding radicalisation and cybercriminal behaviours.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 researchand innovation programme under grant agreement No 786894.