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Profiling Terrorists—Using Statistics to Fight Terrorism

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Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies 2017

Part of the book series: NL ARMS ((NLARMS))

Abstract

The financial war on terror necessitates authorities and governments to search for novel methods and tools to identify, prosecute and round up (members of) terrorist networks and, preferably, preventively thwart their activities. Terrorist profiling, originating in offender profiling, provides one such method. It aims to derive information from seemingly relevant and coherent sets of attributes. Grounded in counter threat finance, and geared towards incapacitating terrorist business models and underpinning financial resources, the toolkit used is derived from another area of misuse of financial services, namely money laundering. This chapter, based on practice and scarce research, thus far, renders an account of developments in terrorist profiling in the financial economic realm. Specifically, it is discussed whether statistical profiling based on retail banking behaviour can be considered effective in the financial fight against terrorism. We conclude that, to date, similar to the effectiveness of FATF’s financial measures to fight terrorism, the effectiveness of statistical profiling in this respect remains limited.

Some families produce baseball players. Others produce terrorists.

(Levitt and Dubner 2009, p. 62)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Coleman 2011, p. 4091.

  2. 2.

    Blalock et al. 2009, p. 1717.

  3. 3.

    Beeres and Bollen 2012, p. 149; Brück 2005, p. 380; Krugman 2004; Müller 2011, p. 131.

  4. 4.

    Levitt 2012, p. 1.

  5. 5.

    McCulloch and Pickering 2005, p. 470.

  6. 6.

    Ayers 2001, pp. 458–459.

  7. 7.

    McCulloch and Pickering 2005, p. 470.

  8. 8.

    Raphaeli 2003, p. 80.

  9. 9.

    Beeres and Bollen 2011, p. 99.

  10. 10.

    Napoleoni 2010, p. 29.

  11. 11.

    Donohue 2008, pp. 175–176.

  12. 12.

    Levitt 2012, p. 1.

  13. 13.

    Paulson 2007.

  14. 14.

    van Fenema et al. 2015; Leese 2014; Stielkowski and Lisin 2013.

  15. 15.

    Levitt and Dubner 2009, pp. 87–96; Levitt 2012; Levitt and Dubner 2009, pp. 161–165.

  16. 16.

    Levitt and Dubner 2014, p.164.

  17. 17.

    Keene 2014, p. 4.

  18. 18.

    Schmid and Jongman 1988, p. 28.

  19. 19.

    See for instance Sinai 2008, p. 11; Fitzgerald 2004, p. 387.

  20. 20.

    Rae 2012, p. 64.

  21. 21.

    Attran 2006; Charlesworth 2003; Clarke 2015; Davis et al. 2004; Krueger 2007; Rae 2012; Sageman 2004.

  22. 22.

    Philips and Pohl 2012, p. 151.

  23. 23.

    Alison et al. 2010, p. 115.

  24. 24.

    Alison et al. 2010, pp. 116–117; Philips and Pohl 2012, p. 155.

  25. 25.

    Alison et al. 2010, p. 117.

  26. 26.

    Phillips and Pohl 2012, p. 155.

  27. 27.

    Alison et al. 2010, p. 118.

  28. 28.

    Also see Dean 2007, p. 176; Phillips and Pohl 2012, p. 151.

  29. 29.

    Leese 2014, p. 496.

  30. 30.

    Levitt and Dubner 2009, pp. 91–92 and pp. 162–163.

  31. 31.

    Clarke 2015, p. 7; Johnson 2008, p. 7.

  32. 32.

    Zarate 2013, p. 8 ff.

  33. 33.

    Beeres and Bollen 2011, p. 99.

  34. 34.

    Bogers and Beeres 2013, p. 2993; Johnson 2008, p. 8.

  35. 35.

    Zarate 2013, p. 21.

  36. 36.

    See FATF 2014.

  37. 37.

    Beeres and Bollen 2011, p. 100.

  38. 38.

    Donohue 2008, p. 347.

  39. 39.

    Levitt and Dubner 2014, pp. 161–162; Levitt and Dubner 2009, pp. 90–91 note eight of such banking behaviours.

  40. 40.

    Levitt and Dubner 2009, p. 91; Levitt and Dubner 2014, p. 163.

  41. 41.

    Levitt and Dubner 2009, p. 93.

  42. 42.

    Levitt and Dubner 2009, p. 93.

  43. 43.

    Levitt and Dubner 2009, pp. 94–95.

  44. 44.

    Levitt 2012, p. 17.

  45. 45.

    Levitt 2012, p. 2.

  46. 46.

    Levitt and Dubner 2014, pp. 164–165.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Military Sciences, Netherlands Defence Academy, Breda, The Netherlands

    Robert Beeres, Robert Bertrand & Myriame Bollen

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  1. Robert Beeres
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  2. Robert Bertrand
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  3. Myriame Bollen
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Correspondence to Robert Beeres .

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  1. Faculty of Military Sciences, Netherlands Defence Academy, Breda, The Netherlands

    Paul A.L. Ducheine

  2. Faculty of Military Sciences, Netherlands Defence Academy, Breda, The Netherlands

    Frans P.B. Osinga

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Beeres, R., Bertrand, R., Bollen, M. (2017). Profiling Terrorists—Using Statistics to Fight Terrorism. In: Ducheine, P., Osinga, F. (eds) Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies 2017. NL ARMS. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-189-0_12

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