Counter Terror Business 48

www.counterterrorbusiness.com | ISSUE 48

EVENT SECURITY

PROTECT DUTY

THE PROTECT DUTY What might the new Protect Duty legislation mean for security teams?

FAKE NEWS

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

COMMENT

COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS www.counterterrorbusiness.com | ISSUE 48

EVENT SECURITY

FAKE NEWS

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

SAFEGUARDING PUBLIC SPACES On 18 November, CTB 365, the online events arm of Counter Terror Business magazine, will be hosting another webinar looking at Martyn’s Law and the development of the Protect Duty.

The Protect Duty, campaigned for tirelessly by Figen Murray, mother of Martin Hett who was killed in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, is expected to be written into UK Law by the middle of 2022. While still to be finalised, the legislation would require those in scope to consider terrorist threats and consider and implement appropriate and proportionate protective security and organisational preparedness measures.

PROTECT DUTY

THE PROTECT DUTY What might the new Protect Duty legislation mean for security teams?

This means that venue owners and operators are having to look at specific counter terrorism staff training, increased numbers of emergency first aid/ bleed control kits, perhaps even augmented physical security measures – all of which come at a cost.

However, questions remain over how a new duty would sit alongside existing duties and delivery of work in the counter-terrorism space.

To help answer some of these questions, our expert line-up of speakers will examine the Manchester Arena Inquiry, security expectations for event venues, protecting our communities against terrorism and effectively striking the balance between safety and visitor experience.

Follow and interact with us on Twitter:

@CTBNews

Register here: https://365.counterterrorbusiness.com/1811/protect-duty/register Michael Lyons, editor

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ISSUE 48 | COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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THE NEW INTERACTIVE ONLINE EVENT SERIES FROM COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS

NEXT EVENT 18th NOVEMBER 2021 • 10AM

PROTECT DUTY (MARTYN’S LAW) HOW TO SAFEGUARD PUBLIC SPACES In Association with

CONTENTS

CONTENTS CTB 48 07 NEWS 11,000 police hired, with more women than ever before; new security guidance for religious establishments; sentencing guidelines for terrorism offences to be revised; and MI5 downgraded intelligence on Manchester Arena bomber

14 PROTECT DUTY In the wake of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, an inquiry was undertaken to establish how such an atrocity was able to happen. Here, Iain Moran looks at what the Protect Duty might mean for security teams.

16 EVENT SECURITY The United Kingdom Crowd Management Association assesses the future of crowd management and event security in a post pandemic world, as well as how we improve the importance of training for a terrorist incident

21 BUSINESS CONTINUITY What are the first business continuity steps in planning for an attack? And what should business continuity planning include? Julie Goddard explores on behalf of the Business Continuity Institute

26 RADICALISATION Since the lockdown measures of early 2020, there has been increased concern that national responses could exacerbate radicalisation. Joe Whittaker looks at the reasons for this, as well as reasons to be cautious

31 INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EXPO International Security Expo and International Cyber Expo will return to Olympia London from 27 – 28 September 2022. Here, CTB looks back at the 2021 show and the newly launched International Cyber Expo

34 CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE Cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated and frequent within the energy industry. Sagi Berco and David Stroud argue that governments need to act immediately to protect their energy infrastructure

36 FAKE NEWS For many terror organisations the coronavirus pandemic, combined with their ability to harness fake news and social media, has proved a menacing combination, writes Jim Preen, in his feature on the dangers of fake news

40 BORDER CONTROL The Nationality and Borders Bill will introduce fundamental reforms that will mean those who enter the UK illegally will find it harder to stay. So why are there arguments against its passing through Parliament? www.counterterrorbusiness.com | ISSUE 48

EVENT SECURITY

42 HATE CRIME All terrorists commit crimes that are based on some degree of hate: not all hate constitutes terrorism. That is the opinion of Phil Gurski, who writes in this article that when we call everything terrorism, in effect, nothing is

FAKE NEWS

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

44 GLOBAL RISKS This year’s Terrorism & Political Violence Risk Maps report found that the coronavirus pandemic both suppressed and aggravated terrorism and political violence risks in 2020. CTB looks at the findings

Counter Terror Business magazine // www.counterterrorbusiness.com THE PROTECT DUTY PROTECT DUTY

What might the new Protect Duty legislation mean for security teams?

ISSUE 48 | COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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CTB NEWS POLICING

11,000 police hired with more women than ever before

More than half of the promised 20,000 additional police officers have now been recruited, with an increasing

number of women signing up to join forces across England and Wales.

The Home Office has said that an extra 11,053 officers have been hired across England and Wales as part of the Police Uplift Programme to help bring crime down and keep neighbourhoods safer, meaning that the government is now 55 per cent of the way to meeting its recruitment target of 20,000 additional officers by March 2023.

Between July and September 2021, female officers accounted for 45 per cent (1,451) of all new recruits.

Eight forces – Derbyshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, Sussex, Thames Valley, Kent and Suffolk – have hired more women than men over the last year.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “Two years ago, this government made a promise to the British people to put 20,000 extra police officers on our streets - and we are delivering on that pledge. I am delighted that today we are more than halfway towards our goal, with an additional 11,053 police officers already recruited to our forces.

“These extra officers have meant police forces can set up new units tackling crime and protecting vulnerable people – including supporting those who have suffered rape and sexual assault. These officers are already on our streets, cutting crime and keeping our communities safe.”

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COP26

PROJECT SERVATOR

Body Worn Video for Police Scotland ahead of COP26

Campaign to promote security operations ahead of COP26

Police Scotland has completed the roll-out of Body Worn Video cameras to armed officers ahead of the COP26 climate conference.

The implementation of the new equipment follows extensive public engagement, earlier this year, which showed widespread support for armed police officers to be equipped with BWV. The camera, supplied by Motorola Solutions, can be mounted on either an officer’s body armour or hat and captures both live video and audio during an incident.

Assistant Chief Constable Mark Williams said: “Extensive public engagement highlighted just how important this technology is in providing

transparency and maintaining high levels of public trust and confidence.

“The Chief Constable has previously set out the operational imperative of delivering BWV to officers, providing increased safety to both the public and themselves as they carry out their daily duties to keep people safe across Scotland.

“The introduction of BWV brings Police Scotland in line with armed officers across the United Kingdom and ensures best practice and evidence gathering, as well as increased transparency and accountability at incidents.”

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Police Scotland is launching a six week campaign to highlight the work of Project Servator - a tactic designed to disrupt a range of criminal activity, including terrorism, while providing a reassuring presence for the public.

Project Servator deployments will form an important part of the policing operation for COP26 and Police Scotland has been working with Glasgow City Council, British Transport Police (BTP) and the business community to build a network of vigilance and encourage the reporting of suspicious or unusual activity.

Key to the success of Project Servator is the support of the public to be extra eyes and ears for the police, reporting anything that doesn’t seem right, to help make it even harder for criminals to succeed. A new six-week advertising campaign will remind people of the important part they can play.

Around 10,000 officers will be deployed each day during the COP26 climate conference for what will be one of the largest policing operations undertaken in the UK.

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CTB NEWS GCHQ

Patel pressed to explain Amazon cloud contracts firm, with Labour urging explanations on whether any risk assessment was undertaken before the deal was signed. It is believed that other government departments such as the Ministry of Defence will also use the system during joint operations.

A letter from Shadow Security Secretary Conor McGinn poses a series of questions for the government, including: why Amazon was awarded the contract; whether the decision was discussed by the national security council; what the implications are of outsourcing data to a ‘non-British’ company; whether any assessment has been made as to the impact on the UK’s cyber resilience; what risks this brings; and what contingencies are in place should Amazon’s systems fail.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is being pressured to disclose whether the UK’s most sensitive national security secrets could be at risk after revelations that its spy agencies signed a cloud contract with Amazon Web Services.

The agreement, estimated by industry experts to be worth £500 million to £1 billion over the next decade, was signed this year.

It will see GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 use a highsecurity system provided by the US-based

BUILDINGS

BORDERS BILL

New security guidance for religious establishments

Borders Bill ‘breaches international and domestic law’

The Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure has released new guidance on deterring hostile reconnaissance for religious establishments.

Religious groups regularly publish detailed information about their venues and events which, whilst useful for their congregation and community, can also be useful for hose wishing to undertake a hostile act against their venue, event or people. These acts could range from petty criminality, such as theft, to ideologically, religiously, or politically motivated acts, like terrorism.

The CPNI guidance is being labelled as important for all those who have contact with the public; the more interaction a member of clergy, staff or volunteer has with the public, the more opportunity they have to inadvertently provide information that would be useful to a hostile.

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A team of leading immigration lawyers has concluded in a new report that Home Secretary Priti Patel’s new Borders Bill breaches international and domestic law in at least 10 different ways.

Four barristers led by the human rights QC Raza Husain claim that the Nationality and Borders Bill, which is currently moving through Parliament, will lead to challenges under international human rights and refugee treaties. The legal opinion paper argues that the proposed legislation ‘represents the biggest legal assault on international refugee law ever seen in the UK’.

Commissioned by the human rights group Freedom From Torture, the report states that the bill seeks to reverse a number of important decisions of the UK courts, including at the House of

CLICK TO READ MORE

Lords and court of appeal level, given over the last 20 years. It draws up battle lines between the government and human rights lawyers that are likely to be tested in courts if, as expected, the Bill passes through Parliament and becomes law in the Spring.

The stated objectives of the Bill are to make the asylum system fairer, deter illegal entry to the UK, and remove people with no right to be in the country. It also means that anyone arriving in the UK by an illegal route could have their claim ruled as inadmissible, receive a jail sentence of up to four years, have no recourse to public funds, and could have their family members barred from joining them.

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CTB NEWS SENTENCING

Sentencing guidelines for terrorism offences to be revised

Plans to revise four sentencing guidelines for terrorism offences in England and Wales to reflect

changes brought in by the CounterTerrorism and Sentencing Act 2021 have been published for consultation by the Sentencing Council.

The Council is seeking views on the draft guidelines from judges, magistrates and others with an interest in this area.

Revisions being proposed by the Council to the Preparation of terrorist acts and Explosive substances (terrorism only) guidelines include new guidance for judges sentencing offenders who meet the criteria for a ‘serious terrorism sentence’. This is a new type

of sentence that carries a minimum penalty of 14 years’ custody unless exceptional circumstances apply.

It also includes new guidance and principles for judges to follow when considering whether there may be exceptional circumstances that justify a departure from that sentence.

The consultation applies to adult offenders and will run from 20 October 2021 to 11 January 2022.

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SECURITY

Counter terror training for security guards The Security Industry Authority has announced that all Door Supervision and Security Guard licence holders will need a first aid qualification and the new top-up training before they renew their licence.

Top-up training includes safety-critical content including updated counter terror training and advice for emergencies and incidents. Top up training for door

supervisors will include refreshed physical intervention training.

The requirements will only affect existing Door Supervision and Security Guard licence holders when they come to renew their licence. This means that these changes will roll out over the course of the next three years.

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LONDON

London’s town centres to be bolstered with new officers

The Metropolitan Police has announced details of how town centres will be bolstered with hundreds of new police officers as part of a new local policing boost.

The announcement reveals that the capital will soon be getting an

additional 650 police officers who will work solely in busy public places and other areas, including those where women and girls often feel unsafe.

