ASCOPE Analysis

[slapout9]

I am working on an LE project that deals with adpating the ASCOPE analysis for LE use,so with that in mind I am looking for information that:

How an ASCOPE Analysis is actually done.
1-Is it done manually with forms?
2-Is is done with a computer?
3-Is there software for this?
4-How often and in what manner are they updated?

I have seen all the field manual references (FM 3-24-2 Tactics for COIN,etc.) so any examples,references or links would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[OfTheTroops]

I think I left you hanging on this. ASCOPE is just one running assessment. The LE/ MP's use POLICE (corny right) Its in the new FM 3-19.50 (public release). Hope it doesn't trap you in a thought box. I would love to hear what you develop. CHP 1-16through

[Oppenheimer]

Interesting theory since most of COIN theory is the application of LE principles.
1-Any form I've seen is self generated
2-Generally because of the volume of information.
3-Pick your poison. I've used Google Earth and spreadsheets to maintain data (about a 200km square area in Iraq), final presentation was always in PowerPoint...isn't it always.
4-ASCOPE in respect to the IPB process is a continuous process, depending on the amount of time you dedicate to the process it can be a daily update. We learned something new about our AO everyday, but we also focused on that.

Hope that helps.

[Sullivoss]

Currently, most ASCOPE analysis is done manually in the form of the Civil Affairs Estimate and Annex. While ASCOPE is relatively new to the rest of the Army, it has been part of the CA Estimate/Annex for decades. Check out FM 3-05.40 (Civil Affairs Operations) and 3-05.401 (Civil Affairs TTP) for examples of the estimate and annex. This includes the sub sections of each major area as well that is typically not included in FM 3-0, FM 3-24, FM 3-07, etc. Now, all of that being said, this is simply how ASCOPE is catalogued, or written for an order. What, I am sure you have more interest in, is how ASCOPE is/can/should be used.

The best way to use it is in what we call a "nodal analysis" where you look at both ASCOPE and PMESII (Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, Information) as if they are on perpendicular axis. So, for example, you would look at political areas, political structures, political capabilities, etc. military areas, military structures, military capabilities, etc. You get the picture. When you can map these "nodes" geo-spatially and layer then on top of one another, you can begin to see where you have overlap, and where you have people who are influential in certain areas, or in certain sectors, etc. This gives you the "so what" and provides the true analysis of the civil component of the battlefield.

Now, realistically, I am not sure how many units, or even how many CA folks out there are doing this. We are moving in this direction though... Hope this helps!

[slapout9]

All, thanks for the info, and keep it coming if you have anything else,had a late night so I will review them and comment later. Should have put this in my original post but the general idea is to apply ASCOPE to an individual criminal as in manhunting Later.

[Jason Port]

The largest challenge in this arena is the competing interests of the "left brain" and the "right brain" From what I have seen, systems that try to address these topics either fall heavily into the qualitative data - lots of beautiful prose, and no ability to extract it, OR into the quantitative data - lots of how many did how much to whom, or the building can hold n-widgets and we have x-buildings . . .Unfortunately, I would suggest that DoD has struggled to find the happy medium - or moreover, found a method of collection that influences users to contribute both.

For example, were one to look at the data from Iraq, you might encounter spot reports where all of the data is shoved into the collection platforms into a text blob. This blob may even be segmented within the text, or in a certain format. But if you are a researcher looking at a system for how many beds are there for women in hospitals, you might not find it.

But with that being said, this is solvable for sure. I can probably dig up an unclassified schema for much of what you might want to collect on, that you could use as a starting point from what we did working with the CA/HTS community. PM me with your email address, and I will get a copy over to you.

We would also be very interested in helping - my first job out of grad school was working in the Prosecutor's office for a major city, and I still have a ton of cop friends, who are feeling like they are facing a losing battle - To quote a detective I know with about 20 years in - "I don't even know why I bother any more - this city is going to eat itself, and there ain't nothing we can do to stop it. . ." I would love to help change that mindset.

