Terrorism has arguably been one of the defining factors of our age. It frequently makes headlines, threatening or attacking governments, private business and ordinary citizens. And in many parts of the world, it has been one of the most important threats to peace, security and stability. But what does this exactly mean? What is the nature of this threat? Who or what is threatened, how, by whom and why? What can be done about it or how can we at least limit the impact of terrorism and make sure that terrorists do not make headlines and manage to scare us? These are just a handful of questions that will be addressed in this course that consists of three parts. First it focuses on the essence of terrorism as an instrument to achieve certain goals, in addition to an exploration of this phenomenon and the difficulties in defining it. The second part provides an overview of the state of the art in (counter) terrorism studies. Since ‘9/11’ terrorism studies have grown exponentially, reflecting the rise in perceived threats. But what has academia come up with? What theories, assumptions and conventional wisdom has it produced that could be of help in understanding terrorism and dealing with it? The most interesting results are examined and compared with empirical evidence with the aim to either stress their importance or to debunk them as myths. The final part looks into the implications and possibilities for policy making. The course ends with a module specifically designed to address one of today's most topical issue: the foreign fighter phenomenon.
4.1 Assumption: One can recognise a terrorist
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From the course by Universiteit Leiden
Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Comparing Theory and Practice
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From the lesson
5 Assumptions on Counterterrorism
In this module, we will continue the work of module 3 and look into five assumptions on counterterrorism. It is highly relevant to keep investigating assumptions that underlie CT-policy, both from an effectiveness perspective (is it really countering terrorism?) but also because these policies often have a large impact on societies and might also have unintended consequences.
Meet the Instructors
Edwin BakkerProf. dr.
Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University
Jeanine de Roy van Zuijdewijndrs.
Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University
[MUSIC]
Hi there.
Last week we discussed five assumptions on terrorism, and
we compared them with empirical evidence and scholarly literature.
This week we will look into five assumptions on counter-terrorism.
Five assumptions we consider interesting,
again, either because they're challenged or
the opposite, they're considered very much true and constitute the basis
of much policy making.
Well, I already mentioned several times that
terrorism is a constantly changing phenomenon, which means
you have to update, revise, evaluate not
only your policies, but also theories and assumptions.
Well, we're going to look into
five of them, five assumptions on counter-terrorism.
And they are the following.
First we will investigate the idea that one can recognize a terrorist.
Then, deradicalisation of terrorists, is it possible or not?
And then the third assumption is decapitation of terrorist groups works.
And then terrorism cannot be defeated, a statement heard quite often.
And then finally, terrorism can best be managed
by a so-called hal, holistic or wide approach.
One of the key problems when researching
terrorism is the secretive nature of terrorists
and terrorism, they work in the dark,
underground, it's very difficult to study them.
Well, this challenge is also a challenge to policymakers.
They would like to know who they're dealing with,
and they would like to discover terrorists before they strike.
And a phrase that is connected to that need and challenge is the following,
looking for the needle in the haystack.
Well that sounds like a mission impossible,
you can't find a needle in a haystack.
But fortunately, there have been quite a few
cases of terrorists that have been caught before
they managed to strike and some have been
caught afterwards based on certain clues or signs.
So apparently it's not impossible to find them.
And perhaps they are recognizable.
Perhaps it is possible to make a
distinction between terrorists on the one hand and
non-terrorists on the other, and to find
terrorists out of a larger population of non-terrorists.
Well the process or tool to do so is called profiling.
How does it work?
Profiling goes under different names, including
its original, criminal or offender profiling.
And there are different types of profiling.
The main distinction is that between a focus on the
individual characteristics of a person, versus a focus on their behavior.
So personality profiling versus behavioral profiling.
And the most prevalent method of attempting to achieve a
distinction between an offender, either a criminal or a terrorist,
and a non-offender is to establish a set of psychological, socio-economic,
physical, behavioral, and or ethnic attributes based on prior experiences.
Well, in other words, indicators that tell us what
a terrorist might look like, what are its behavioral or personality traits, and in
what circumstances do they live and work,
all together making up the terrorist profile.
