The exponential growth of data from an increasingly online world is overpowering traditional intelligence gathering and investigative techniques and requires the harnessing of AI-driven technology innovations to fight back against growing threats.
State actors are exploiting this explosion in the volume and complexity of data to wage misinformation campaigns and foreign espionage on social media platforms.
Drug and human traffickers are using the dark web to co-operate, and criminal gangs are unleashing fraud and money laundering activities affecting both the private and public sector.
Fivecast, a digital intelligence solutions company headquartered in Australia and operating globally, argues the “force multiplier’’ of AI-powered software assessing Open-Source intelligence (OSINT) in the digital realm can help national security, law enforcement and corporate security services fight back against bad actors.
Malcolm Purcell, Fivecast’s Senior Director for APAC, says online data has expanded “beyond human scale’’.
But he says Open-Source Intelligence can integrate and complement many forms of traditional intelligence gathering, including more classified sources as many countries across the region, including Australia, face growing challenges from state actors and criminal groups.
Fighting foreign influence
Fivecast analysis suggests the proliferation of social media has seen an increase in state-sponsored propaganda and “cyber troops’’ being used to spread mass influence.
It has detected an increase in influence campaigns by the People’s Republic of China in Pacific Island nations using social media platforms.
An investigation into Chinese influence in South Africa also identified connections between a group of seemingly unrelated actors liking and sharing “Proudly Chinese SA” posts in a “hearts and minds’’ influence campaign aimed at backing Chinese police operations in South Africa.
“Analyst teams cannot be expanded in line with the volume of data and the increasing risks,’’ Mr Purcell says and adds that Open-Source intelligence can help authorities and companies fight back.
“Being able to have technology on hand that is very automated, consistent and force-multiplies the impact of an analyst team means there is less risk that you will miss that needle in a haystack across a huge volume of data.’’
Open-Source intelligence is information that has been collected from publicly available sources such as online forums, social media accounts, news websites, academic journals, videos, images, public webinars, and government documents.
It also includes ‘data about the data’ known as metadata. This can reveal where a person of interest has posted an image, file, or tweet, when an image was taken, the device used to create it, or the original author.
Using AI, Open-Source Intelligence can be scanned and filtered to obtain details which may link groups together or identify individuals. This can augment traditional person to person intelligence gathering techniques and save hours of police time in criminal investigations.
A deluge of data
Mr Purcell says data overload is a problem now, that is only going to get worse.
“There are billions of smart phone users, and globally on the internet more and more of people’s daily lives are replicated online. There are more conversations online, people date online, do their jobs online,’’ Mr Purcell says.
“The more conversations that are online, the more data that has to be sifted through, whether it’s state interference, or criminal activity.’’
This requires a re-evaluation of traditional investigation and intelligence gathering methods and makes AI tools analysing large volumes of open-source intelligence increasingly necessary to aid government, analysts, and investigators.
However, Mr Purcell says AI analysis should complement rather than replace the skills of an intelligence analyst, police investigator, or security team.
He says human input will always be essential to ensuring AI and machine learning is used in an ethical way which avoids inbuilt biases in machine learning tools.
Mr Purcell says Fivecast works with a range of government and corporate clients around the world, including in the defence and national security spheres, to help them confront this growing complexity.
Its cloud-based software as a service offering allows a user to log on from their own network into the protected enclave of Fivecast to perform data collection.
Once inside they obtain access to a range of capabilities that can allow them to discover specific social media accounts, identify online narratives, understand networks and relationships, and uncover relevant content.
“Then to support that there are AI-enabled analytical tools that sit within the platform that make it easy for an investigator to quickly zero in on the high-risk data relevant to their investigation while avoiding much of the manual processes of the past. So, there is scalability and productivity,’’ Mr Purcell says.
Much of the work Fivecast assists with relates to social media platforms, both niche and mainstream platforms that are constantly evolving, while also covering the surface and dark web.
