Can Publicly Available Information Be Used in Planning Terrorist Attacks?

I wrote yesterday about the dangers of providing free information to terrorists and as if by magic, this RAND report came out today. The report talks about whether you can use publicly available information to plan terrorist attacks? the answer is definitely yes, but the devil is in the detail. As I mentioned, professional terrorists will go to deep lenghts to investigate and analyse the target, so as to increase the chances of success and to know all there is to know about the risks and benefits. Similarly, this longer process helps the security services to catch them as well.

But the RAND report offers a good systematic way of analysing the information content for target selection. Please remember that this is exactly how an air-force target planner will go about selecting his targets as well. So it cuts both ways. In any case, mum's the word and wall's have ears! :)


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Can Publicly Available Information Be Used in Planning Terrorist Attacks?
With the ever-growing presence of the Internet in people’s lives, it is easier than ever to obtain information from publicly available sources on a wide range of topics. This raises the question of whether terrorists can exploit this availability of information when planning terrorist attacks. Conversely, familiarity with public sources of information can also be useful to policymakers in defending potential targets. However, given the vast array of publicly available information, identifying all the information relevant to a potential target and assessing its possible value to terrorist planners is daunting. What is needed is a way to define the kinds of information that would be useful for planning and executing attacks on particular targets.
A RAND Corporation study developed a framework to guide assessments of the availability of such information for planning attacks on the U.S. air, rail, and sea transportation infrastructure and applied the framework in a red-team information-gathering exercise. Working with six plausible attack scenarios — two each in air, rail, and sea transportation infrastructures — and a modified intelligence preparation of the battlefield (ModIPB) framework based on U.S. Army doctrine, red-team members serving as proxies for terrorists were instructed to find information sufficient to complete an operation plan for each of the six scenarios.
Based on the exercise, the study found the following:
The ModIPB framework is a useful guide to identifying information relevant to the planning and execution of terrorist attacks. Relying on checklists provided by the study team, red-team members were able to identify information that, with scattered exceptions, proved useful for planning the hypothetical terrorist attacks in all six scenarios. The results of three validation exercises support this assertion.
Ease of identifying relevant information varied across information categories. General, descriptive information was the easiest to find, and detailed information about security procedures was the most difficult to find. Some types of information could be found for one class of infrastructure target or for one scenario but not others.
Based on these findings, the authors recommend that, to prevent information that includes security details from becoming public, infrastructure owners should review and revise procedures for operational and informational security. This is especially pertinent given that new information becomes public every day, as do new capabilities for searching and fusing information.
The authors also recommend that infrastructure owners consider information that can be obtained from easily accessible public-information sources, such as the Internet, in vulnerability assessments. Given that new information can become publicly available at any time, such vulnerability assessments should be conducted frequently.

How to protect Cultural Monuments from Terrorism

An interesting topic indeed. Cultural Monuments, such as parliament buildings, major economic targets (stock exchanges and corporate headquarters), historical monuments, residences of kings, presidents and prime ministers, are all high value targets for terrorists. And it will be attacked, no questions asked. Simply because of the high value attached to them. Instead of destroying the whole country, what better way to hit a country hard than to hit these cultural monuments? So these targets will always will be high on the priority list of terrorists. For example, the IRA hit the British Prime Minister's residence, the Al Queda hit NY and Pentagon, the Pakistani based jihadi's hit the Indian Parliament Building, the J&K State Parliament Building, the Mumbai Stock Exchange Building, Jihadi's hit the Jakarta Stock Exchange Building, the Luxor shooting in Egypt, so on and so forth.

So how do we protect them? The authors suggest that one should (1) be ready to accept that these targets will be attacked and create an good acceptance expectation around this; and (2) when it does happen, then re-construct the damaged monument extremely quickly. This will, (1) allow the populace to draw together into the national ethos and (2) counter the terrorists consequent target selection exercise. By and large, the author's do make sense, but one has to consider certain aspects. There are several monuments that are simply not able to be replaced. If somebody blew up St. Paul's Cathedral, I would expect it to be very difficult to replace. Or St. Peter's. Or the Taj Mahal, etc. etc. Furthermore, let us not forget the propensity of governments and bureaucracy to just freeze from the shock or just get hung up on legality (think about the 9/11 Twin Tower replacement project, its more than 5 years and they are still faffing around. Criminal. )

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

TY - JOUR
JO - Defence and Peace Economics
PB - Taylor & Francis
AU - Frey, Bruno S.
AU - Rohner, Dominic
TI - PROTECTING CULTURAL MONUMENTS AGAINST TERRORISM
SN - 1024-2694
PY - 2007
VL - 18
IS - 3
SP - 245
EP - 252
AB - Famous cultural monuments are often regarded as unique icons, making them an attractive target for terrorists. Despite huge military and police outlays, terrorist attacks on important monuments can hardly be avoided. We argue that an effective strategy to discourage terrorist attacks on iconic monuments is for a government to show a firm commitment to swift reconstruction. Using a simple game-theoretic model, we demonstrate how a credible claim to rebuild any destroyed cultural monument discourages terrorist attacks by altering the terrorists' expectations and by increasing the government's reputation costs if they fail to rebuild.
UR - http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/10242690600951664
ER -