Detection of Organised Crime Signals on Social Media

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New approach has been developed to detect presence of organised crime signals on social media networking site Twitter. Through words and phrases, also called ‘weak signals’, used by the public, a Formal Concept Analysis has been used to group this data according to location and type of crime, and creating organised crime concepts which could alert intelligence analysts to the possible presence of crime, in this case - signals of human trafficking (Andrews, Brewster, Day, 2016).

New, fully-functional prototype software system has been developed, incorporating a 'Social Media Scanning System' and a map-based user interface. It is used for identification, extraction and corroboration of data from social media using ‘automated data acquisition, natural language processing and formal concept analysis’ (FCA) to identify 'weak signals'. 'The concept of weak signals is abstracted from the Canadian Criminal Intelligence Service’s (CISC) definitions of primary and secondary indicators, and the perception that in reality there is little tangible value to be extracted from isolated indicators as there is potential for them to be indicative of a variety of phenomena' (Andrews, Brewster, Day, 2016).

A social media scanning system enables the collection,
restructuring, processing, filtering and output of the data
in preparation for further analysis.

The research has found that detection of organised crime signals from one tweet would not be enough to take any further action but when corroborated by more data from the same location, this could prompt further data mining and investigation (Andrews, Brewster, Day, 2016).

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To carry out the Formal Concept Analysis, the structured data extracted from the information sources must be scaled into a formal context. The benefit lies in considerably smaller volume of information presented to the intelligence analyst, and its corroboration by several sources.
Although this system has not been used in operational setting yet, the utility of the system was seen as mostly positive by various law enforcement agencies from within the European Union (Andrews, Brewster, Day, 2016).

Types of Human trafficking



  • Sexual exploitation
  • Forced labour
  • Domestic servitude
  • Organ harvesting
  • Child related crimes such as child sexual exploitation, forced begging, illegal drug cultivation, organised theft, related benefit frauds etc.
  • Forced marriage and illegal adoption (if other constituent elements are present)

Source: National Crime Agency (2017)


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References:
Andrews, S., Brewster, B., Day, T. (2016). Organised crime and social media: detecting and corroborating weak signals of human trafficking online. Retrieved from http://shura.shu.ac.uk/12133/1/Organised_Crime_and_Social_Media_ICCS16.pdf.

National Crime Agency (2017). Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. Retrieved from http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/crime-threats/human-trafficking.

National Crime Agency (2017). Organised Crime Groups. Retrieved from http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/crime-threats/organised-crime-groups.
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