CINA MSI Summer Week By: John Hollis Dan Vandiver said the week he recently spent at George Mason University has given him a much better understanding of the many opportunities available to him in the fields of computer science, criminal investigations, and digital forensic science. A rising senior from California State University – San Marcos,…
Annual Report 2019: CINA Sponsored Events
Illicit Supply Networks On March 25 and 26, CINA co-organized an NSF-led conference on “Disrupting Operations of Illicit Supply Networks.” Academic and private sector experts in this field connected with representatives from relevant federal agencies including DHS, DOD, DOJ, USAID, and the U.S. Department of State, to discuss various forms of illicit activities including: trafficking…
Annual Report 2019: Introducing the Multimedia Archive
In 2019, CINA launched its Distinguished Speaker Series of expert overviews of CINA mission topics followed by audience Q&A. Inaugural talks covered such crucial challenges as illicit trade, tracking cash flows, threat financing, narcotics, interviewing techniques, and the role of cryptocurrencies in protecting the anonymity of criminals. Featured experts included Channing Mavrellis, a transnational crime…
CINA Science Manager, Stu MacKenzie, Talks About Student Grand Challenge on Podcast
The Department of Homeland Security pursues tech and innovation in a number of ways. One of the most inspiring is their Centers of Excellence Student Grand Challenge. The DHS-sponsored hackathon challenges students to come up with novel methods of answering difficult security questions. This year, they focused on how to better protect ourselves from drones.…
CINA Distinguished Speaker Series: Tom Holt, Illicit Online Markets
Tom Holt (Michigan State University) examines the various illicit markets operating on both the regular and Dark Web, using an mixed methods analysis of over 100 vendors’ advertisements. He highlights the range of products offered, their prices, and the ways that goods move in digital and physical spaces. Holt discusses the implications of this study…
Annual Report: Introducing the CINA Multimedia Archive
In 2019, CINA launched its Distinguished Speaker Series of expert overviews of CINA mission topics followed by audience Q&A. Inaugural talks covered such crucial challenges as illicit trade, tracking cash flows, threat financing, narcotics, interviewing techniques, and the role of cryptocurrencies in protecting the anonymity of criminals. Featured experts included Channing Mavrellis, a transnational crime…
Annual Report: COE Summit 2019 Student Grand Challenge
As part of the 2019 DHS Centers of Excellence Summit, 30 students from across the COE network participated in a student Grand Challenge to develop groundbreaking, interdisciplinary counterunmanned aerial systems (UAS) strategies for the Homeland Security Enterprise. Thanks to generous support by General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), students from eight Centers of Excellence and their…
Annual Report: CINA Outlook 2020
These illicit activities form a massive global economy sector. While it remains hard to assess their full scope, transnational networked criminal activities are widely estimated to account for up to 5% of the world’s $80 trillion economy. These estimates put this illicit economy on par with, or even ahead of, the economies of most wealthy…
Annual Report: Building an Enriched Gazetteer of Illicit Cartel Activities
Cartel activities occur over space and time at one or more geographical locations, and are based on several possible functional building blocks. However, identifying the space-time characteristics (context) of such geographic locations and the relations between them is not simple, as such information can often be extracted only by exploring the convolution of activity type,…
Annual Report: New Research Projects
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from George Mason University, led by Foteini Baldimtsi, Associate Professor of Computer Science, is partnering with the Blockchain Intelligence Group to pursue a project on “Money Laundering with Cryptocurrencies.” The project will pursue big data analysis techniques to assess money laundering activities using cryptocurrencies, and develop automated (probabilistic) tools to…