From this, 500 officers will form town centre teams across the capital and will be based permanently in busy

neighbourhoods. The extra officers will patrol at the times that will have the most impact on crime as well as on public safety, such as in the evenings.

A further 150 officers will join London’s dedicated ward officers – commonly referred to as ‘Bobbie’s on the beat’ – who are already based in communities and work with Londoners to drive down crime and problem solve local issues, including concerns raised by women about areas or individuals.

The town centre teams follow the creation of 12 Predatory Offender Units in 2020, which to date have arrested more than 2,000 suspects for domestic abuse, sex offences and child abuse; and continue to focus on the most dangerous offenders who present the highest harm to women and girls.

It is expected the first tranche of teams and officers will be in place by late 2021. All 19 teams are expected to be in place by spring 2022.

CLICK TO READ MORE

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CTB NEWS MANCHESTER ARENA

‘Different actions could have stopped plot’ says MI5 Abedi had left the UK with his family on a one way ticket to Libya on 15 April 2017. He returned five weeks later carrying only hand luggage, four days before carrying out the suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert.

The inquiry has been told that Abedi bought a new phone and sim card and took ‘anti-surveillance’ measures to stay ‘off grid’ by getting a bus and taxi to where he had left the bomb components.

Pete Weatherby QC, representing some of the bereaved families, said ‘port action’, where someone is questioned and searched, could have revealed Abedi’s plans by something he said or something being uncovered on his phone.

On 25 October, Witness J had agreed that not stopping Abedi, taking a port action, had been a missed opportunity.

An unnamed senior MI5 officer has accepted that stopping and questioning the Manchester Arena terrorist when he returned to the UK from Libya could have led police to the bomb.

The inquiry into Salam Abedi’s actions in may 2017 has heard evidence

evidence from an intelligence officer given the pseudonym Witness J. Visible only to lawyers and inquiry chair Sir John Saunders, Witness J said it was conceivable that different actions would have prevented Abedi carrying out the plot.

MI5

FAR RIGHT

MI5 downgraded intelligence on Manchester Arena bomber

Far-right targets hotels housing Afghan refugees

The inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing has heard how MI5 downgraded what turned out to be ‘highly relevant’ evidence about the suicide bomber Salman Abedi.

Witness J, a senior MI5 officer, anonymously told the inquiry that there were two pieces of intelligence received by the intelligence agency about Abedi in the months before the attack that were assessed at the time to relate to possibly non-nefarious or non-terrorist criminality. Only after the attack did MI5 realise that the evidence was important.

The inquiry heard that MI5 first received information about Abedi on 30 December 2010, the day before his 16th birthday, but there was ‘nothing to suggest’ then that he was a risk to national security. From December 2013 to January 2017, he was in direct contact with three men, all separate ‘subjects of interest’, whilst between April 2016 and April 2017, a month before the attack, he had contact with three more subjects of interest, all with suspected links to the ISIS terror group.

On one occasion Abedi had himself been made a subject of interest, but his file was closed five months later, in July 2014, based on a ‘lack of engagement’ with extremists.

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It has been reported that there has been an increase in far-right groups targeting hotels where Afghan refugees are being accommodated, following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.

Britain First is one of the most prominent organisations involved and, according to its own website, has made more than a dozen unsolicited visits in recent weeks to hotels housing Afghan refugees in areas including Telford, Stoke-on-Trent and Colchester.

The Hope Not Hate campaign group has stated that resettlement schemes for Afghans have became a focal point for many such groups, with the arrival of the refugees having led to the far right ‘reviving, and refining, similar attacks used during the Syria crisis’.

Britain First and For Britain, another farright political party, claim to be concerned

about the cost of the resettlement of Afghan refugees to UK taxpayers, with For Britain focusing on claiming that the new migration will increase unemployment among British workers, exaggerating the framing of refugees as potential terrorists or sexual predators.

Britain First has reportedly been barred from various social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Instead, it urges supporters to download the Telegram app where it broadcasts many of its anti-migrant hotel videos.

According to Hope Not Hate, some of these recent videos posted on Telegram have received 40,000 views.

CLICK TO READ MORE

ISSUE 48 | COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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PROTECT DUTY

PROTECT DUTY IS COMING: WHAT MIGHT THIS NEW LEGISLATION MEAN FOR SECURITY TEAMS?

I

n the wake of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, an inquiry was undertaken to establish how such an atrocity was able to happen just 10 years after the London 7/7 bombings. As well as documenting the various failings that collectively exposed a route for the attack to take place, the subsequent report provided a series of recommendations for owners of large organisations and operators of public spaces and venues. One of these was a new Protect Duty.

WHAT IS THE PROTECT DUTY AND WHAT WILL IT INCLUDE? Though yet to be enshrined in law, the potential scope of the Protect Duty is far-reaching and expected to mandate that UK organisations and operators to engage with security and counter terrorism measures in new and profound ways.

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A now closed public consultation considered three different areas that a Protect Duty could apply to: public venues that can accommodate an audience of more than 100; large organisations employing more than 250 people; and public spaces.

Further detail is still light, but one suggested recommendation is that there be a duty to implement more specific risk assessments and mitigation measures proportionate to the venue/ organisation and its environment.

As well as whatever the nature of the terrorist threat is at that time.

HOW MIGHT THE PROTECT DUTY IMPACT THE UK’S LEGAL REQUIREMENTS? It’s difficult to say at this stage, but we do know that the government is proposing to enforce the Protect Duty through

COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE | ISSUE 48

a blend of advice, enforcement notices, and civil penalties.

Rather than a total overhaul, the new Protect Duty will complement existing duties on organisations and operators of public spaces. With the likes of risk assessments already a staple of many duty holder’s risk management procedures, the Protect Duty is not predicted to impose any additional burdens. Instead, it will produce a parallel system with civil but with the threat of considerable reputational damage in the event of a breach, ever present.

However, where a breach of duty exposes people to risk, criminal consequences such as fines will likely remain and if deemed serious enough, prosecutions could be brought under legislation such as the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act.

PROTECT DUTY

WHAT COULD THE PROTECT DUTY MEAN FOR THE SECURITY PROFESSION? In the subsequent inquiry, one of the key criticisms levelled at the security teams on the night of the Manchester Evening Arena bombing was their lack of preparedness and proactiveness. The threat level at the time was not sufficiently appreciated and existing risk assessments and threat mitigation procedures were deemed to be substandard. The Protect Duty aims to ensure this is never repeated.

It will do so by recommending the following:

Employee training and empowerment Those managing security teams employed to safeguard locations falling under the remit of the Protect Duty will need to methodically review their training schedules. They will also need to provide evidence that all third-party security staff have the requisite skillsets before the signing of any contract.

Security personnel will feel more empowered by both the establishment of professional standards and an increase in the frequency of training programmes to identify threats and respond to them. A renewed confidence and readiness to react to suspicious behaviours is critical for avoiding a major incident. This risks being undermined by unqualified and untrained personnel.

Though various agencies in the UK such as Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) and the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO) provide eLearning courses, these should supplement the training of security personnel, not form

the basis of it. Practical ‘prevent and respond’ training, encompassing first aid and physical restraint techniques should take priority and be completed regularly.

Consider new and unforeseen terror vulnerabilities While much of the world was placed under lockdown during the Covid19 pandemic, terrorist incidents in the West did decline. The threat though, has not gone away.

Many public venues and spaces that attract large crowds, such as music concerts and sports events, continue to experience large, external queues with measures such as temperature checks taking place at entrances. This creates an opportunity for terrorists who would use vehicles as weapons.

Significant consideration must be given to this threat and carefully planned antiterror measures, such as the installation of temporary, approved perimeter security solutions, may be necessary.

Create, review and enforce plans It is expected that the Protect Duty will recommend that initial risk assessments be followed by the creation of a ‘Protect Plan’. These plans will be developed to identify measures that mitigate risks and vulnerabilities, be regularly assessed and reviewed, and be configurable so they can flex with whatever the threat level is at the time.

Threats such as those posed by terrorism will also require risk assessments to be subject to external reviews, rather than be monitored in-house.

Likely, this grade of risk assessment will also need to contain certain

standardised criteria, be appropriately differentiated for the venue or event to which they apply, and be stamped with an official kitemark of approval.

Plans and risk assessments will also be expected to go through rigorous review processes, be adjusted to meet evolving threat levels, and accommodate the emergence of new, threat-mitigating technologies and strategies.

Security teams should also be prepared for both planned and unplanned inspections of the sites or venues they are managing. Inspections will likely be altered to cover licensing checks with the message made clear that any breaches will invite enforcement consequences as serious as those relating to Health & Safety legislation.

Though the new Protect Duty is yet to be finalised, let alone enshrined in law, it is coming and will impact how security teams in the UK operate. To prevent rushed procedure changes and the stresses and mistakes that can follow, preparations for its enactment must begin now.

Depending on what the Protect Duty mandates, some of the measures outlined in this article may not be necessary, but it is advised that all are implemented where possible. When it comes to the matter of public safety, exceeding requirements carries far fewer risks than failing to meet them. L

By Iain Moran, director at ATG Access.

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.atgaccess.com

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EVENT SECURITY

THE FUTURE OF CROWD MANAGEMENT AND EVENT SECURITY IN A POST PANDEMIC WORLD W

hat a title and what an opportunity to speak to the wider security industry. These were my first thoughts when asked to write a short article on behalf of the United Kingdom Crowd Management Association (UKCMA) which I chair.

There was a subtitle though: ‘How do we improve standards and the importance of training for a terrorist incident’. Easy enough, until I really started to think about the very last part of that title. Then I began to ask myself if we were talking about prevention or aftermath. My conclusion was that it surely must be both. It’s not a short article anymore.

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COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE | ISSUE 48

First, we need to look at where we are and briefly, the journey we have taken over the last 18 months. Like so many in events, security, and the wider service industry, when lockdown came on 23 March 2020, I sat and scratched my head as to what the future held.

After 33 years in the Metropolitan Police, I had launched a Crowd Safety Management Company in 2009 which had grown from strength to strength.

Then 97 per cent of my business for the summer disappeared as I scrabbled to get back from a job in Vancouver before we (and the Canadians) shut the borders.

The UKCMA soon started to warn of the mass

EVENT SECURITY

departure of staff, SIA, and stewards, as well as highly experienced safety and technical crew who sought jobs elsewhere. Many found the new pastures greener than the fields they were used to working in, as well as drier, warmer and with better pay and conditions.

Those who could have made a difference insisted staff would return when events started again, and it was up to the industry to increase rates of pay and conditions for often minimum waged staff. We were relying on promoters and organisers (including local authorities) to put up pay rates after they had suffered a year (which became two years) of no earnings and with tens of thousands of tickets sold at 2019 rates but build costs at 2021 prices. These are the same promoters who would often haggle down pay rates by 5p or 10p per hour and play companies off against each other, even when the market was strong. Well slowly but surely, and very reluctantly, they have had to raise those rates to attract people back but, there remain huge shortages compared to when we started with Covid-19, and we were short even before that.

