Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT) is characterized as the ability to harness actionable insights from publicly available information on social media and online communication platforms.
Social Media Intelligence is a powerful tool that can help law enforcement and government agencies keep communities safe. With approximately 4.89 billion users globally, social media has become an invaluable source of information for intelligence teams to investigate criminal activity often posted on these platforms.
Many traditional data collection methods, such as lawful interception and digital forensics, have been hampered by end-to-end encryption and advanced security settings installed in modern communication devices. One important form of intelligence that has emerged in recent years is Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), and with it, Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT) – a subset of OSINT.
Social Media Intelligence Definition:
Social media intelligence is the ability to collect, analyse and extract actionable insights from publicly available information (PAI) on social media and online communication platforms, enabling investigations teams to address risks to the community ranging from violent extremism, drug trafficking, disinformation, insider threats, fraud and money laundering.
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The Value of SOCMINT for Policing Intelligence Teams
In most investigations, intelligence teams must access social media to collate information from numerous platforms, adding to existing intelligence or finding new leads. SOCMINT focuses on extracting intelligence and insights from social media platforms to help build the bigger picture. Tasks can involve discovering multiple accounts for one individual, deanonymizing criminal users or linking groups of people together to understand their relationships and networks in real time.
Social Media: Challenges
Although the content is classified as publicly available online, intelligence analysts often face challenges accessing online platforms securely and sifting through masses of data across various sources to find the needle in the haystack. Usually, this will be part of a manual search, which can require advanced skills to stay up to date with innovative platforms and threat actors, resolve identities and zero in on risky content. This task is increasingly beyond human scale. The challenges mentioned can be detrimental as manual processes often prolong and stall investigations and obstruct the analyst from uncovering key actionable insights needed to succeed in their mission
Leading the way with Fivecast ONYX
Fivecast ONYX, a cutting-edge OSINT tool enables law enforcement agencies to uncover actionable insights across the surface, deep and dark web in real-time to enhance the decision-making of skilled analysts to solve complex investigations. Fivecast works as a force multiplier for your intelligence team, leveraging AI and machine learning to rapidly target, entity-centric data, networks and risks critical to criminal investigations.Read Fivecast’s latest industry brief which explores the challenges and benefits of social media for Intelligence teams. Learn how SOCMINT provides policing and government agencies like yours to navigate mainstream, foreign and niche platforms to quickly zero in on the most critical identity threats, increase security and protect communities.
Fivecast is enabling a safer world. As a world-leading provider of cutting-edge digital intelligence solutions, Fivecast delivers the world’s most important public and private organizations with the capability to explore masses of digital data, gaining insights critical to protecting our communities. Utilizing leading-edge AI-enabled technology and with the ability to solve the most complex intelligence challenges, there is no other technology that has the capabilities of Fivecast’s solutions.
Visit Fivecast to learn about their innovative solutions and how they are helping law enforcement agencies enhance their investigations.