And oftentimes, this is followed by data mining or data searching, using various
sources for what is called secondary
security screening of the group of individuals
with the largest number of indicators. So it's two steps.
First, you look at the population as a whole, then you have a group
that have quite a number of indicators, and then you're, you are going to
do some data mining, data searching, trying to and hopefully getting out of it,
a number of people that might be
terrorists or, ideally, that are the terrorists.
Well, if it works. In an ideal situation,
it might offer the counter-terrorism agencies a perfect
tool to discover terrorists without much prior information
about this individual or group, purely based on
past experiences, past experience with other groups or individuals.
Obviously there's a demand for a tool that could really do this.
Terrorist attacks cost a lot of
casualties and property damage, and counter-terrorism measures
have an impact on the lives of many and also cost a lot.
Well here's a, a statement that is a good example of the demand for a tool,
a mechanism to make a distinction between terrorists and non-terrorists.
And it's a statement from a, a newspaper in Germany that was published in December
2010, and it said airports demand racial profiling to fight terror.
And it reads, the incoming head of
Germany's main airport lobby group is demanding
the nation's transit authorities use racial profiling
to weed out terrorists at security checks.
Well, the idea is that it does not
only make travelling safer but it also reduce costs.
If you use your resources to try to scan and assess everyone you're wasting a lot
of money a lot of time as well
that could also be used on other precautionary measures.
So, any tool that could help us to speed up that process or limit
the time that we're waiting at airports would, of course, be very helpful.
Well on top of that, most of these
measures at airports that take a lot of time
that you and I might find annoying, also gives
us the idea that terrorism is a big threat.
And that's actually what terrorists want, they want
us to believe that they pose a big threat.
So there's a lot to say for any tool that could help
us to reduce time, reduce cost, and also make us make
it less feasible that we have to take all kinds of measures to prevent terrorism.
And the example also illustrates some of the difficulties.
It's talking about racial profiling, so it's discriminatory,
making distinction between people with certain faces and features,
and that's against the law in most countries, and for good reasons.
But, what about security?
What if it really works? The benefits are many.
Still, even if it works, is it proportional?
Is it ethical?
Well these are important, difficult and sensitive
questions which we will look at later on.
First, let's go back
to and have a closer look at profiling.
Where does it come from, and how has it been applied in the past?
I guess the basic idea behind profiling is the perception
among many that criminals and terrorists are different from us.
Well, last week, we argued that there's no
empirical evidence that suggests that terrorists are crazy.
But they could have other personal or
behavioral characteristics that sets them apart from non-terrorists.
Well,
whether true or not, it is an important explanation for
the idea that it might be possible to recognize a terrorist.
I would like to add that terrorists,
themselves, probably think that profiling is possible.
Because from the early days on terrorists have tried their best not to look
suspicious, act normally, make sure that you, you're not noticed by the
police or the secret services. And Jihadists or Islamist terrorists, for
instance, they have used women or Caucasian or white converts or
simply tried to change their appearances, their haircut, their clothes, the way
they walk, all in order to not look
suspicious, not fit any profile. Besides these human aspects,
there is a technological side to the
idea that it's possible to recognize a terrorist.
In recent years the revived interest in profiling
is partly explained by the possibility today to
gather, store and analyze enormous amounts of data
thanks to developments in information technology and the Internet.
Profiling however is far from new and there are quite a number
of examples from the past, for instance, in the late 19th century
the authorities wanted to know the true identity of a person who
was responsible for the killing of a number of women in London.
Well that person was called in the media Jack the Ripper.
I'm sure that many of you have heard of Jack the Ripper, well the investigation
into that case was considered by many as the starting
point of criminal profiling. Another
famous historical case is that of the so called Mad Bomber.
In November 1940 the workers of the Consolidated Edison building in New York
found a homemade pipe bomb, and attached to it was a note and it said, Con
Edison crooks, this is for you. Well more than 30 small bombs in public
areas, theaters, phone booths would follow in the years between 1940 and 1956.
And the Mad Bomber escaped the authorities, he alluded
the investigators for 16 years. And in 1956 the investigators went to
a psychiatrist called James Brussell, and they asked him to draw up a profile of
the suspect, and they gave him all
kinds of clues and information of their investigation.
