Wynyard is a specialized software in the detection of young people … – Review Computers

More than 20 thousand people from across the world joined in recent times, the so-called Islamic State. The number far exceeds the total foreign recruits to the Afghan war recorded in the 1980s – and the Internet persuasiveness may be related to the success of funding campaigns of young soldiers of the terrorist organization .. It is in this context that the Advanced software Crime Analytics Wynyard. A British company claims to have created the necessary tools to detect, on the Internet, terrorist organization recruitment attempts. What will act before the youth or adults follow trip to Syria or Iraq.

The software Wynyard operates on data stores collected from Twitter accounts, blog posts, or even file sharing sites. To this information is added to data communications processed by e-mail, mobile phone or computer.

All of these data are analyzed by an algorithm able to “understand” the texts published on the web and establish relations that indicate a potential recruitment. In the end, the information is presented through a graphical interface that reflects a network of jihadist suspects and recruits. According to New Scientist, the Wynyard of the platform analysis can also be refined by analysis carried out by researchers of the secret services which may, at any time, broader view of each of the network nodes and try to get more information each person who established relations with these nodes.

Is the Wynyard platform to be used today? The brand itself does not indicate that the intelligence services turn today to this pattern analysis software on the Internet. New Scientist questioned the British secret service and the FBI, the US, but received no response on the matter.

The Internet substantially accelerated persuasion and recruitment processes of potential radicals soldiers and the use of software analyzes the different communications on the Net may represent a gain of time – but it is not the ultimate solution: a specialized event in the subject held in London, there were those who remembered the case of an extremist suspect had already created 140 Twitter accounts, in Following the various blocks that was the target. This confirms that the technology may not be enough to change mentalities.

Jonathan Russell, a member of the group of anti-terrorism experts from the Quilliam Foundation, remember that the fight against propaganda of the Islamists can not be limited to the identification of suspects or censorship of content on the Net, “(the platform content analysis) try not know why people want to go (to the so-called Islamic State). Despite being in favor of using these solutions, do not hesitate to remember that we are neglecting other counter-narrative strategies’.