Those rising wages have tempted a few back but, a combination of lack of confidence, the extended Covid 3 closure powers, nervousness about the industries ongoing stability and yes, even Brexit (so many foreign workers left and have not returned) that we remain incredibly under strength. Normality now often looks like organisers having to

overbook staff by 20-30 per cent and still often under achieve by 10-15 per cent, but how many risks can you take? The day you overbook by 30 per cent and everyone turns up, then what? Pay them and take a huge hit or, send them home and damage the confidence in those staff even further?

As predicted, shortages are now the norm and events large and small are struggling to get through. Its not just staff of course, there are huge shortages in the equipment pipeline and the driver shortages (and increasing wages there) are adding to the problem.

With this background of reduced numbers, we have also been expected to enforce strict Covid measures and for many local authorities, this has been the sole focus in planning and monitoring events. Recently a planned four-hour SAG spent three hours 45 minutes reviewing Covid plans yet that weekend we would bring 12,500 people and park 5,000 cars on a grassy sloping field with forecast high winds, heavy rain, and lightning. My ‘spider senses’ were tingling and were far more focussed on weather related issues than Covid, but the SAG was not interested in those safety plans.

So, short staffed and with other real worries ahead of the event, we then had to promise to divert 15 per cent of the remaining staff towards Covid checks, including in one case an insistence to use heat sensors to take the forehead readings of people who would be E

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EVENT SECURITY  queuing in 80˚ F temperatures for two hours (with most of the delays caused by the Covid checks themselves).

That level of ‘monocausal thinking’ is highly dangerous but sadly common place and, as we drift, seemingly inexorably, towards the government’s Plan B and the introduction of Covid Passports, remains a real challenge for the industry. If we don’t comply, the dreaded Covid 3 Regs hang like the sword of Damocles to be swung by the same authorities who would bend over backwards for Covid mitigations, rather than use their existing H+S powers when other obvious risks are apparent at events. (NB: I should point out that many SAGs have been outstanding).

Against this background, we are also supposed to focus (and in the opinion of some, solely focus) on the outcomes and recommendations of the Manchester Arena Inquiry (MAI) and the Protect Duty/Martyn’s Law. We cannot and we will not because public and crowd safety is far wider than just terrorism.

We expect people to join our industry when they have just seen an 18-year-old (at the time of the incident) hauled over the coals on live on TV, having been identified as responsible for a ‘missed opportunity’ when 22 lives were lost. Show me any teenager, or adult, that wants to carry that burden when stacking shelves at Sainsburys pays better.

WHICH THREAT? We talk of improved training standards and the MAI recommendations say we must ‘guard against complacency’ – but how? How do we brief every detail of what the team might need to know when we have no idea at the start of each day what the threat might be? Gun, knife, drone attack, suicide bomber, hostile vehicle momentum attack, acid, or bleach spray. Oh yes, and all the ‘other stuff’ that happens like drugs, drunks, violence against staff, need I go on? How do you brief all the detail of what to look out for, how to tackle a suspect (and stay safe) and what to do if the suspect succeeds and injures some but is still attacking others?

We don’t pay anyone enough to tackle those suspects. Not even the police, even if armed, are paid well enough for those rare occasions where they tackle a gun or knifeman, never mind a terrorist.

What do we really expect of staff in most of those circumstances? In my view and that of many colleagues, I expect them to ditch the jacket and ‘Run, Hide, Tell’. They are at that point no more than a member of the public. I cannot, nor will I ever, tell someone on £10 an hour, or even ten times that, to tackle a terror suspect. Should they even challenge that person if they genuinely fear their intent is mass murder? Ideally, the best they can do is take cover from view, observe from a distance,

WE ARE ALSO SUPPOSED TO FOCUS ON THE OUTCOMES AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE MANCHESTER ARENA INQUIRY AND THE PROTECT DUTY/MARTYN’S LAW. WE CANNOT AND WE WILL NOT BECAUSE PUBLIC AND CROWD SAFETY IS FAR WIDER THAN JUST TERRORISM and report upwards until armed police arrive to assess and challenge.

If every time we saw someone suspicious with or without a bag, we rang 999, how many more calls would there be? How many more incidents of men and women dressed in black with masks, carrying guns and running, shouting and screaming ‘get down’ would there be? How many more ‘self-initiated crowd evacuations’ might we see such as the one in Oxford Street on Black Friday 2017 with 16 people injured, eight of them needing hospital treatment. Just as importantly, how long can we operate at a level of such response until we start to become complacent again or the media and the public insist our ‘overreaction’ is risking public safety?

During the Toronto Raptors victory parade in 2019, shots were fired in a dense crowd and a spontaneous evacuation occurred that left scores injured. There is evidence that a secondary, larger surge took place as firearms officers arrived. Thousands, perhaps with a heightened sense of fear from the first incident, ran in all directions.

When Covid is ‘over’ and we can complete that review, I am convinced we will find far more injured from the second pulse than from the first. Have we even started to train our teams on how to deal with an apparently unexplained mass evacuation such as occurred there, or in Oxford Circus or in Times Square, NY in August 2019 when a motorcycle backfired and twenty people were hurt running away?

How do we even start to train our teams to deal with the unintended consequence of flight from misperceived threats? Incidentally, if you are scratching your heads on that concept, read the recent excellent reports prepared by Dermott Barr, John Drury and Sanjeedah Choudhury on the subject.

all attacks, we must do what we can to prepare for when they succeed.

I would, however, also argue that this is not about just security staff.

Why can’t we teach basic first aid in schools? Why do we assume that when we talk about terrorism, people will get scared and ‘panic’, when all the evidence suggests they respond better when they have an expectation that something might happen and know how to respond? We do not have to live in fear, we are just better able to respond and do so more quickly if we are informed and alert.

If we want a serious and grown-up discussion about preventing and responding to terrorism in the future, we need to remove the constraints of talking about the government, police security services and security/ stewarding companies being the answer. We must widen the argument to say that we all, as a nation, need to shoulder the burden of Prevent, Protect and Prepare. If we are all targets, then we must all be part of the solution. L

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.ukcma.com

A BIGGER SOLUTION Let me just say, I am completely in support of first aid training for staff, for enhanced ACT training and believe that we should all be better prepared for an attack.

Accepting that we will never prevent

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Project Servator – together, we’ll help keep people safe Project Servator is a policing tactic that aims to disrupt a range of criminal activity, including terrorism, whilst providing a reassuring presence for the public.

The approach seeks to disrupt hostile reconnaissance – the information-gathering terrorists and other criminals need to do to plan a criminal act.

It was developed by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) before being trialled at the City of London Police.

Uniformed and plain-clothed police officers are speciallytrained to identify tell-tale signs that someone may be carrying out hostile reconnaissance. If they suspect they are, they’ll speak to them to find out if there’s further cause for concern and if they need to take any further action. There may be an innocent explanation.

If so, they’ll be free to get on with their day. Officers will always explain why they stopped someone.

Project Servator is now being deployed in 22 UK police forces, and overseas by Royal Gibraltar Police and New South Wales Police Force, in Australia. It has been responsible for gathering intelligence that’s helped counter terrorism investigations, and taken illegal items off the streets, such as weapons and drugs. It’s been used to help keep major events secure, including the recent G7 summit

in Cornwall, music festivals and sporting occasions.

You will see Project Servator officers in town and city centres and places where people gather. They plan their deployments in advance, but they’re designed to be unpredictable, to keep criminals guessing.

They’re often supported by other specialist police teams and tactics, including firearms officers, police dogs and horses, drones and automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR). Officers also work with security staff and CCTV operators.

As well as looking out for suspicious activity, officers will approach you and talk to you about how you can play a part in helping to keep people safe.

Whether you’re a passer-by or work in the area, they’ll encourage you to be their extra eyes and ears.

You’ll know if something doesn’t seem right where you work or live or spend your free time. It’s important to trust your instincts and report it straight away.

If it’s at your workplace, report it to a manager or security staff. If you’re passing by, tell a police officer or member of staff at the location.

You can also call police on 101 if there’s no one there to report it to. In an emergency, always call 999.

Together, we’ll help keep people safe.

Find out more counterterrorism.police.uk/servator

BUSINESS CONTINUITY

BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING FOR TERRORISM

I

t is an unfortunate fact that many organisations fail to plan for the impacts of a terrorist attack on their staff and business operations, often because it’s in the ‘too hard’ box.

It can also be down to people assuming it won’t happen to them, or they don’t want to contemplate the harsh reality of something so awful happening.

True story: In a previous position of employment, I was in an executive meeting where one of the members said he didn’t want me to refer to terrorism with the staff when doing BC planning, as he thought it ‘would scare people’. This was during 2017, a particularly bad year for terrorism in the UK, and my response was that if staff aren’t a bit scared already, then they probably haven’t seen any news for the past 12 months!

Thankfully the CEO sharply rebuked the individual, saying that it’s no use trying to pretend it’s not happening, but it was an interesting example of a ‘head in the sand’ attitude by a senior manager. The positive end to the story is over 500 staff voluntarily attended classroom-based counter terrorism awareness training as part of the ‘Protect’ strand of NaCTSO training programme. I

didn’t have to drag them there. They came because they understood its value for their own, and their colleagues’ safety.

WHAT IS BUSINESS CONTINUITY (BC)?

The BCI describes Business Continuity as ‘about having a plan to deal with difficult situations, so your organisation can continue to function with as little disruption as possible.

A good BC plan recognises all potential threats to an organization and analyses what impact they may have on day-to-day operations. It also provides a way to mitigate these threats, putting in place a framework which allows key functions of the business to continue even if the worst happens’.

WHAT ARE THE FIRST BC STEPS IN PLANNING FOR AN ATTACK? The first job is to ensure all members of the top team understand the threat, and support the planning effort. They should be reminded that they have a legal ‘duty of care’ responsibility for staff and visitors on their premises. [and for certain sectors, to watch for the new ‘Protect Duty’ (Martyn’s Law) which has just completed consultation and is expected to become law in mid 2022]. E

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Maximise safety and security with free See, Check and Notify (SCaN) training SCaN educates staff at all levels of an organisation about hostile reconnaissance – the informationgathering terrorists and other criminals need to do. It helps to ensure that those seeking to cause harm can’t get the information they need.

As an added bonus, the skills staff learn help to provide an enhanced customer service experience.

See, Check and Notify See what?

In a nutshell, anything that doesn’t seem right.

Staff are educated about the importance of being aware of their surroundings and possible signs that someone may be gathering information to help them plan or prepare a criminal act.

Check what?

We encourage people to trust their instincts. If, for example, staff are concerned about someone’s behaviour, it could be

as simple as approaching them and saying hello. They may actually be a bit lost and need some help finding their way.

This sort of simple interaction can help to determine whether there is anything that needs further investigation, and makes it harder for hostile reconnaissance to be carried out.

Notify who about what?

Anything that doesn’t seem right. Notifying can be done through local channels and procedures.

Or it could be reporting concerns to the police through the online reporting tool at gov.uk/ACT, in person, or by calling 999 in an emergency.

Hundreds of organisations across the UK have signed up to SCaN, including: retailers; airports; tourist attractions; sports clubs; event organisers; entertainment destinations; educational establishments; local authorities; hotels; religious establishments; and transport operators.

The free training is delivered by qualified trainers working for the police in counter terrorism roles.

