Privacy-First Situational Awareness Platform for Violent Terrorism and Crime Prediction for LEAs and Governments to Counter Radicalisation and Protect Citizens (CounteR)

In order to support the fight against radicalization and thus prevent future terrorist attacks from taking place, theCounteR project will bring data from disperse sources into an analysis and early alert platform for data mining andprediction of critical areas (e.g. communities), aiming to be a frontline community policing tool which looks atthe community and its related risk factors rather than targeting and surveilling individuals. This is a key point inensuring the privacy of citizens and the protection of their personal data, an issue that has been of great concernto policymakers and LEAs alike, who must balance the important work they do with the need to protect innocentindividuals.The system will incorporate state of the art NLP technologies combined with expert knowledge into the psychologyof radicalization processes to provide a complete solution for LEAs to understand the when, where and why ofradicalization in the community to help combat propaganda, fundraising, recruitment and mobilization, networking,information sharing, planning/coordination, data manipulation and misinformation. Information gained by thesystem will also allow LEAs and other community stakeholders to implement prevention programs and employcounternarratives rather than relying solely on surveillance.The CounteR solution will cover a wide range of information sources, both dynamic (e.g. social media) andoffline (e.g. open data sources) and combined with world-renowned expertise in radicalization processes and theirpsychology. The CounteR solution will allow LEAs to take coordinated action in real-time while also preserving theprivacy of citizens, as the system will target “hotspots” of radicalization rather than individuals.In addition, the CounteR solution will support information sharing between European LEAs and foster collaborationbetween diverse agencies by providing an open platform which prioritizes harmonized information formats.