“There’s not just disinformation campaigns – there are bots, there is advertising, there are all sorts of different voices,’’ Mr Purcell says. “Understanding and finding the information you want as part of that can be difficult.’’
He says investigations in this space are not new. What has changed is that there is now advanced technology, such as the solutions provided by Fivecast, that can assist whereas in the past much of this work was done in house by authorities with very manual, cumbersome processes.
An Australian tech success story
Fivecast is an emerging Australian tech success story. It had its origins in the Data to Decisions Co-operative Research Centre (CRC), which was originally set up to address big data issues that had arisen out of terrorism threats to national security.
It was spun out of the CRC in 2017 into a private company which now has more than 100 employees and offices in Adelaide, Canberra, London and Arlington, Virginia in the US. In April, it announced it had secured a $US20 million funding in a Series A capital raising led by US fund Ten Eleven Ventures.
With a stated company mission of enabling a safer world, its technology is used to fight threats including terrorism, foreign interference, drug trafficking, human trafficking, corporate fraud, due diligence, insider trading and insider threat management.
Mr Purcell says despite its Australian origins, the takeup of its services has been greater globally than at home with some overseas agencies, including in the United States, more willing to embrace new technologies.
While the technology is being harnessed at an international intelligence level, it has also proven effective in police investigations such as those into youth crime.
He cites an Australian example where Fivecast ONYX, a market-leading open-source intelligence analysis solution, was used to investigate a trend where young people were posting videos of themselves engaged in dangerous driving, often in stolen cars, goading police into chases which at times escalated into attempts to ram police cars.
Multiple TikTok accounts were found using two hashtags promoting the activity. Fivecast filtered the accounts and was able “chain’’ them together to identify a wider network and social media accounts of interest.
While the individual concerned used a high degree of security on the crime promotion account, the Fivecast software was able to perform network mapping to identify associates and peers and eventually identify the person who was behind the account. Almost 27,000 online entities were scanned with AI-enabled risk detectors made easily searchable by Fivecast ONYX.
Fivecast was also able to identify and store videos relating to street racing and theft from multiple social media accounts which assisted the police investigation.
“The information is there and can be helpful to investigators,’’ Mr Purcell says. “It’s got a time stamp on it. It’s got a date stamp; you know which account it’s come from. Maybe there is a number plate in the background.
“There is a treasure trove of data that an investigator can potentially tap into. There are threads that can be pulled to either find an individual or understand where they were at specific times.’’
He says the alternative is a police officer sitting on a laptop manually scrolling information, hoping to find something.
“I think most people can agree that is just useless effort.’’
Mr Purcell said Fivecast ONYX was very much a targeted proportionate technology designed to find the information an investigator was looking for while eliminating noise.
Fighting cyber-attacks and international crime
The technology has proven useful in investigating cyber-attacks and international crime such as drug and people smuggling.
“A lot of threat actors jump from platform to platform,’’ he says. “They may go from mainstream social media platforms to more niche ones and then jump over onto the dark web where they actually carry out the really serious crime whether it’s child exploitation, selling drugs or selling identifies.’’
Data that has been hacked in cyber-attacks is often moved over to the dark web to be sold.
“Being able to identify those threat actors from the dark web that may be selling that can be vital,’’ Mr Purcell says.
The technology has also proven effective in running security clearance background checks and identifying potential insider threats in organisations.
“With a security clearance it is all about understanding someone’s motivations, their ability to be blackmailed,’’ Mr Purcell says. “If you can verify information or really understand who a person is, it can be a window into the soul.
“With an insider threat, perhaps some of the warning signs are hiding in plain sight in some of the online data.’’
Mr Purcell says while the digital world has produced a wave of profound improvements in communications, commerce, and productivity, it has unleashed a wave of new challenges for intelligence, security, and police services.
But harnessing AI gives them a powerful weapon to confront and combat emerging threats.