Find out more at cpni.gov.uk/Scan

BUSINESS CONTINUITY  The next task is to risk assess the threat to the organisation. There are three perspectives which the top team should consider and drive forward; Firstly, ‘could we be a direct target due to the nature of our business or because of our links with other organisations or causes? Secondly, ‘could we be impacted because we are geographically close to a high-risk target’? Thirdly, ‘could we be caught up in an incident due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time’? - i.e., due to an indiscriminate attack (either physical or digital). note: the third perspective could

pretty much apply to any organisation, so it should appear on everyone’s risk register!

Based on risk assessment, next comes the development of business continuity that plans are proportionate and phased to prevent under reaction or over reaction. It’s also important that they are short, succinct and easy to understand – although given you probably won’t have time to read plans during a fastmoving situation, the most vital aspect of planning is exercising and rehearsing.

As well as traditional terror attacks, organisations should not underestimate

the massively growing cyber threat, and the urgent need to have the right plans and technical skills to deal with a cyberattack on the organisations systems and data. (This is a topic in its own right.) L

Written by Julie Goddard (FBCI), Business Continuity Consultant, Databarracks.

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.thebci.org

WHAT SHOULD BC PLANNING INCLUDE? ACTIVITY Emergency response & incident control

PLANNING • • •

•

•

People impact

• •

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•

•

Business impact on processes, services, IT systems, products; Business continuity planning to cope with loss of key resources.

BE AWARE

Identify an internal incident team including as *suitable incident lead (with deputies) Carry out CT awareness training with incident team Draw up an emergency response plan, which includes a ‘watching and assessing’ brief based on UK threat levels and has a clear escalation procedure, especially for if the UK threat level moves to ‘Critical’.

Draw up a clear communication procedure & multiple options for message delivery to all staff and visitors 24x7. This should allow for two-way communication back to managers, so staff can flag up that they are not safe or need assistance.

Make sure the team know where to get the most up to date information on a developing situation, and which member of the team will take responsibility for that task.

*suitable = strong assertive leadership, calm under pressure, situational awareness, great communication skills.

Ensure HR/’People’ team are represented on the incident team and receive CT awareness training.

HR should be trained to identify and deal with mental trauma and stress, or if not put in place arrangements with a 24x7 ‘people care’ type organisation to support staff and managers.

Ensure there is access to next of kin details, including if main IT systems are unavailable; encourage staff to keep the details updated.

Consider options for staff transport to home if their normal transport is disrupted, or if stress/trauma means they need assistance.

HR should identify any vulnerable staff where known – i.e., those who may need special assistance during an incident, and deal with them sensitively.

Consider enhanced training for First Aiders and Mental Health First Aiders.

In communications planning, be aware of MTPAS being invoked by the emergency services/Gold commander, as this may limit mobile network availability unless your organisation is a Cat 1 or Cat 2 responder.

I can recommend signing up to the CSSC partnership – https://www.thecssc.com

Consider enhanced training for First Aiders and Mental Health First Aiders.

In ‘peace time’, carry out Business Impact Analysis; identify critical processes, services or products and the impact of a terror attack on the organisations ability to continue to deliver them to an acceptable level…. ..Plan all available options for continuing to deliver to customers or clients, when normal resources are not available or severely limited.

Options include: • • •

Work Area Recovery (WAR) Site; back up office space provided by a third party.

Moving operations to another of the organisations’ sites if possible.

Have a plan to introduce home working arrangements quickly – e.g., configure/ ship out laptops to homes if necessary.

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FREE RUNNING EXPLOSIVE DETECTION DOGS (FREDDs)

Wagtail UK is a leading provider of Free Running Explosive Detection Dogs (FREDDs), having 9 fully accredited FREDDs teams approved by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Department for Transport (DFT).

FREDDs screen cargo within the warehouse offering a real time detection capability for screening the cargo for explosives in an operational environment. The dogs are trained to check cargo for a range of explosive materials. FREDDs are a vital part in the air cargo supply chain process to ensure cargo arrives safely and on time.

Wagtail FREDDs are currently used at international airports across the UK. All of Wagtail FREDDs have undergone intensive training in-line with standards set by the UK Government to prepare them for this role. On a daily basis, the dogs are tested and independently verified to ensure that they are working effectively prior to commencement of operational searches.

FREDDs compliment measures such as x-ray, ETD and hand search.

There are many different types of cargo that will benefit from FREDDs screening: • Machinery with dense parts such as aircraft parts and ship spares • Certain food products that would usually require packaging to have to be opened • Larger scale crates • More fragile pieces such as artwork that would benefit from less manual handling Advantages of using FREDDs: • Rapid and effective way of screening large or small volumes of air cargo • Screening turnaround times reduced with increased efficiency • Less intrusive form of screening • Ability to screen cargo which is extremely difficult if not impossible to screen using conventional methods.

• FREDDs save time; time is money.

For more information please call

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BUSINESS CONTINUITY 

•

•

•

•

•

building impact

•

•

• •

•

Systems/IT impact

•

•

•

Training, exercising and testing

• • • • • • • • • • •

Training, exercising and testing

• •

Consider transport options for staff if parts of the transport network are disrupted; this includes to home or to the Work Area Recovery site.

Cross train staff to ensure there are no single points of skill and expertise, and have a partnership with a recruitment agency to bring in temp staff.

IT Disaster Recovery planning for recovery of IT systems and data, at a back-up site; ensure testing of recovery takes place on a regular basis.

Have a Cyber Incident Response plan drawn up and owned by those sufficient technical skill, and ensure it links clearly with the organisations’ main incident response plan.

Consider entering into an arrangement with a trusted supplier to assist each other in the event of a business disrupting incident (assuming you both aren’t impacted simultaneously).

As well as the normal evacuation procedure, ensure you have a second evacuation procedure (known only to small number of authorised staff) which copes with bomb or explosion threat.

Draw up a ‘invacuation’ and ‘lockdown’ procedure to keep staff safe inside if there is an external incident unfolding, including identifying areas of the building which are safe (as far as possible) from flying glass.

Know where and how to turn off building air conditioning and vents in case of chemical or toxic incident.

Involve building services staff in planning for the move to a ‘Work Area Recovery’ site, as they may need to support staff in the new environment.

Work with business to pull together an emergency ‘grab bag’.

Ensure critical systems are identified as part of the Business Impact Analysis, and confirm to IT how quickly those systems need to be recovered in order for the business to continue operating to an acceptable level Ensure critical data is identified, and advise IT of how much data loss is tolerable without disrupting the organisations operations.

Ensure critical systems and IT Infrastructure have robust cyber protection (‘defence in depth’), along with a cyber team (or partner) with the skills to react to and manage a cyber incident.

Train and rehearse staff and management regularly, including: ‘ACT Aware’ training for all staff – available on line.

Internal incident response rehearsal to an attack Familiarity with second evac point (limited staff) Building Lockdown Emergency communication test (to all staff) Trauma training for managers and HR IT Systems/Penetration Testing Technical cyber response Business cyber response IT/DR testing/recovery

Check your insurance policy; does it include business interruption cover for terrorism or a cyber-attack?

Having robust insurance will help during the recovery and in the aftermath

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RADICALISATION

RADICALISATION IN THE COVID ERA S ince the announcement of lockdown measures in countries around the world in early 2020, there have been persistent concerns amongst policymakers, academics, and the media that the Covid emergency and our response could

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exacerbate radicalisation. This could be either by creating vulnerabilities among a wider pool of individuals, by speeding up the process, or by intensifying it. Looking at the wave of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories that have grown over the past 18 months,

RADICALISATION

which certainly seem to have many of the hallmarks of extremist narratives, this is an understandable position.

Largely, the arguments that Covid may exacerbate radicalisation fall into two inter-related premises: firstly, the conditions brought about from Covid may create or intensify vulnerabilities to radicalisation; and, secondly, the extra hours that individuals spent online makes radicalisation more likely.

The first premise is, I believe, theoretically sound – although we have no idea of knowing whether it will actually come to pass. The second, however, plays into existing ‘online

radicalisation’ tropes, in which the role of the Internet is given undue primacy over other factors to the point in which it is given radicalising agency to ‘brainwash’ users. Below, I take each premise in turn and argue that we should not simply assume that we are due for a wave of Covid radicalisation in the near future.

Premise 1: The conditions brought about from Covid may create or intensify vulnerabilities to radicalisation.

In an article earlier this year, Francesco Marone argues that the Covid emergency could breed or exacerbate

states of mind or grievances that underlie violent extremism. This includes: having grief from personal losses and trauma, a disruption to daily life which potentially leads to isolation, psychological distress, high degrees of uncertainty. These conditions, he argues, could be ideal for recruitment to flourish.

Similarly, Gary Ackerman and Haley Peterson offer ten potential outcomes for terrorism as a result of the pandemic, noting that it may increase susceptibility to radicalisation by fostering anxiety and paranoia, as well as antigovernment attitudes via conspiracy theories. All of the factors shown by Marone and Ackerman and Peterson have been posited in the academic literature as having the potential to exacerbate this process. Scholars such as Haroro Ingram have argued that many factors such as uncertainty and a perception of crisis can be exploited by extremist groups, who blame the in-group’s plight specific out-groups, and in turn, advocating that violence is the only way to solve the crisis.

The threat of this combination of factors is put succinctly by Paul Gill, who recently stated that: ‘You have the perfect storm with Covid going on, and lockdown, where you’ve got people unmoored from their families and friends and going through psychological distress…Lots of people get radicalised for a lot of different reasons but there is definitely a pool of people that have become more vulnerable as a byproduct of the lockdown.’

This argument is a compelling one; it draws from decades of radicalisation research and theory and follows a sound internal logic. However, at present, we have no idea if it is correct in practice. Marone discusses some case studies of violent extremist activity that can be linked to Covid, such as that of Corey H, who stormed the Canadian Prime Minister’s residence and ascribed several pandemic-related grievances. Despite a small number of individual case studies, there is still limited empirical research to suggest that the threat from radicalisation has become worse since lockdown. In fact, the early available evidence suggests the opposite. In their recent Terrorism Situation and Trend Report, Europol noted that arrests for terrorism had more than halved in 2020 from the previous year, noting that it was unclear whether this indicated reduced activity or changes in operational capacity.

They note that the pandemic has not changed groups’ modi operandi, but instead they have weaved the pandemic into their longstanding narratives, concluding that judging the extent of Covid on terrorism is difficult to assess.

Pantucci took stock of the one-year impact of Covid on terrorism in March 2021, concluding that the impact E

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RADICALISATION

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RADICALISATION  had been relatively limited. Assessing terrorism databases, he notes that by almost every metric, violence is down year-on-year between 2019 and 2020.

Similarly, van Dongen notes that the last year has clearly created instances of extremism related to the pandemic, which may present a broader threat to society and democracy, but that there have presently been too few cases to ascribe it a threat as violent extremism.

It should be underscored that it is too early to make firm conclusions here, but the early evidence suggests more promise than initial worst fears.

Premise 2: The extra hours that individuals spent online makes radicalisation more likely.

