Abstract
Open source intelligence is playing an increasing role in helping agencies responsible for national security to determine the characteristics, motivations and intentions of adversary groups that threaten the stability of civil society. Analytic methods that are able to assimilate and process the emergent data from such rich sources in a timely fashion are required in order that predictive insights can be made by intelligence specialists. The methods of social network analysis (SNA) have proved particularly useful in organising and representing covert network organisations’s however, it is a particularly data-hungry technique. Here, we present recent work on a statistical inference method that seeks to maximise the insight that can be gained into the structure of covert social networks from the limited and fragmentary data gathered from intelligence operations or open sources. A protocol for predicting the existence of hidden “key-players” covert in social networks is given.
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1 The work presented in this section was undertaken with Dr S. Green (UK Home Office) and is currently unpublished.
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© 2011 Springer-Verlag/Wien
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Rhodes, C.J. (2011). The Use of Open Source Intelligence in the Construction of Covert Social Networks. In: Wiil, U.K. (eds) Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0388-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0388-3_9
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