[slapout9]

Still looking through the CA manuals but the Civil Affairs Workbook that can be kept by hand is looking good!!! I would keep the ASCOPE acronym and divide the workbook up by those categories. I also want to keep it low tech and cheap (no batteries required). More later.

[slapout9]

I think I left you hanging on this. ASCOPE is just one running assessment. The LE/ MP's use POLICE (corny right) Its in the new FM 3-19.50 (public release). Hope it doesn't trap you in a thought box. I would love to hear what you develop. CHP 1-16through

No problem, I know your busy. tpd-597 Clear

[slapout9]

This is somewhat what I was thinking about....any thoughts?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HTCA...&feature=feedu

[davidbfpo]

Slap,

I was puzzled what ASCOPE meant and so found it was: Area Structures Capabilities Organizations People and Events. Not an acronym I'd heard before.

There is a lot of commentary on whether modern electronic society has removed anonymity and reduced privacy. See a US perspective, from one of the more astute observer and participants:http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/

Back to the film clip. Yes such modern devices can yield up masses of data, but are you sure Phone 'A' is with Subject 'A' ? We know that mobile / cell phones can be used in ways to evade identification. Really thoughtful criminals will avoid anything electronic. Thankfully few engage in deception.

[selil]

Back to the film clip. Yes such modern devices can yield up masses of data, but are you sure Phone 'A' is with Subject 'A' ? We know that mobile / cell phones can be used in ways to evade identification. Really thoughtful criminals will avoid anything electronic. Thankfully few engage in deception.

Go ahead and try. Drive a modern car? Gothcha. Buy groceries. Gotcha. Pay with cash... gotcha. Walk naked down US50 in Nevada (loneliest highway in American) still gotcha. That is really what the intersection cyber means.

[slapout9]

Slap,

I was puzzled what ASCOPE meant and so found it was: Area Structures Capabilities Organizations People and Events. Not an acronym I'd heard before.

I been working on this since the first GPS monitoring systems came out, some ten years ago. Wanted to apply it to domestic violence/stalking cases( I was literally laughed at for thinking about this some ten years ago). but I do it (have done it ) by hand. Used to plot locations on a city map based on peoples checkbooks,date books and address books. Cross reference to known locations where businesses had CCTV systems and or known offenders or crime locations. Very time/labor intensive.

[slapout9]

Link to Michagin State police cell phone readers used for no warrant data searches. Interesting to see how this turns out.


http://www.theoaklandpress.com/artic...f515008262.txt

[pvebber]

Slap,

There are several products out there for quickly sucking data out of cell phones:

http://www.cellebrite.com/

I'm not particularly happy with the Michigan police asking to do this at traffic stops, but seems to make your data acquisition process a lot easier.

OOps see you got this ...

[slapout9]

Slap,

There are several products out there for quickly sucking data out of cell phones:

http://www.cellebrite.com/

I'm not particularly happy with the Michigan police asking to do this at traffic stops, but seems to make your data acquisition process a lot easier.

OOps see you got this ...

Yes, the ones I have seen require you to remove the chip, evidently cellbrite does not require it. The method of orgazing the data once removed is impotant to......ASCOPE (6 ring analysis)....I am telling you the Rings will rule

[selil]

I really wish I knew more about this cell phone forensics stuff.

[pvebber]

I am telling you the Rings will rule

I'll get back to you later tonight on the other thread, but I've never questioned that systems - theory inspired solutions are not very valuable

Back to cell phone forensics - and large scale data mining in general:

What gets scary is on the one hand you have cell phone forensics stuff that undoubtedly has great value when applied to know bad guys, but raises serious questions when applied more broadly to "us law abiding citizens" - particularly when we are not aware of what data our cell phones are collecting:

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news...phone-tracking.

What constitutes "public information" that law enforcement can acquire without a wrrent, and where does that run afoul of privacy concerns when we are not aware what information devices we carry are making public about us?

