14 DAY TRIAL // As you know, monitoring is one way to uphold security. And when threats become direr, so do the methods of netting them. One of the worst threat that we are facing now, far worse than malware of any type, botnets or whatever, is cyber-terror. It's as nasty as it can get as skilled hackers already exist and people with enough money to pay for anything exist as well, that's why this is considered such an issue. But, as you have already been accustomed to, in the history of the Web, whenever something nasty pops up, so does a way to counter it!
So, now, researchers fight against cyber terror, monitoring the Net for terrorist activity. It's no new fact that terrorists have become a vast presence on the Internet. After all, the Web does offer anonymity and it's so easy to communicate hiding behind it, not to say anything about the fact that it's so wide spread. Analyzing web content is an important step to take when talking about security (both cyber and real life security).
Funded by the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies, Hsinchun Chen and his Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona have created the Dark Web project, which aims to systematically collect and analyze all terrorist-generated content on the Web. However, terrorists are not stupid, they know that sometimes they're being watched. Usually, spiders are used to track down terrorist activity, that's why "they can put booby-traps in their Web forums" - Hsinchun Chen explains - "and the spider can bring back viruses to our machines."
Dark Web is also being used to study whatever extremists are doing online. You can call it another security measure, if you like, however, Chen says they're using it to study societal change and that computational science can help other disciplines better understand this change. Whatever the reasons, the truth is they're monitoring web activity. I for one, hope that this will help law enforcers thwart terrorism!