Sociocultural Data to Accomplish Department of Defense Missions Toward a Unified Social Framework: Workshop Summary (2011) / Chapter Skim
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3 The Conflict Environment
3 The Conflict Environment
Pages 17-34
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From page 17... ...
Because of these changes, sociocultural knowledge has become an increasingly important factor in the success of military missions in conflict environments. The workshop's first panel addressed ways in which a sociocultural approach can offer new perspectives on conflict and violence that may improve the chances of success in such missions as combat, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism operations; collecting and securing light arms and military weapons; protecting local noncombatant populations; and militia and criminal gang suppression.
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From page 18... ...
In his presentation, Hsinchun Chen of the University of Arizona described how he has used information from the Internet -- forums, chat rooms, video postings, and so on -- to identify potential terrorists and to map out their web of connections. Beginning in the late 1990s, Chen developed a system called COPLINK that provides a way to link information from a large number of criminal justice databases, such as collections of detailed criminal reports from local police departments (for additional background information, see Hauck et al., 2002)
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From page 19... ...
, not by news reporters." The content is drawn from about 10,000 websites. Much of the content -- about 80 to 90 percent -- is political discus Forum Identification Forum Preprocessing Identification Accessibility Structure Identify extremist Apply for Identify site maps groups memberships forum access list info Identify forums Identify spidering URL Ordering from websites parameters Features Identify forums Identify proper URL Ordering from public ISPs proxies Techniques structure info forum Wrapper forum info info Forum Info Generation Duplicate Incremental Data Backup Multimedia Removal Crawler and Storage spidering result log filtered files collection Recall Statistics Forum Collection Improvement Generation Forum Spidering Forum Storage and Analysis FIGURE 3-1 Dark Web Forum Crawler System.
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From page 20... ...
In particular, Chen discussed identifying two types of sentiment: hate and violence. Working from the text of the message, they pull key words from the text and then use them to define a hate score and a violence score.
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From page 21... ...
Middle Eastern 300 Violence Scores N 4676 3349 beta (slope) 0.079 0.682 200 t-Stat 21.354 48.265 100 - P-Value 0.000 0.000 R-Square 0.076 0.486 0 0 100 200 300 400 Hate Scores Middle Eastern Forum Scores 400 300 Violence Scores Strong hate and violence correlation, especially for 200 Middle Eastern groups.
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From page 22... ...
There is a search tool, for example, that can be used either inside a single forum or across multiple forums to find threads or individual messages that contain particular key words. Google translator1 will translate key words for searchers in various languages or translate messages and threads from one language to another.
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From page 23... ...
It is a striking example of how sociocultural knowledge and techniques can be applied to identify the most serious offenders in an area and control their most dangerous behaviors, and it may well have lessons that can be applied in military conflict environments. Kennedy explained that the dramatic decrease in homicide rates was the work of a group led by Tracey Meares at the University of Chicago -- and it was no accident.
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From page 24... ...
In developing this approach, Kennedy said, he did not start with some overarching theory or unifying social framework. "It began with on-theground observations of what was happening to get people killed, and it drew on enormously rich insights of front-line people in law enforcement and communities, which led to a particular picture of what was happening." This picture of what was happening did not exist in any of the social science or criminological literature at that point, he said, and "if we had started with those literatures, we never would have gotten anywhere." However, once he and his team had a good idea of what was going on, they found that a great deal of existing research in various disciplines was helpful.
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Do we control very much? No, most of what goes on out there is just local random street stuff.
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"The formal records and criminal justice agencies collect vast amounts of information," Kennedy said. "It is just not as helpful in this setting as local people who know what is going on and are willing to share what they have got." Speaking to the higher ranking police officers is nowhere near as helpful as talking with the cops on the streets, who generally know exactly who the core offenders are.
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Burnet and Rockdale Hanfield and Whitler Avondale Northside Regional Towncenter Loth and Thill #1 Setty Kuhn Main & Schiller A-1 Totlot Loth and Thill #2 North Avondale Loth and Thill #3 California and Reading Pendleton King's Run Findlay Park Cotti Boys South Avondale Green and Republic Green and Race Bond Hill Duke's Place Redwood Carryout (Kennedy Heights Posse - K.H.P.) Winton Terrace Feud Alliance Volatile FIGURE 3-3 Network analysis of street sets in Cincinnati.
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From page 28... ...
Kennedy described the approach he has developed as a partnership of law enforcement, community figures with standing in the eyes of the offenders, and the helping professions. The partnership opens a sustained formal relationship with the groups of interest, with plenty of face-to-face interaction in which the groups are told that the shooting and the killing must stop.
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From page 29... ...
"When strong figures in the community don't sanction that sort of thing, it is generally because they are so angry at the outside that they are not willing to stand with the outside against their own." At the same time, the police tend to have their own distrust of and wrong ideas about the community. So it is necessary first to address this mutual distrust and dislike by bringing law enforcement and the local community together to talk explicitly about the misunderstandings and then to turn the talk to common ground and mutual goals.
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From page 30... ...
"Neither the community nor the street guys, if that help is seriously tendered, get to say anymore ‘I am a victim, nobody will help me, so I am justified in what I am doing.' Even if they don't get a job, they feel more obligated to put their guns down." There are a number of lessons learned from these successful core offender programs that could be applied in military conflict situations, such as the current conflict in Afghanistan, Kennedy suggested. First, it is vital to have a specific problem focus.
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From page 31... ...
. But we don't have a SOCINT, a sociocultural intelligence discipline in our national security apparatus." When he has spoken with people in the military and the intelligence community about whose responsibility it is to pay attention to sociocultural intelligence, Patton said, he has received different answers.
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From page 32... ...
In response to a question about whether the tools for SOCINT already exist and have been field-evaluated, Patton responded that the history of this approach shows that the tools clearly exist to get the job done. "If you look at the history of organizations that implemented sociocultural intelligence initiatives, you will see they are successful.
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From page 33... ...
"You have never physically lived in the environment, and you cannot really explain what it feels like to be there, what the texture on the walls is truly like." Ultimately, he said, the only way that the United States is going to be successful in places like Afghanistan is to have people on the ground who are familiar with current sociocultural thinking and know how to apply it to practical situations. "We need real-world, timely information that is ground truth," he said, "and the only way to get that is by injecting human factors into human systems and networks.
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