Jérôme Cukier
VAST 2011
Challenge
Mini-Challenge 3 - Investigation into Terrorist Activity
Authors and Affiliations:
Jérôme
Cukier, OECD
Tool(s):
I
used Python to clean and prepare the
dataset, and Protovis (M. Bostock,
J. Herr, V. Ogievetsky, Stanford University) to
develop the interactive tool that visualizes the data.
The
tool can be downloaded at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5259106/mc3.zip
Video:
http://youtu.be/CMPZJLms9tU?hd=1
ANSWERS:
MC 3.1 Potential
Threats: Identify any imminent terrorist threats in the Vastopolis metropolitan
area. Provide detailed information on the threat or threats (e.g. who, what,
where, when, and how) so that officials can conduct counterintelligence
activities. Also, provide a list of the evidential documents supporting your
answer.
The answer
The most dangerous threat Vastopolis faces is a biological attack,
for 2 reasons.
1.
Vastopolis is not equipped to
respond to such a situation. City officials declined to comment on emergency
plans. (4080)
2.
Some dangerous groups appear to be
able to strike.
a.
The Center for Ethical Treatment of
Laboratory Mice is suspected to have stolen the lab equipment of bioterrorism
expert Edward Patino, which can be used to manufacture deadly microbes (3212,
1785).
A possible target for the CETLM could be Ariad Pharmaceuticals, who experiments
on mice (1936)
b.
Food supply seems especially
vulnerable to bioterrorism (3040). On May 15th, a member of the
paramurders of chaos has been arrested near a food processing plant (1878).
Another menace comes from smaller terrorist
groups (4080), especially if they gain access to dangerous equipment.
1.
The network of hate managed to steal
weapons, including 20 rifles and 3 surface-to-air missiles (2287). The missiles
have been recovered by a stroke of luck (2395) but could have been used
otherwise. No details on the rifles though.
2.
Weapon experts believe building a
dirty bomb is within the technical capacity of terrorist groups (3231) provided
they get radioactive material.
There are other suspect groups or
individuals which may not pose an immediate threat but which should be watched
nonetheless.
1.
The F-alliance, who managed to steal
library computers (926) on April 10th. The
computers were found about a week later (3630) but what have they done with it?
2.
Joi Beers / Johnny “the virus”
(2157, 3393) is a hacker which deals punitive justice how he sees fit. He has
been rather harmless until now.
3.
Forever Brotherhood of Antarctica
(1482), intents unclear, did kidnap the mayor’s dog.
4.
Order of the Plague is reported as a
small, capable and dangerous group (4080) although there are no other mentions
in the corpus.
Many articles discuss air security,
following a string of aircrashes, notably that of Antarctica Airlines (which
may or may not be criminal). Attention and resources are being devoted to
screening passengers (790), while it’s relatively easy to smuggle weapons or
explosives through supposedly off-limit areas (1691). Security standards also
differ across companies (947).
A global, cost-efficient strategy
should be implemented for the airport.