This gets really dicey when one considers the likely application of programs like the one in Michagan to collect lots of data on lots of people.It doesn't take rocket scientist to figure out that they are likely doing social network analysis on this data to understand social networks and be able to rapidly create lists of "persons of interest" when a crime occurs.

For those not aware of how the predominant types of social network analysis software works, they typically use "Bayesian Netwok Analysis" that uses proabaility based assumptions about the connections between network nodes and determines the correlation and probability that a member of the network is linked to another person on the network in a particular way.

What is potentially troubling about this is the often arbitrary nature of those assumptions and the proabailities associated them. This was a major part of the downfall of HB Gary executive Aaron Barr in his attempt to profile and expose members of the hacker group Anonymous. Barr used Bayesian Network tools to correlate and find connections between chat aliases and real names and locations. Bayesian methods use a form of "guilt by association" that considers it more probable that one web presence is connected to another based on the temporal and content correlation of web activity.

These methods have a high degree of accuracy , but suffer from a high degree of false positives as well. Barr likely accurately identified some membersof Anonymous with this technique, but also falsely accused a significant number of girlfriends, roommates, officemates, or just random people who happend to use certain leywords in chat at the wrong time.

The extension of this to llink those identified with "co-conspirators" through more coventioal social network analysis leads to a another failure mode that is guareenteed to implicate innocents who happen to be assocaited with the someone they really don't know as well as they might think.

Police are taking techniques that worlk well in the real world - if you are hanging out in a vacant lot with a group of known gang menbers, what are the chances you are part of that gang too - to the web where we often interact with people in online games, social network stes or other web 2.0 services in an extremely narrow context that are difficult for Bayesian analysis to differentiate from nefarious associations.

I support Slap and his brothers in LE to the 9s when it comes to employing these techniques to catch known (or legitimately suspected) bad guys.

I have a HUGE problem however with the idea of the LE community collected large volumes of social network data, particularly in cases where law abiding citizens are unaware of just what data is collected, and using that data to implicate people in criminal activity without any judicial oversight.

There is a huge potential of abuse of number crunching large amounts of data using error-prone statistical techniques that will in effect produce seemingly compelling cases of circumstatial evidence that is statistically guarenteed to result in innocent people being innapproriately implicated in criminal activity.

There are a million stories in the naked city everyday, thus a 1 in a million story will probably occur during each one.

[selil]

Law enforcement has several applications that you can import the entire contents of a cell phone (address books, SMS's, location data, apps data) and then it will create the social network. This is evidence based analysis since it using known contact data. You can then using the same tools import a CLEAR report (Thomson/Reuters) and get secondary analysis aspects based on the information it contains. This will give secondary/tertiary/etc. data points. Adding to the analysis at that point many of the gang and organized crime units nationwide maintain databases of known aliases, crimes committed, known associates, etc. . That is also fuzzy data. Weighting all of that a social network graph can be created and even timeline analysis done on specific paths through the data cloud. Having the handset is a nice factor for physical evidence, but it is wholly unnecessary. It is possible to do all of the same tracking (plus a lot more) from the provider.

[pvebber]

It is possible to do all of the same tracking (plus a lot more) from the provider.

Not every thing that is in the phone is available from the provider, particularly "app-based" data that is where a lot of the social network info content (not just connections) reside.

To me the dangerous thing is that getting info from the provider involves judicial oversight, while police collecting it ad hoc from individuals "who have nothing to hide" allows collection of a voume of data that will statisically result in more "false povitives" as the database grows.

It also begs the question that if law inforcement can get info out, can criminals insert or manipulate information to set up their patsies to take falls for higher order members of the criminal enterprise.

We need to arm LE with effective technology to compete in the Web 2.0 environment, but without very careful oversight, and education in the limitations and pitfalls of its use, we open a wide aperture for unintentional abuses (or overt abuse by criminal enterprses).