Almost immediately after lockdown measures were introduced, concerns arose over increased screen time exacerbating radicalisation. In March 2020, Nikita Malik argued in Foreign Policy that self-isolation may be an effective tool for halting the spread of Covid, but that it will increase the speed of radicalisation. She notes that greater access to fake news, conspiracy theories, and extremist materials would intersect with individuals’ attempts to make sense of the crisis. In June 2020, Wales’ most senior counter-terrorism police officer offered concerns that children that were exposed to extremist content on social media had become radicalised during lockdown. Similarly, Kevin Southworth, of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit also expressed this concern, noting that the amount of flagged online terrorist content had increased by seven per cent (including a 43 per cent increase in far-right content) in 2020, suggesting that greater access to this content may lead to more individuals becoming radicalised. On the other side of the Atlantic, CNBC warned its readers that QAnon and anti-vaxxers had ‘brainwashed’ kids who were stuck at home, both via mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, but also via their parents who themselves have fallen deep into conspiracy theories.

To be clear, there is no doubt that extremist groups and their supporters have attempted to exploit Covid for their own purposes. In their study on far-right German party AFD’s Twitter activity, Lella Nouri and Suraj Lakhani found that online supporters positioned themselves in discourse to ‘other’ out-groups and ineligible in-groups such as the German Government and the global establishment. CVE organisation Moonshot have released two reports which show an increase in white supremacist search terms within both the US and Canada. A recent study by Garth Davies, Edith Wu, and Richard Frank conducted an analysis to assess the aggregate change of daily

DESPITE A SMALL NUMBER OF INDIVIDUAL CASE STUDIES, THERE IS STILL LIMITED EMPIRICAL RESEARCH TO SUGGEST THAT THE THREAT FROM RADICALISATION HAS BECOME WORSE SINCE LOCKDOWN posts before and after lockdown on seven fora of incel, far-right, far-left, and jihadist ideology. They found that the far-right and incel platforms did see a statistically significant increase, suggesting that these ideologies may be most suited for the exploitation of pandemic-related grievances.

Jihadist groups also incorporated Covid into their propaganda. Mina al-Lami of BBC Monitoring notes that the so-called Islamic State (IS) saw the pandemic as an opportunity to call for attacks, but in contrast al-Qaeda used it as an opportunity to bring non-Muslims into Islam. She notes that jihadists have typically framed the pandemic as a punishment from God and have taken the opportunity to gloat towards the West’s handling of the emergency.

Similarly, Aymenn al-Tamimi conducted an analysis of IS’ al-Naba newsletter, observing that the group framed this period as an opportunity exploit the division among its enemies that have arisen because of the pandemic.

In comparative research analysing jihadist and the far right, Milo Comerford and Jacob Davey found that both movements were opportunistically using the pandemic to advance their objectives. They note the overlap between far-right accelerationist and the apocalyptic jihadist narratives which both involve supporters hastening a crisis to advance the movement. They do observe differences, however, with the jihadists framing Covid as God’s work while the far-right ascribed blame to minority communities.

OFFLINE FACTORS Despite the obvious increase in the supply of extreme content available to users, we should be sceptical that this will necessarily exacerbate radicalisation.

As Maura Conway correctly asserts: ‘There is no yet proven connection between consumption of and networking around violent extremist online content and adoption of extremist ideology and/or engagement in violent extremism and terrorism.’

Although there are a handful of studies that have taken to studying this in an experimental format, this is still a field that is very much in its infancy.

Moreover, studies have repeatedly demonstrated that although the Internet is important in contemporary cases of violent extremism, offline factors remain key. In their 2017 literature review on the topic of online radicalisation, Alexander

Meleagrou-Hitchens and Nick Kaderbhai note that ‘the vast majority of authors argue that, while the Internet plays a facilitating role, in most cases the individual must still also be in contact with [face-to-face] networks.’ The question is not whether terrorists are using the Internet more (we all are) or whether they are exploiting events for their own narrative (they always do), but whether more time online – at the expense of face-to-face contact – will result in more cases of radicalisation.

For this, I see little evidence and a strong reason to be sceptical given the current empirical basis.

To conclude, we should be concerned that the material conditions of Covid and society’s response to it could exacerbate radicalisation moving forward. There is a wealth of existing research which suggests that a global upheaval, anxiety, uncertainty, and stressors caused by the forthcoming economic downturn could spark vulnerabilities in potential violent extremists. However, we should be cautious of policymaker and media claims that the mere increase in access and supply of radical content will necessarily lead to more people becoming radicalised, or faster radicalisation trajectories. One might reasonably note that these two premises are not separate; that the combination of the increased vulnerabilities could push people towards new or existing radical communities online. However, given the current empirical research, we would expect these interactions to move into the offline domain before solidifying into violent action.

Importantly, as Marone suggests, the forthcoming period will act as a global natural experiment; much of the research presented above is based on the pre-Covid era. If, for example, there is a strong relationship between more time spent online and increased radicalisation, then the data will begin to show this. As always, it will be important to keep an open mind as new trends appear. L

Written by Joe Whittaker.

Joe Whittaker is a Research Fellow at ICCT. He is also affiliated with the Cyberterrorism Project in Swansea.

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.icct.nl

ISSUE 48 | COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EXPO

Senior security professionals from around the globe come together to mark the return of International Security Expo -and launch of International Cyber Expo

MARKING THE RETURN OF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EXPO F rom 28 and 29 September, the International Security Expo – the world’s premier government, industry, academia and end-user security event – returned for the first time in nearly two years. Co-located with the newly-launched International Cyber Expo, the events welcomed thousands of security professionals including senior representatives from Heathrow Airport, British Army, Bank of England, Tesco Stores Ltd, BAE Systems, Chester Zoo, CPNI, Dell, Neptune Energy, Post Office, NaCTSO, DASA and the Embassy of Argentina. Recently appointed Minister for Security and Borders Rt Hon Damian Hinds MP, was also in attendance and carried out a keynote speech, clearly demonstrating the importance of the event to the security sector.

Reconnecting the market from far and wide, the international audience was made up of attendees from 36 countries including Israel, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Belgium and Australia with senior delegates from NATO - HQ AIRCOM, Germany, Government of Gibraltar, US Army RCCTO, New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police and the Embassy of the State of Kuwait. The overwhelming feedback from visitors and exhibitors alike proved a strong desire for the opportunity to reconnect, source new products and take advantage of in-person learning opportunities.

Harry Forsyth, Risk and Intelligence Analyst, Kings Secure Technologies said: “Both International Security Expo and International

Cyber Expo are excellent events to reconnect with people in the industry, watch some great talks and broaden my horizons. The quality of the products exhibited was noticeable.”

Rachael Shattock, Group Event Director at Nineteen Group said: “The overwhelmingly positive feedback from visitors and exhibitors alike is testament to the reputation of the show, and the value it gives to all those who attend. We were delighted to see so many visitors and exhibitors excited to be back at the show, reuniting with their peers. The energy in the hall spoke for itself, and the breadth of product launches demonstrates how the industry has continued to focus on research and development, constantly innovating to improve our safety and security. We are already looking forward to a bigger and better event in 2022, and welcoming back many of our international exhibitions and visitors who were unable to attend due to the pandemic.”

A GOVERNMENT BACKED EVENT The specialist Government Zone demonstrated significant support from UK Government and associated agencies. It provided a central meeting point for visitors to network and discover the latest projects and plans for the future from exhibitors including Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE), Border Force, British Transport Police, The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Counter Terrorism Policing, Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), E

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INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EXPO  The Joint Security and Resilience Centre (JSaRC), The National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO) and more.

Border Force carried out a live demonstration of a seized Ford Kuga that uses a sophisticated magnet system to open a concealment area within the rear of the vehicle, while British Transport Police had an experienced dog handler and trained Explosive Search Dog demonstrate the capability and effectiveness of responding to these threats. Officers on the stand also highlighted a selection of equipment including firearms, less lethal devices, door entry apparatus and medical supplies used to actively deter, detect and disrupt terrorist and criminal activity.

In addition to exhibiting, several highprofile government officials took to the stage to present insightful sessions across the two days including Mark Goldsack, Director DIT, UKDSE; Angela Essel, Head of JSaRC - Joint Security and Resilience Centre (JSaRC); Tracy Buckingham, Deputy Director Security and Cyber Security Exports – DIT UKDSE; Kevin Knappett, Cell Broadcast Delivery Lead Digital Infrastructure Directorate UK Government, DCMS UK GOV; and Shaun Hipgrave, Director Prepare, Protect, CBRNE & Science Directorate Homeland Security Group, Home Office.

On day two, there was a real buzz on the show floor as it was announced that Rt Hon Damian Hinds MP, Minister for Security and Borders, would deliver an exclusive keynote speech. During his address, he highlighted how events like International Security Expo and International Cyber Expo bring the security community together to inspire and be inspired, commenting: “In the security field you have to keepon innovating

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because the threat, what we’re up against, keeps on shapeshifting and changing.”

Speaking after his keynote session, Hinds added: “I think it’s really important for people to come together, to be able to learn from each other, to see what is happening and make connections and to work out how we can all work together to improve our safety and security.”

EXCLUSIVE EXPERT INSIGHT The event’s free-to-attend and CPD certified educational programme saw over 90 inspiring sessions and 120 speakers deliver insightful sessions across five theatres.

The Global Counter Terror and Serious & Organised Crime Summit was packed out throughout the two-day event, with eager listeners regularly spilling out the door.

One of the most popular sessions was delivered by Nick Bailey, retired Detective Sergeant involved in the Salisbury Novichok poisoning. Bailey took attendees on an emotional journey by talking through the events of 4 March 2018, and the impact it has had on his mental health, describing himself as ‘a different person, broken physically and mentally’. Discussing the uniqueness of it being a state-sponsored attack, he spoke to attendees about coming to terms with trauma, resilience and the damaging effect losing control of many aspects of everyday life has had.

In another session, Philip Ingram MBE, former Senior Intelligence & Security Officer and Editor in Chief; Figen Murray, Protect Duty Campaigner; and Aaron Edwards, Senior Lecturer at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, sat on a panel to discuss the blurred lines between terrorism and organised crime. Moderating the session, Roy McComb, Director of Inquisitio Consulting Ltd and Former Deputy Director of the National Crime

COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE | ISSUE 48

Agency immediately opened the session for attendees to address questions to the panel, which ranged from: Are we spending too much money on terror and organised crime at the expense of other issues? Should we negotiate with terrorists? to How do we cut off the financial stream to terror and organised crime?

Sponsored by Adani and Patriot One, at the International Security Conference, speakers from British Transport Police, City of London, HVM Advisors and more provided attendees with insights across CNI, transport and aviation, with day two turning to the night-time economy, public sector and major events. In one session, Philip Baum of Green Light Limited and Coventry University reflected on the role of mental health as ‘a major challenge to the industry’. He spoke about the importance of behavioural analysis, describing this as ‘the first and foremost measure we ought to be implementing to mitigate future threats, before reflecting on the new challenges brought about by the pandemic and introduction of social distancing in airport security screening.

Across the hall in the Disaster & Resilience Conference sponsored by Everbridge, senior leaders from Unilever, Joint Security and Resilience Centre (JSaRC), Ministry of Defence, Public Health England, and London Fire Brigade took to the stage to offer the audience actionable insights on responding to a crisis. Tony Thompson, Fellow, Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management showed attendees how to monitor and respond to events in real-time, use integrated technology solutions to drive greater efficiencies and cost savings, and finally deliver a unified security platform.

