Terrorist Social Network Analysis

In previous posts "Visualization, Intelligence and the Starlight project" and "Visualization in the Security and New Media world" I covered various security and intelligence related projects and mostly emphasized on the future potential of visualizing data. Data mining is still everyday's reality -- social networking as well. Just came across this at DefenseTech :



"It'd be one thing if the NSA's massive sweep of our phone records was actually helping catch terrorists. But what if it's not working at all? A leading practitioner of the kind of analysis the NSA is supposedly performing in this surveillance program says that "it's a waste of time, a waste of resources. And it lets the real terrorists run free." Re-reading the USA Today piece, one paragraph jumped out: This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for 'social network analysis,' the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together. So I called Valdis Krebs, who's considered by many to be the leading authority on social network analysis -- the art and science of finding the important connections in a seemingly-impenetrable mass of data. His analysis of the social network surrounding the 9/11 hijackers is a classic in the field."



It gets even more interesting with a comparison of a Fortune 500 company's network and Al Qaeda's one. Social networks are among the driving forces of Web 2.0, and I find the concept of communication and planning online a very realistic one. And if you really want to know more about social networks in the business world, corporate anthropologist Karen Stephenson - The Organization woman is really up to it, very good article. And of course, Valdis Kreb's blog on smart economic networks.