Electronic surveillance

Terrorist attacks trigger surveillance technology reboot

According to an EU security official, European surveillance experts are in talks with their Israeli counterparts that have been developing systems to spot lone wolf attackers online. These assailants, acting without direct connections to an organised group, present an extremely difficult problem for the security forces.

"How do you capture some signs of someone who has no contact with any organisation, is just inspired and started expressing some kind of allegiance? I don't know. It's a challenge," EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove told Reuters while visiting Israel’s second largest city Tel Aviv.

De Kerchove’s visit to Israel in the wake of the tragic attacks was not coincidental. The Middle-Eastern state, embroiled in a decades-long conflict with its Arabic neighbours, is believed to have developed technology that gathers information from social media to spot early warning signs of someone preparing a solitary act of terrorism.

The technology is not yet fully automated and requires a human researcher to set parameters such as age, religiosity, socio-economic background or links to known militants in the population. Once the group of targets is narrowed down, the system can then automatically detect messages that could signal someone readying an attack.