The inaugural Global Cyber Summit also welcomed major names in cyber security

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EXPO including Tracy Buckingham, Deputy Director of Security & Cyber Exports at UKTI DSE and Professor Ciaran Martin CB, Oxford University, Former CEO, National Cyber Security Centre. Underpinning Martin’s speech on the current cyber threats and priorities was the belief that we have unconsciously polluted the cyber environment, resulting in the need for a rethink to make it a safer place to inhabit.

PRODUCT INNOVATION AND LAUNCHES Visitors perused the stands of the likes of Adani, Marshalls Mono, Audax Global Solutions, Bastion Security Products, Leidos, Patriot One, Rapiscan Systems, HS Security Group, PointWire, Pitagone, Smiths Detection Group, Tripwire, Heras, Leonardo, APSTEC Systems, Jacobs, Astrophysics, Intqual and Mitie to source a wide range of security products and solutions. The show floor was recognised as a hotbed for innovation, with many exhibitors taking the opportunity to launch new products.

For example, Apstec Systems showcased version 4 of its Human Security Radar (HSR V4) which combines a sleek design, smaller footprint and improved mobility with enhanced AI, additional detection capabilities and flexible integration.

Meanwhile, Everbridge showcased its Global Critical Event Management (CEM) Certification™ Program with formalised standards for assessing an organisation’s enterprise resilience.

As well as showcasing its range of protective street furniture options, Marshalls Landscape Protection used the event to launch its new seating range, Verso. The full range has been tested to IWA14-1 using a 1.5 tonne M1 vehicle and a 7.2 tonne N2A vehicle travelling at 30mph.

THIS YEAR IS PARTICULARLY SPECIAL AS WE LAUNCHED THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CYBER EXPO WITH ITS OWN DEDICATED GLOBAL CYBER SUMMIT CONFERENCE Meanwhile, Lochrin Bain introduced its industry disrupting B3(SR2) rated fencing system, Lochrin Combi™ SL2.

The fence offers the same attack delay times as other systems of the same level but no specialist tooling or training for installers and security professionals.

Elsewhere, Bastion Security Products announced the launch of its new single and double steel doorsets which feature BastionCORE attack resistant materials to mitigate cut through and cylinder guard removal attacks.

Rebecca Hughes, Country Marketing Manager (UK) at Heras said: “Heras was delighted to be a Premier Partner Exhibitor at the ISE and support an event where the UK security industry could come together, showcase the latest innovations in physical and cyber security and discuss key issues where effective security can be beneficial for UK plc. We are delighted that our new innovations were so well received at the show and generated strong interest. We expect this to translate into a strong order book.”

MEETING EMERGING CYBER RISKS The inaugural International Cyber Expo also played host to new launches, for example, a solution from Senetas Corporation that allows employees to download files from the web without risk or hidden threat. Votiro Secure File Gateway leverages patented Positive Selection technology for anti-malware and anti-ransomware protection whilst preserving 100% file functionality and user workflow.

Chris Pinder, Chief Operating Officer, IASME Consortium said: “This has been a great show for IASME. We’ve had both the quantity and quality of visitors we’d hoped for, with a great range of people representing our client base. We are looking forward to following up on some promising leads and interesting contacts.”

Catherine Craig, Channel Manager at 3M, added: “We’ve had consistently good engagement and conversations on the stand. It’s been so helpful to be able to tap into a wide range of different markets and people all in one place. It’s been a great show and we’ve already signed up to return in 2022.”

PRODUCTS UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT The Product Innovation Theatre took a deep dive into the latest new launches with exhibitors including Exeon Analytics, Census Labs, Robin Radar, 3M Privacy Solutions, Heras, Safetyflex Barriers and Smiths Detection delivering a range of insightful sessions. For example, Christoforos Papachristou, Strategic

Account Manager for Census Labs provided attendees with insights on how the Internet of Security Things – a network of sensors, wearables, and IoT devices that use cloud and edge computing – create a cohesive security force. Jeremy Tettmar, Sales Manager, Safetyflex Barriers revealed the next generation of crash rated street furniture from ultra-slim profile, shallow mount anti-terrorist bollards to cost-effective, large perimeter Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM) equipment.

LIVE DEMONSTRATIONS Visitors witnessed these products and more in action across a number of live, interactive demonstrations. The LPCB Live Testing Lab gave visitors the opportunity to witness a team of professional forced entry specialists attempt to break through physical security products including mesh fencing systems, key safes, glazing units and more from the likes of ARX, Fastline, Frontier Pitts and Eagle Automation.

The realities of a cyber attack also came alive with a number of interactive features. CrisisCast in collaboration with Cyberprism carried out a theatrical live cyber attack on a high-tech revolving stage. Visitors were able to engage in the dialogue from both sides of the attack and understand the psychology and motivating factors from two perspectives at one - the attackers and the entity’s boardroom. Elsewhere, Cyber Griffin offered attendees an NCSC certified, immersive training experience through its award-winning tabletop exercise designed to explore the decisions that people make to protect their businesses from modern-day threats.

Rachael Shattock, Group Event Director at Nineteen Group, added: “I can’t describe how fantastic it feels to reunite the whole security industry, face-toface after over 18 months without a physical event, and provide a platform to network, learn and discover the latest security solutions from the world’s leading suppliers. This year is also particularly special as we successfully launched the first International Cyber Expo with its own dedicated Global Cyber Summit conference programme, interactive activities, and a raft of top suppliers.” L

International Security Expo and International Cyber Expo will return to Olympia London from 27 – 28 September 2022.

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.internationalsecurityexpo.com

ISSUE 48 | COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

DEFENDING ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FROM ESCALATING ATTACKS

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yber attacks are becoming more sophisticated and frequent within the energy industry.

Whether it’s a direct attack on a gas pipeline like the Colonial Pipeline breach or a sweeping supply chain intrusion that infects up to a quarter of North American electrical utilities like the SolarWinds attack, the reality is that the next attack is a matter of when, not if.

The attack that kicked off this streak came in 2016 when malware hackers used a script called ‘Crash Override’ to seize Ukraine’s power grid and briefly black out the capital city of Kiev. In 2018, it was announced Ukraine was not alone and that the U.S. electric grid,

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among other critical infrastructures, had been targeted by Russian state-backed hackers as far back as 2016. Soon after that in March 2020, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E), the organisation responsible for coordination of European electricity markets, was also breached in a separate incident.

Only a few months later, UK-based Elexon, responsible for overseeing payments between UK power station operators and companies that provide electricity supply to consumers and businesses, were the victims of a ransomware attack that stole important internal data, stemming from a supply

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chain software vendor called Pulse Connect Secure, who themselves were found to be the victim of a massive persistent ransomware attack. Then later in 2020 India’s Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), who had just launched an initiative to install 240 million smart meters across the country, faced a sabotage of its smart meters, which left 160,000 homes without power. The breach was the largest of its kind in India’s history and forced the project to pause its massive rollout.

State-level governments have begun to recognise this worsening national security risk. Officials in the EU have initiated legislation to protect their energy sector,

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE IT SHOULD BE CLEAR BY NOW THAT THE ENERGY INDUSTRY IS A SIGNIFICANT TARGET FOR HACKERS EAGER TO INTRUDE INTO THE VAST NUMBER OF VULNERABLE TARGETS THAT UTILITIES KEEP ROLLING OUT, EITHER FOR FINANCIAL OR GEOPOLITICAL LEVERAGE

with the proposed bill including increased cyber security requirements for critical infrastructure companies, though each country gets to decide for themselves which companies to classify as such.

Finland declared more than 10,000 companies as critical infrastructure, while Cyprus designated just 10.

Standardising across a single classification with more thoroughly articulated security requirements is advisable. The American government is aware of the worsening threat environment for their energy sector as well, and following a recent memo on the subject from US President Joe Biden, over 150 utilities signed on to deploy new security technologies for their control systems.

AWARENESS, ACTION AND AUTHORISATION These state-level actions, though leaving a bit to be desired regarding consistency, urgency, and enforceability, are steps in the right direction. That said, the measures will not be enough without widespread awareness and action on behalf of their partners at the regional and local levels of government.

There are two primary lessons that these decision-makers, as well as their equivalents in private energy industry, ought to keep in mind considering the ongoing and escalating series of attacks on energy infrastructure.

The first is that supply chain vendors and organisational insiders can no longer be trusted with system access unless continually authorised. A Ponemon Institute study published in January 2021 found that insider cyber security incidents have risen 47 per cent since 2018 and the average annual cost of an insider-caused breach also increased, up 31 per cent to $11.5 million. The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, or ENISA has reported similarly stark figures about attacks from along the supply chain and expect 2021 will conclude with four times as many such attacks as the year prior.

One of the reasons for the increase in these attacks is that the rapidly scaling connectivity of energy industry endpoints like smart meters has vastly increased the attack surface for these organisations without an equivalent bolstering of security postures. Connected devices are prime targets for advanced persistent threats (APTs), which work by gaining access to the device, exploiting vulnerable endpoints, and injecting malicious code into the non-volatile memory of the device in order to gain persistency that survives a restart or power loss. This persistent presence allows bad actors to take their time and try multiple strategies to get from the device to the network it’s connected to, at which point the hackers can manipulate data, change commands, seize control from operators, or simply lay dormant until the time is right.

Within the energy sector, among the most vulnerable targets for these APT attacks are network assets like advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), which includes newly networked Operational Technology (OT) devices like smart meters that the energy industry is rolling out at dramatic speed. Research from Omdia projects global spending on advanced metering infrastructure to rise to $13 billion by 2023, a nearly 50 per cent increase from 2018 numbers.

Given the vulnerability of legacy OT devices, the nature of APT attacks on these devices, and the diverse sources these attacks have stemmed from, local and regional governments, energy sector decision-makers, and supply chain manufacturing partners must ensure that each device on their network is

itself impermeable. One solution is to introduce an embedded software gatekeeper within the flash or nonvolatile memory of the networked device that will provide a Zero Trust architecture and passive prevention against outsider, supply chain, and insider APT threats by automatically rejecting all changes unauthenticated by a trusted external server. This Zero Trust, perimeterless approach prevents persistency and maintains the device integrity by preventing bad actors from injecting code into the device’s memory and impacting functionality. This will not stop future hackers from trying to breach the devices and their networks, but it will at least prevent them from achieving any results.

It should be clear by now that the energy industry is a significant target for hackers eager to intrude into the vast number of vulnerable targets that utilities keep rolling out, either for financial or geopolitical leverage. Public and private stakeholders have started to take notice of this worsening threat landscape, but lest we be left in the dark, local, regional, and state-level governments need to act immediately to protect their energy infrastructure – and thereby their constituents – from the effects of cyber attacks.

Written by Sagi Berco, VP of Research & Development, NanoLock Security & David Stroud, GM of Europe/ APAC, NanoLock Security. L Sagi Berco¸ VP R&D of NanoLock¸ has over 20 years of experience in cyber security and technology management. Formerly¸ Sagi worked in the Israeli Intelligence community.

David Stroud is NanoLock’s GM of Europe and APAC, overseeing strategic partnerships in Europe and APAC. Stroud is an industry-recognised leader with over 15 years of experience, along with direct expertise in the energy and metering sector – including through his successful tenure as executive director of EDMI Europe, a leading smart metering solution provider, and as general manager of Advanced Metering Services, New Zealand’s largest metering provider.

