Identifying criminal organizations from their social network structures

  Identification of criminal structures within very large social networks is an essential security feat. By identifying such structures, it may be possible to track, neutralize, and terminate the corresponding criminal organizations before they act. We evaluate the effectiveness of three different methods for classifying an unknown network as terrorist, cocaine, or noncriminal. We consider three methods for the identification of network types: evaluating common social network analysis metrics, modeling with a decision tree, and network motif frequency analysis. The empirical results show that these three methods can provide significant improvements in distinguishing all three network types. We show that these methods are viable enough to be used as supporting evidence by security forces in their fight against criminal organizations operating on social networks.

___

  • Chatfield AT, Reddick CG, Brajawidagda U. Tweeting propaganda, radicalization and recruitment: Islamic State supporters multi-sided twitter networks. In: ACM 16th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research; 27–30 May 2015; Phoenix, AZ, USA. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 239-249.
  • Carrington PJ. Crime and social network analysis. In: Scott J, Carrington PJ, editors. The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis. London, UK: SAGE Publications, 2011. pp. 236-255.
  • Calderoni F. Social network analysis of organized criminal groups. In: Bruinsma G, Weisburd D, editors. Encyclo- pedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. New York, NY, USA: Springer, 2014. pp. 4972-4981.
  • Helbing D, Brockmann D, Chadefaux T, Donnay K, Blanke U, Woolley-Meza O, Moussaid M, Johansson A, Krause J, Schutte S et al. Saving human lives: what complexity science and information systems can contribute. J Stat Phys 2015; 158: 735-781.
  • Goodarzinick A, Niry MD, Valizadeh A, Perc M. Robustness of functional networks at criticality against structural defects. Phys Rev E 2018; 98: 022312.
  • Jalili M, Perc M. Information cascades in complex networks. J Complex Netw 2017; 5: 665–693.
  • Krebs V. Uncloaking terrorist networks. First Monday 2002; 7: 4.
  • Husslage B, Borm P, Burg T, Hamers H, Lindelauf R. Ranking terrorists in networks: a sensitivity analysis of Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Soc Networks 2015; 42: 1-7.
  • Morselli, C. Inside Criminal Networks. 8th ed. New York, NY, USA: Springer, 2009.
  • Gutfraind A, Genkin M. A graph database framework for covert network analysis: an application to the Islamic State network in Europe. Soc Networks 2017; 51: 178-188.
  • Natarajan M. Understanding the structure of a large heroin distribution network: a quantitative analysis of qualitative data. J Quant Criminol 2006; 22: 171-192.
  • Lupsha PA. Networks versus networking: analysis of an organized crime group. In: Waldo GP, editor. Career Criminals. Beverly Hills, CA, USA: SAGE Publications, 1983. pp. 59-87.
  • Davis RH. Social network analysis: an aid in conspiracy investigations. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 1981; 50: 11-19.
  • Sparrow MK. The application of network analysis to criminal intelligence: an assessment of the prospects. Soc Networks 1991; 13: 251-274.
  • Berlusconi G. Social network analysis and crime prevention. In: Leclerc B, Savona E, editors. Crime Prevention in the 21st Century. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017. pp. 129-141.
  • D’Orsogna MR, Perc M. Statistical physics of crime: a review. Phys Life Rev 2015; 12: 1-21.
  • Shang X, Yuan Y. Social network analysis in multiple social networks data for criminal group discovery. In: IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Enabled Distributed Computing and Knowledge Discovery (CyberC); 10–12 October 2012; Sanya, China. New York, NY, USA: IEEE. pp. 27-30.
  • Borgatti SP, Everett MG, Freeman LC. Ucinet. In: Alhajj R, Rokne J. editors. Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining. New York, NY, USA: Springer, 2014. pp. 2261-2267.
  • Zachary WW. An information flow model for conflict and fission in small groups. J Anthropol Res 1977; 33: 452-473.
  • Milo R, Shen-Orr S, Itzkovitz S, Kashtan N, Chklovskii D, Alon U. Network motifs: simple building blocks of complex networks. Science 2002; 298: 824-827.
  • Kashtan N, Itzkovitz S, Milo R, Alon U. Efficient sampling algorithm for estimating subgraph concentrations and detecting network motifs. Bioinformatics 2004; 20: 1746-1758.
  • Wernicke S, Rasche F. FANMOD: a tool for fast network motif detection. Bioinformatics 2006; 22: 1152-1153.
  • Kashani ZRM, Ahrabian H, Elahi E, Nowzari-Dalini A, Ansari ES, Asadi S, Masoudi-Nejad A. Kavosh: a new algorithm for finding network motifs. BMC Bioinformatics 2009; 10: 318.
  • Chen J, Hsu W, Lee ML, Ng SK. NeMoFinder: dissecting genome-wide protein-protein interactions with meso-scale network motifs. In: ACM 12th SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining; 20–23 August 2006; Philadelphia, PA, USA. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 106-115.
  • Omidi S, Schreiber F, Masoudi-Nejad A. MODA: an efficient algorithm for network motif discovery in biological networks. Genes Genet Syst 2009; 84: 385-395.
  • Grochow JA, Kellis M. Network motif discovery using subgraph enumeration and symmetry-breaking. In: 11th Annual International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology; 21–25 April 2007; Oakland, CA, USA. Berlin, Germany: Springer. pp. 92-106.
  • Schreiber F, Schwöbbermeyer H. Frequency concepts and pattern detection for the analysis of motifs in networks. Transactions on Computational Systems Biology III 2005; 3: 89-104
  • Milo R, Itzkovitz S, Kashtan N, Levitt R, Shen-Orr S, Ayzenshtat I, Alon U. Superfamilies of evolved and designed networks. Science 2004. 303: 1538-1542.
  • Xiong H, Capurso D, Sen Ś, Segal MR. Sequence-based classification using discriminatory motif feature selection. PLoS One 2011; 6: e27382.
  • Buza K, Schmidt-Thieme L. Motif-based classification of time series with bayesian networks and svms. In: 32nd Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKI 2008); 16–18 July 2008; Hamburg, Germany. Berlin, Germany: Springer. pp. 105-114.
  • Kunik V, Solan Z, Edelman S, Ruppin E, Horn D. Motif extraction and protein classification.In: Computational Systems Bioinformatics Conference; 8–11 August 2005; Stanford, CA, USA. New York, NY, USA: IEEE. pp. 80-85.
  • Xing EP, Karp RM. MotifPrototyper: a Bayesian profile model for motif families. P Natl Acad Sci USA 2004; 101: 10523-10528.
  • Leuprecht C, Hall K. Why terror networks are dissimilar: how structure relates to function. In: Masys AJ, editor. Networks and Network Analysis for Defence and Security. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2014. pp. 83-120.