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TrackingTheThreat.com is database of
open-source information about the Al Qaeda
terrorist network. It contains data in the form
of:
- Entities: Discrete data elements that
comprise people, places, organizations,
events, etc.
- Relationships: Information about the
personal, organizational, transactional, and
historical connections between entities.
- Metadata: Additional information about
entities and relationships that help form a
more complete picture.
- Notes and Documents: Unstructured text
that provides background information on
entities, relationships, and metadata.
Technology Overview
This site is a research project of the FMS
Advanced Systems Group, a division of FMS, Inc.. It is designed to
explore the application of cutting-edge system
techniques to the problem of threat assessment,
intelligence gathering and dissemination, and
information visualization and analysis. As a
web-based portal, the system is based on the
Sentinel Visualizer database platform, and a
middle-tier comprised of J2EE, Tomcat and
similar web servers, and a variety of operating
systems.
TrackingTheThreat.com attempts to bridge the gap
between rich-client analytical environments
running on Windows or Unix/Linux platforms, and
traditional web-based database query tools. By
providing browser-based geospatial and network
tools, coupled with the standard database tools,
TrackingTheThreat.com investigates the
application of new technologies and solution
ideas.
The History of TrackingTheThreat.com
In the summer of 2002, a small team within
FMS Inc. started work on a prototype application
that would perform data analysis on entity and
relationship data. This prototype, called
Sentinel Visualizer, was designed to apply basic
network theory and social network analysis to
the problems faced by the United States Federal
Government in “connecting the dots”, with a keen
focus on data related to 9/11 and the Al Qaeda
network.
In order to test the prototype system, we
needed real-world data—information about the
people, places, events, connections, and other
metadata about Al Qaeda in general, and 9/11 in
particular. Several months of research using
open-source materials, such as articles on the
web, books, magazines, and other information
yielded our initial Al Qaeda dataset—a large
collection of structured entity and relationship
information. This dataset was initially used to
test and tune the algorithms in Sentinel Visualizer and
provided the genesis of our platform offering.
In February of 2003, we authored scripting
mechanisms to pull information from our Al Qaeda
database and generate a large collection of
static HTML pages. We collated these into the
first TrackingTheThreat.com website, which went
live in March 2003. Since then, the site has
consistently received a large amount of visitor
traffic. Our web logs show activity from all
over the globe, with the largest user audience
comprised of journalists, legal investigators,
and members of the worldwide intelligence
community.
After the initial launch, we provided updated
data, but in the following year, we put
TrackingTheThreat.com on the back burner as we
concentrated on building out the
Sentinel Visualizer
product line. In June of 2005, we started to
re-focus on TrackingTheThreat.com for two main
reasons. First, with the release of Sentinel Visualizer
3.0, we have developed a wealth of new tools and
techniques that would be directly applicable to
a web-based portal. Secondly, the release of the WMD Commission’s report on intelligence failings
in the run-up to the second Iraq war pointed out
the value of open-source intelligence
exploitation. Since TrackingTheThreat.com
represents the original open-source database on
Al Qaeda, we realized that the application of
our latest tools and techniques to the
open-source issue would be timely, and valuable
for the overall research community. The result
of this renewed effort is the
TrackingTheThreat.com website that you are using
today.
Although this second generation system offers
a lot of compelling new features, including
fuzzy name searching, geospatial analysis, and
browser-based network diagramming, it only
scratches the surface of what we envision moving
forward.
As always, we invite your
feedback. Let us
know what you think we could do to add further
value to this public resource.
About the Data
This site contains information collected from
thousands of open source reports, documents,
news stories, and other places which are deemed
worthy of note. It is presented here in a
concise and organized fashion as a demonstration
of some of the capabilities of Sentinel Visualizer.
While we have attempted to assign some degree of
credibility to its accuracy, no representation
is made or implied that all data contained
herein is completely reliable. Users of any
TrackingTheThreat.com content are cautioned and
advised that they should do their own
independent verification of any information.
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