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.nanolocksecurity.com

ISSUE 48 | COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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FAKE NEWS

IS FAKE NEWS THE TERROR SUPER-SPREADER?

F

ake news is typically used to inflame, influence, and destabilise political debate, drive culture wars, undermine traditional journalism and to promote appalling ideologies.

Misinformation has been with us for centuries, but social media has greased the rails when it comes to reach and availability. Fake news plays on our hopes and fears. It feeds any confirmation bias we might have, and it reinforces our beliefs and undermines our sense of enquiry or search for the truth.

Fake news can also muddy the waters so that even when facts do get reported accurately such is the onslaught of lies many people just don’t believe them.

If fake news was entirely made up of out-and-out falsehoods, then it might be relatively easy to dismiss, but often it contains a kernel of truth that can

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be manipulated or skewed to drive the protagonist’s agenda. It’s an insidious virus that pumps toxins into our lives.

TERROR ORGANISATIONS For many terror organisations the Covid pandemic combined with their ability to harness fake news and social media has proved a menacing combination.

A recent report published by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) called ‘Stop the virus of disinformation’ bears careful examination.

Antonia Marie De Meo (UNICRI Director) says in the introduction that ‘terrorist, violent extremist and organized criminal groups are trying to take advantage of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic to expand their activities and jeopardize the efficacy and credibility of response measures by governments’.

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The report divides these groups into far-right extremist organisations, groups associated with Islamic terror and organised criminal gangs.

According to the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, the right-wing extremists are a ‘shifting, complex and overlapping milieu of individuals, groups, and movements (online and offline) espousing different but related ideologies, often linked by hatred and racism toward minorities, xenophobia, islamophobia or anti-Semitism’.

Those groups involved in Middle Eastern terror which include alQaida and ISIL are often well organised and adept at using social media to promote their agenda.

The other group of violent nonstate actors are comprised of criminal gangs such as the narcos in Mexico and the Cosa Nostra or mafia in Italy.

FAKE NEWS STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES The UN report identified three strategic objectives that are common to all these violent non-state actors.

1. To undermine trust in governments and to reinforce extremist narratives and recruitment strategies.

The pro-ISIL Al-Qitaal Media Center shared a message claiming Covid is a divine punishment that would not affect their believers. This group constantly targets Hindus with hate speech while at the same time seeks to portray the virus as a ‘divine’ matter rather than a genuine health crisis.

The Somali Islamic terror group, AlShabaab, also spreads disinformation about the pandemic using it as a justification to continue their terror activities. They claim foreign troops, particularly the African Union Mission in Somalia, have been responsible for deliberately spreading Covid and should therefore be expelled from the country.

2. To increase ‘inspired terrorism’ leading self-radicalised individuals to carry out terror attacks.

There are reported cases of far-right groups explicitly telling their supporters to spread the virus by attending gatherings of racial or religious minorities, by the simple expedient of coughing when among them.

A more extreme example of an ‘Inspired terrorist’ is Timothy Wilson who was killed by the FBI while he was attempting to detonate a bomb at a Kansas City hospital caring for Covid patients. It’s also believed he planned an attack on a US TV network and discussed targeting a presidential candidate.

Thousands of email addresses belonging to staff at the World Health Organisation, the Gates Foundation and other groups combatting Covid were apparently posted online by far-right groups.

3. The promotion of a ‘positive image’ among their followers and potential recruits.

Terror groups often want to promote themselves as an alternative to their country’s government. During the pandemic some have tried to offer people healthcare thus playing on the public’s grievances to their advantage.

In Mexico, drug cartels have distributed aid packages with the criminal gang’s name emblazoned on the boxes. The images were then publicised on social media. A case in point is the Gulf Cartel that shared aid including food and sanitisers in Tamaulipas. Inside each box was a sticker bearing the name of the cartel and the name of its leader.

BECAUSE OF THE INTERNET WE ARE NOW ABLE TO SOURCE INFORMATION IN A MANNER AND SPEED UNPARALLELED IN HISTORY. NO LIBRARY HAS EVER ALLOWED US SUCH EASY ACCESS TO SO MUCH VALUABLE INFORMATION EXTREMIST TACTICS Right-wing groups have become experts at producing internet memes to attract new audiences. This is typically a phrase or image that captures their message and then spreads like wildfire across their social media networks.

They often use vicious humour to make antisemitic or Islamophobic insults that appeal to their followers.

Violent non-state actors have become adept at using the services provided by the big media companies. Anyone who uses Facebook, knows the company is always prompting users to find new ‘friends.’ Friends will often share the same ideology or confirmation bias.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all have algorithms that help expand a user’s network. For terror groups these algorithms can help grow and radicalise their legion of recruits.

The groups will try to bypass controls used by the media companies to root out extremism by not using certain key words or phrases and avoiding extremist language. They may also try to appear blander and more legitimate than they are to appeal to a wider audience.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES Messages deployed by extremist organisations include conspiracy theories that local governments, religious or ethnic groups, who they oppose, are responsible for creating or disseminating Covid among the local population.

Other messages may allege that governments have secret agendas and are involved in global depopulation.

Another popular tactic is to contend that politicians or business leaders are making money out of vaccines and other treatments.

The New Jersey European Heritage Association (NJEHA) deployed stickers with slogans such as ‘Stop coronavirus – deport all illegal aliens’ and ‘Multicultural is the virus’. Other far-right groups adopt antisemitic or Islamophobic slogans depending on their ideology.

In many of these cases the terror groups claim to possess ‘real’ information not available on mainstream media and known only to the initiated or their followers. Typically, they claim that the pandemic will hasten the demise of the government leaving a vacuum that will be filled by their followers with their enemies being eliminated.

SOCIAL MEDIA BUBBLE We tend to live in a social media echo chamber where we hear our views repeated back to us on a continual loop. It may sometimes appear that everyone we interact with on social media shares our views.

This makes it much more difficult to tell what is fake and what isn’t.

Inside our bubble we are selectively exposed to information aligned to our beliefs. This plays into the hands of the violent non-state actors and they use it to their advantage.

Worryingly this situation looks unlikely to change. During the 2020 US presidential election, fake news on Facebook was far more popular than real news.

According to The Washington Post, researchers at New York University and France’s Université Grenoble Alpes found that between August 2020 and January 2021, articles that contained misleading or misinformation received ‘six times as many likes, shares, and interactions as legitimate news articles’.

Dr Rebekah Tromble, head of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University, told the Post: “The study helps add to the growing body of evidence that, despite a variety of mitigation efforts, misinformation has found a comfortable home – and an engaged audience – on Facebook.”

Facebook responded saying the research doesn’t show the full picture.

Because of the internet we are now able to source information in a manner and speed unparalleled in history. No library has ever allowed us such easy access to so much valuable information.

Unfortunately, there are far darker elements in society who find this a perfect arena for their nefarious activities. Despite the best efforts of governments and on occasions the social media companies themselves, the gangs appear able to spread their messages and recruit followers almost at will. Terror groups are combining fake news, the Covid pandemic and social media to superspread their abhorrent ideologies. L

By Jim Preen, Crisis Management Director at YUDU Sentinel.

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.yudu.com/sentinel

ISSUE 48 | COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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Swedish Sea Rescue Society use Over the Air Programming to improve their emergency response operations.

Click on the image to view our case study

Over the Air Programming enables organisations to change many aspects of a radio’s setup; options include amends to a radio’s configuration, phonebook or talkgroup updates, enabling feature licenses, installation of AppSPACE applications or the upload of crucial data.

Wireless programming vastly reduces the risk of radio downtime; rather than requiring every fleet radio to be in one central location for the process, the fleet programmer can programme multiple radios, at a set time.

Radios can be based in disparate locations such as satellite offices or vehicle parking lots. As long as they are connected to a trusted and approved secure Wi-Fi

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connection, the update can be deployed.

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These solutions are available for users of Sepura’s advanced SC Series TETRA radios, used by major public safety and other mission critical organisations around the world. L

To find out more on how Sepura’s solutions can enhance your emergency response, please visit the website below.

FURTHER INFORMATION www.sepura.com

ISSUE 48 | COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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BORDER CONTROL

BORDERS BILL - THE PLANS AND THE PROBLEMS

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n July, the Home Office conceded that at least least 430 migrants crossed the English Channel to the UK in one 24 hour stretch, a new record for a single day. This included beach landings at Dungeness and Dover, with around 50 people, including women and children, witnessed landing in Kent after crossing in one dinghy.

At that point, the height of crossings in the Summer, the government believed that nearly 8,000 people had reached the UK in about 345 boats since the start of the year.

Following the revelation, Home Secretary Priti Patel pledged to make Channel crossings ‘unviable’, with new legislation to make it a crime to knowingly arrive in the UK without permission. The consequential Nationality and Borders Bill would

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introduce fundamental reforms that will mean those who enter the UK illegally will find it harder to stay.

By this stage, the government had already ended freedom of movement with the EU and introduced a pointsbased immigration system to ‘welcome the brightest and the best from around the world’. The Bill will make it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK without permission to be here, sending a clear message to migrants thinking about making the dangerous and illegal journey.

Since 2015, more than 25,000 refugees have been resettled in the UK from regions of conflict through formal schemes – more than any other European country. In addition to that, more than 29,000 close relatives have also joined them in the UK in the last

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five years - something Patel alluded to in order to showcase that the UK government is not ‘mean-spirited nor ungenerous’ towards asylum seekers.

As part of tougher measures, the Home Office will include a life sentence for those that bring asylum seekers to the UK and facilitate illegal entry, as well as the maximum prison sentence for entering the country illegally rising from six months to four years to ‘send a signal’ that there is increased risk to paying and propping up criminal gangs to get to the UK illegally. Border Force will also gain additional powers, including the seizure of vessels used to facilitate illegal entry to the UK and the ability to search all freight for people suspected of seeking illegal entry.

The government is making the border fully digital which will allow authorities

BORDER CONTROL

to count people in and out, help to stop dangerous people coming here, with Electronic Travel Authorisations deemed a major step up in the UK’s border security. Carriers will check that passengers have this digital authorisation or another form of digital permission like a visa before they travel. The new scheme is modelled on the US Electronic System for Travel Authorization which has been in place since 2009, while the EU is planning to introduce its own version - European Travel Information and Authorisation System - next year.

Approximately 30 million people are expected to apply for ETAs each year.

ISSUES WITH THE LAW A team of leading immigration lawyers has concluded that the Home Secretary’s new Borders Bill breaches international and domestic law in at least 10 different ways. Four barristers led by the human rights QC Raza Husain claim that the Nationality and Borders Bill, which is currently moving through Parliament, will lead to challenges under international human rights and refugee treaties. The legal opinion paper argues that the proposed legislation ‘represents the biggest legal assault on international refugee law ever seen in the UK’.

Commissioned by the human rights group Freedom From Torture, the report states that the bill seeks to reverse a number of important decisions of the UK courts, including at the House of Lords and court of appeal level, given over the last 20 years. It draws up battle lines between the government and human rights lawyers that are likely to be tested in courts if, as expected, the Bill passes through Parliament and becomes law in the spring.

