What & Who discovers terrorist plots?

[davidbfpo]

A Chicago-based academic lawyer has a short note on a different approach; which fits here:

Community-led counterterrorism presents an untapped opportunity, as it recognises that religiously defined communities have a distinct role to play in responding to growing terrorist recruitment efforts in Europe and North America.

Link:https://sustainablesecurity.org/2017...nterterrorism/

[davidbfpo]

Amidst the BBC News "rolling" coverage of the Manchester attack is this:

A Muslim community worker has told BBC News that members of the public called the police anti-terrorism hotline warning about the Manchester suicide bomber’s extreme and violent views several years ago.The BBC also understands that Abedi was in Manchester earlier this year when he told people of the value of dying for a cause and made hardline statements about suicide operations and the conflict in Libya.
The community worker – who did not want to be identified – said two people who knew Salman Abedi at college made separate calls to the police.
They had been worried that “he was supporting terrorism” and had expressed the view that “being a suicide bomber was OK.” The friends had argued with him, telling him he was wrong but had become so concerned they contacted the police.
The community worker told the BBC “all of the publicity is about Muslims not coming forward and this shows that they are coming forward and expressing their concerns.”
The calls are thought to have been made around five years ago after Abedi left school, where he was known to have smoked marijuana and mixed with gangs in south Manchester.
Greater Manchester Police said they would not comment on the claims.

Link and item is at 1635hrs:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-en...ester-40007967

[davidbfpo]

Jason Burke, in The Observer writes again on the 'first line' of defence in CT, after the recent attacks in the UK and his article ends with:

The only way potential attackers will be identified before they kill and maim is through the most old-fashioned means one can imagine: someone warning authorities about what they plan to do. This can be people in the workplace, the mosque, or at school. Research tells us that more than 70% of Islamic militants who operate alone tell someone of their plans. The first line of defence against Islamic militancy is not our crash barriers or covert operations, nor armed cops or MI5, it is a potential terrorist’s brother, mother, partner or friend.

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ly-and-friends

[davidbfpo]

The reverse of telling the authorities. A mother in Birmingham (UK) whose son left for Syria and died there fighting with ISIS:

The clues were difficult to decipher; their contexts always allowed for other, perfectly innocent explanations.....With hindsight, I should have questioned more his distancing of himself from his usual social group — and, possibly, the watchful eye of his father. Naïvely, perhaps, I had passed off the changes in Rasheed as his exploring and forming an identity away from his parents. It was the biggest mistake and regret of my life. But ask any parent of teenagers: Would you have done better?

Link:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/o...dist.html?_r=0

The mother told the police he had gone to Syria and went onto found a group to help families in such predicaments.

[davidbfpo]

A BBC report on a current trial of a Muslim convert who was radicalised quickly and left for Syria - where he was stopped and returned to the UK. It appears he had an arranged Muslim marriage, who disliked his extremism and told someone and two undercover MI5 agents become his trusted friends.
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...yside-40863216

It almost fits what the UK's most senior CT police officer referred to in a Q&A:

Q: Police now work closely with MI5, sitting, literally, alongside them, so you’re getting all that intelligence. But is it harder to counter the threat from lone actors, because, by definition, they are loners and are working alone?
A: Well you can get intelligence about loners but it comes from different sources. So many of the lone actors have at some stage in their radicalisation connected into extremist groups in this country; or connected online to some of the propaganda being put out by Isis and other groups. So that gives us opportunities but also, of course, intelligence comes from communities. So, we’ve got examples where an escalating threat from lone actors has been spotted first by someone in the community who’s picked up the phone to us and that makes a difference. So when I talk about a “whole system effect”, I think expecting a small group of a few thousand police officers and security service officials to be able to solve this is not realistic. We will do everything we can to improve but we’re going to need that wider input from public and other agencies.

Link:http://news.met.police.uk/blog_posts...errorism-60655

Update 21/12/17 after court:

Watson, 27, who held "deep radicalised views" was jailed for five years

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...yside-42440771

[davidbfpo]

The police-operated ATS Hotline after a FOI request has reported:

Calls to a dedicated police hotline rocketed by more than 600 per cent in just six months as thousands of potential leads poured in.
(Later) It received 22,729 calls in the year to the end of June 2016 - almost double the tally of 11,892 in the previous 12 months. The service took 21,596 calls from July 2016 to June 2017.

Link:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a7897346.html

I wonder if calls to MI5 (Security Service) have also gone up.

[davidbfpo]

Nearly missed this report on Anglo-Australian academic research on 'community reporting'; the Australia research came first and was built upon here:

It expands and develops the approach of the Australian study through a sample of 75 community members and professional practitioners, with a particular focus on young adults, matching the demographic profile of many plotters and those who travelled to Syria. The UK study’s preliminary findings suggest we need to re-examine policy and practice approaches around two key issues.

Two points emerged:

First, sharing concerns with authorities about an ‘intimate’ is likely to be the last resort, with respondents much more likely to seek help from figures of authority within communities first....Second, reporting processes around terrorism are not clearly understood by community members or professional practitioners and need to be both strengthened and clarified. As in Australia, respondents in our current study express a strong preference for face to face reporting – they largely do not trust on-line or telephone based methods.

Link to summary article:https://crestresearch.ac.uk/comment/...ity-reporting/ and the full report (not yet read) is:https://crestresearch.ac.uk/resource...ds-full-report

(Added) A statement in November 2017 by a senior police officer, responsible for CT; which in sum says:

funding cuts for local policing will harm intelligence efforts

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...head-neil-basu