Privacy-First Situational Awareness Platform for Violent Terrorism and Crime Prediction, Counter Radicalisation and Citizen Protection

In order to support the fight against radicalization and thus prevent future terrorist attacks from taking place, the CounteR project will bring data from disperse sources into an analysis and early alert platform for data mining and prediction of critical areas (e.g. communities), aiming to be a frontline community policing tool which looks at the community and its related risk factors rather than targeting and surveilling individuals.

This is a key point in ensuring the privacy of citizens and the protection of their personal data, an issue that has been of great concern to policymakers and LEAs alike, who must balance the important work they do with the need to protect innocent individuals.

The system will incorporate state of the art NLP technologies combined with expert knowledge into the psychology of radicalization processes to provide a complete solution for LEAs to understand the when, where and why of radicalization in the community to help combat propaganda, fundraising, recruitment and mobilization, networking, information sharing, planning/coordination, data manipulation and misinformation.

Information gained by the system will also allow LEAs and other community stakeholders to implement prevention programs and employ counternarratives rather than relying solely on surveillance.The CounteR solution will cover a wide range of information sources, both dynamic (e.g. social media) and offline (e.g. open data sources) and combined with world-renowned expertise in radicalization processes and their psychology.

The CounteR solution will allow LEAs to take coordinated action in real-time while also preserving the privacy of citizens, as the system will target hotspots of radicalization rather than individuals.

In addition, the CounteR solution will support information sharing between European LEAs and foster collaboration between diverse agencies by providing an open platform which prioritizes harmonized information formats.