The stated objectives of the Bill are to make the asylum system fairer, deter illegal entry to the UK, and remove people with no right to be in the country. It also means that anyone arriving in the UK by an illegal route could have their claim ruled as inadmissible, receive a jail sentence of up to four years, have no recourse to public funds, and could have their family members barred from joining them.

The report says that the inadmissibility regime outlined in the bill is potentially in breach of articles 31 and 33 of the UN refugee convention as well as articles 2, 3 and 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Additionally, plans to send those claiming asylum to offshore centre would breach three articles of the ECHR,

three of the articles of the refugee convention, while plans to ‘fast-track’ cases with an expedited, accelerated appeals process would risk unfairness under common law as well as articles 2, 3, 4, 8 and 13 of the EHCR. Steve Crawshaw, the policy director of Freedom From Torture, said the bill showed the government seemed not to care that they were ‘riding roughshod’ over international obligations.

On top of this, the End Violence Against Women Coalition has written to the Public Bill Committee to object to the government’s claim that the Bill will help women and girls fleeing violence. It argues that many of the proposals will seriously undermine the government’s commitments to prevent and address violence against women and girls, including proposals to introduce additional thresholds that survivors must meet in order to gain refugee status, and punishing women who are unable to disclose their history of violence and abuse immediately. L

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.gov.uk/government/ organisations/home-office

ISSUE 48 | COUNTER TERROR BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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HATE CRIME

WHY IT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA TO CONFLATE HATE AND TERRORISM

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ll terrorists commit crimes that are based on some degree of hate: not all hate constitutes terrorism.

US pop star Taylor Swift, in her song Shake It Off, crooned ‘And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate’. I am not a fan of her music but even I have to admit that particular hit was catchy.

Humans are capable of incredible heights - or depths - of hatred. Recent examples in human history include the Holodomor in Ukraine in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Holocaust under the Nazis in the 1940s and the Rwandan genocide in 1994. If you look through Canadian linguist/psychologist’s 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined however, you would see that things were actually much worse on that

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front historically (thankfully, violence is going down, not up as many assume).

Nevertheless, hatred is still a part of the human condition and will most likely always be so. At times that hate manifests itself as invective and nasty words: at others in acts of heinous violence as the horrendous examples above note.

As societies we have a natural interest in undermining hate before it leads to deaths and injuries. When those efforts fail, however, we resort to arrests, trials and incarceration to deal with the assailants and the consequences of their actions.

In most nations the crimes with which hatemongers can be charged range from assault to murder, or conspiracy to commit both offences. In some jurisdictions, like Canada, judges have

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the leeway to impose stiffer sentences when it is shown that the actions were motivated by hate (section 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code).

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TERRORISM? Simply put, there are some who want to conflate hate crimes with terrorist ones: that to my mind is a mistake and likely to lead to unwanted consequences.

Terrorism is a subset of hate, not a synonym. Terrorists and terrorist movements are ideologically-driven to commit serious acts of violence, whether that underlying ideology is religious, political or other in nature. These ideologies usually, if not always, have a hate element if they are not completely riven with hatred towards an identifiable group

HATE CRIME

(or in the case of Islamist extremism many such groups: women, the West, LGBTQ, other Muslims, etc.).

Many hatemongers are not, however, tied to an ideology: they just really, really hate. Combining the two groups and prosecuting them identically is a bad idea. Proving that a given individual targeted someone for his/her actions is relatively straightforward: proving that a deep-seated ideology was the primary reason is much more complicated.

Nevertheless, there are calls for more crimes to be treated as acts of terrorism. The leader of Sweden’s centre-right opposition has called for the country to use its far-reaching terror legislation against gang criminals. A London (Ontario) court charged a man who appears to have deliberately run over a family of Muslims, killing four and wounding one, with terrorism, despite the lack of publicly-available information indicating that an ideology was at the root of the act.

To this we have to add the call for violent ‘incels’ (‘involuntary celibates’) to be treated as ‘terrorists’. Some see conspiracy theorists (like QAnon) in the same boat. To my mind this is muddling what is and what is not terrorism (fully recognising that the definition has changed over time).

PROVING THAT A GIVEN INDIVIDUAL TARGETED SOMEONE FOR HIS/HER ACTIONS IS RELATIVELY STRAIGHTFORWARD: PROVING THAT A DEEP-SEATED IDEOLOGY WAS THE PRIMARY REASON IS MUCH MORE COMPLICATED

One aspect that is lost in this debate is the question of which organisation will be tasked with investigating and preventing these violent acts. Law enforcement? Security intelligence agencies? Where will the resources come from? What priorities will these investigations be accorded? What other priorities will be shunted aside?

How long is it before some demand that spousal (or child) abuse be labeled acts of terrorism? After all, these are clearly hate-filled violent incidents.

If so, where does this all end?

What if court cases fail when the Crown/prosecution is unable to prove terrorism beyond a reasonable doubt?

Will ne’er-do-wells walk free? Will this undermine real terrorism cases?

In my way of seeing things we need to use the terrorism moniker LESS not MORE frequently. We have ‘terrorism

on the brain’ and see it as an expanding scourge with existential implications despite evidence to the contrary.

We have the laws and means to go after those who strike out in hateful ways. We do not need to call all these individuals ‘terrorists’. When everything is terrorism in effect nothing is. L

By Phil Gurski, President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting.

A 32-year Canadian intelligence veteran. His latest book The Peaceable Kingdom: A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present is available on his website.

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.borealisthreatandrisk.com

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GLOBAL RISKS

VIOLENCE UNDERMINING A GLOBAL REBOUND

T

his year’s Aon Terrorism & Political Violence Risk Maps report which provides a global overview of political and terrorism risks for businesses and their supply chains in 2021, found that the coronavirus pandemic both suppressed and aggravated terrorism and political violence risks in 2020. Outside of conflict zones, incidents that have occurred have most commonly been lone attackers, reflecting a more situationally suppressed threat.

However, Dragonfly, who produced the report, warns that the unprecedented scale of state control, economic inequality and public anger over government handling of the pandemic will continue to play an influential part in growing global unrest. For example, lockdowns and travel restrictions have had a containing effect on most forms of terrorism and protest in 2020 – the percentage of countries exposed to terrorism and sabotage fell to 45 per cent - with surges in incidents mainly accompanying an easing of restrictions. There were no new terrorism and sabotage perils added, and five (all in Europe and Latin America) were removed.

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As a result, terrorist attacks by both extreme-right and extreme-left actors fell overall worldwide. In Western countries, there was a 53 per cent drop in 2020 of far-right extremist terrorist incidents and an even greater fall in the number of casualties from attacks, suggesting a lack of targeting means and opportunities due to pandemic-enforced restrictions.

But an increase in foiled plots and far-right extremist propaganda online suggests this relative respite will probably not last. Additionally, extremists and activists from across the spectrum are evolving their narratives; the pandemic has been an opportunity to build support and challenge established orders and forms of governance through protests and violent direct action.

Attacks by far-left extremist terrorist groups fell in South Asia (-35 per cent), Latin America (-46 per cent) and Asia Pacific (-12 per cent). This may partly be due to lockdowns, but ceasefires in Colombia and the Philippines were significant factors.

Conversely, in Europe, far-left extremist incidents increased by 42 per cent, with the proportion targeting businesses rising from 35 per cent in 2019 to more than 50 per cent in 2020.

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The sharp rise in civil unrest and insurrection risks in the US, evident in the storming of the Capitol building in January, shows that democratic governance in a time of profound crisis is particularly vulnerable to challenges.

In fact, Dragonfly finds that the US risk level is at high for the first time ever, following four years at medium.

A risk score is a combination of both the potential/ frequency of a particular event occurring and the impact of that event. The increased score for the US is based upon the events at the Capitol building at the start of the year and the potential for further civil unrest (as currently assessed by Dragonfly), combined with the fact that for any given large violent event, the impact (the calorific value) of damage to property or to business/revenue growth in the US is far greater than elsewhere.

Tony Day, head of Political Violence and Terrorism at the Global Broking Centre, Aon, said in his analysis that where there is weakened governance and rule of law, the momentum for jihadist groups to expand attacks is sustained, as well as an ideology that drives many attacks outside these areas.

The rise of left-wing extremist plots and

GLOBAL RISKS attacks targeting businesses in Europe indicates some organisations, that may not consider themselves particular targets for jihadist groups, will find themselves exposed to this threat.

TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE Looking at terrorism and political violence, the report also claims that Jihadist violence rose overall by a fifth in 2020. The majority of this activity was in conflict zones, such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Mali, all of which are reliant on external military and political commitments to ensure stabilisation. The impact of pandemic on these fragile states is a factor, but foreign troop withdrawals also played a role. In most regions, a single country or a small number of countries and territories account for a significant majority of terrorist incidents recorded in that region.

These are the Philippines in Asia Pacific, Mali and Egypt in North Africa, Iraq and Syria in the Middle East, Afghanistan, India and to a lesser extent Pakistan in South Asia, and Chile and Colombia in Latin America.

In Europe, incidents in France, Germany, Greece and the UK accounted for almost all attacks in 2020. Jihadist attacks and plots rose in Europe by 113 per cent in 2020, with increased activity when coronavirus restrictions eased. The number of plots equalled that of attacks from March, pointing to sustained levels of intent and ongoing counter terrorism activity.

The majority of incidents in 2020

involved bladed weapons, with only two bomb plots reported in Europe.

North Africa has the highest proportion of countries facing some degree of terrorism or sabotage risk.

In terms of risk, seven countries experienced a deterioration in the political risk situation and none improving following a significant uptick in 2021 inflation in emerging markets.

Henry Wilkinson, Chief Intelligence Officer at Dragonfly, said: “The pandemic is a long-tail risk that has created an artificial near-term global risk picture, particularly of political violence risks. The extraordinary measures to contain the pandemic have been suppressive but politically aggravating. A tide of risk by 2022 is likely as mass vaccinations and an easing of restrictions converge, with the accumulated economic and political fallout of the pandemic. The need for reliable and actionable data, intelligence and analysis to manage fluid and high impact global risk exposures while planning for recovery is critical.”

PROTEST Disruptive protests and unrest have remained common over the last 18 months amid pandemic-related restrictions on movement and gatherings. However, the fate of political protest movements was mixed: while new campaigns emerged in the US, Thailand and Belarus, others in Latin America, Asia and parts of Europe ground to a halt. The pandemic also pushed fringe grievances fostered by

misinformation and conspiracy theories into the mainstream. These fuelled protests on both wings of the political spectrum and sustain the potential for civil disorder through 2021.

Two countries that exemplify these contrasts are Hong Kong and Chile.

Pandemic-related restrictions on large public gatherings were a key obstruction to the civil rights protest movement in Hong Kong last year, even before a new national security law in June 2020 effectively thwarted the remaining resistance. Dragonfly analysis says that the new law will probably further deter activists from staging renewed anti-government protests in the territory in 2021.

By contrast, far-left activists in Santiago, Chile, have tried to use coronavirus to reinvigorate their campaign by piggybacking on grievances around socio-economic hardship. The protests forced President Sebastián Piñera to agree to a referendum on rewriting the constitution inherited from General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

In October 2020, over 78 per cent of Chilean voters approved the constitutional change and in June, they elected the constituent assembly. Such attempts to merge political concerns with hardship issues are likely to remain common in most of the world, particularly in emerging economies. L

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.dragonflyintelligence.com

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