And James Brussell came up with a profiling, a profile which had many
elements that were simply common sense,
but he also added some psychological ideas.
For instance,
he said that because paranoia tends to peak at around 35, and now we're 16
years later, so he said that the suspect is probably in his early 50s.
Well, his profile proved dead on, and in January 1957, the police knocked at
the door of a person called George
Metesky, who was arrested and confessed immediately.
What do we learn from this case?
Was it just a lucky shot, or is it really possible
to discover criminals and terrorists, preferably before they plant any bomb.
What about more recent success in profiling?
Well in the, one of the early examples of both profiling and
data screening is the example or the efforts of the German Federal
Criminal Police Office or Bundeskriminalamt, and
especially its its president, Horst Herold,
who in the late 1970s tried to, tried to find the terrorists
of the far left terrorist group called Rote Armee Fraktion, Red Army Faction.
Well, they had found out that these
terrorists, they rented their apartments using a false
name and in order to protect their
identity they paid their energy bills in cash.
So what did the authorities do, they asked for
the data of the power companies to find out what
person did pay their bills in cash.
And then in a second phase they looked for they compared this data with
the data of the registry office and other agencies to single out innocent people.
And for all the others they knocked on the door of these apartments, and in the end
they found this way a, one apartment, one Rote Armee Fraktion apartment and
arrested one of its members.
Well, I'm not sure if you want to call this success, as the efforts were huge.
And looking for other examples in academic literature I soon found out
that there are no clear-cut examples of successful profiling in counter-terrorism.
In fact, virtually all important studies by
academics say that personal profiling is impossible.
And it's clear now from the academic world, it's linked to many
studies that show that there is no terrorist personality.
So terrorists are not only not crazy, but they're also not very different from us,
at least not different enough to make profiling possible.
And even if they were very different, we would still be confronted
by, well fortunately, by the fact that there are relatively few terrorists.
So that makes it impossible to
create enormous databases with data on individuals.
Well, what about this attempt by the Bundeskriminalamt?
That didn't focus on persons and personal characteristics,
it fo, it focused on their behavior.
What about this so-called behavioral profiling?
Well again, most academics are highly skeptical as there are many
obstacles to this kind of effort as well as many risks.
One of the biggest risks is the possibility that
incorrect information from profiling can lead to so-called false
positives or false negatives. And both can have serious consequences.
For instance, a false positive can lead to a situation in which a suspect
who appears to fit a incorrect profile is investigated or even arrested.
And the consequences could be that
it blocks investigating other leads, other clues.
Or it can even lead to the escape of
the person or persons who are responsible for an attack.
And the opposite of a false positive is a false negative.
And in that case the profile might provide information that leads
investigators to rule out certain groups while focusing on the wrong ones.
Efforts to profile terrorists in the West in recent years
have often proved to be examples of racial profiling, monitoring Muslims.
And we know that not all terrorists are Muslims, as we discussed last week.
Racial profiling has also resulted in
false positives and false negatives, but it
also has had considerable ramifications for the
individual liberties of the population being monitored.
Creating and fostering stereotypes and the notion of a clash of
civilization, or a, a struggle between Islam and Christianity.
Well profiling on the base of nationality, ethnicity, race, age, gender also
have negative consequences for certain groups,
or relationships between countries and communities.
As a result profiling can be labeled disproportional,
as the enormous efforts have yield few results.
There are many negative side-effects,
including risks for counter-terrorism.
Adding all up it seems that today profiling is regarded an
impossible endeavor and it is likely to remain so in light of current research.
Therefore, we label the assumption that one can
recognize a terrorist by means of profiling false.
More research is needed.
In sum, there is a demand for a
tool to make a distinction between terrorists and non-terrorists.
And there is a long history in attempts to profile criminals and terrorists.
But there are no clear cut successes.
And according to scholars it's, it's almost impossible to to do
individual profiling, personal profiling and they even see a lot of obstacles
for behavioral profiling, as there are many negative
side effects as well as risks for counter-terrorism.
Therefore we label the assumption that one can recognize a terrorist as false.
In the next video we will explore and analyze
the idea that one
can de-radicalize
terrorists.
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