Authors and Affiliations:

Robert Allison, SAS Institute Inc, Robert.Allison@sas.com

Tool(s):

SAS Software

Video:

Graphs:

ANSWERS:

MC 3.1

Potential Threats: Identify any imminent terrorist threats in the Vastopolis metropolitan area. Provide detailed information on the threat or threats (e.g. who, what, where, when, and how) so that officials can conduct counterintelligence activities. Also, provide a list of the evidential documents supporting your answer.

There were about 4,474 total articles (one txt file per article). I wrote a SAS job to get a directory listing, and loop through it and read each file into a SAS data set, with date, title, and article. I created a subset of just the articles that mention 'Vastopolis' (case-insensitive, of course), and this narrowed it down to 419 Vastopolis articles.

The following needle/bar plot shows these 419 articles - each bar represents a day, and the height of the bars shows the number of Vastopolis articles published on that day.

I perused the 419 Vastopolis articles, and several jumped out at me as potential threats, and I then came up with a list of keywords for various categories of threats. The plot below represents the 58 potential threat articles that matched those keywords. There are a few "false positives" but in general these are all articles about potential threats:

In the live/interactive version of the plot (but not the screen-capture above), you can hover your mouse over the bar segments and see the title of the article, and click the bar segments to see the full-text. This interactive capability allowed me to quickly analyze these potential threat articles.

These articles are possibly all related - it appears a terror group stole some military weapons, and is using them. There is also other gang activity in the area (possibly related?)

• 26APR2011 - Military Weapons Missing
• 30APR2011 - Shootout in Southville Park (with military weapons)
• 01MAY2011 - Terror Group Communications Intercepted (Network of Dread intends to attack targets)
• 09MAY2011 - Threats to City Officials Received (Anarchists for Freedom send threats - seems amateurish)
• 10MAY2011 - City Threat Level Increased (DHS raised the threat level around the country)
• 11MAY2011 - Radioactive Cargo on Ship in Port of Vastopolis (DHS intercepted radioactive material)
• 15MAY2011 - Dangerous Suspect Arrested at Local Plant (gang member)
• 16MAY2011 - Arson Causes Fire (suspicious fire in abandoned warehouse downtown)
• 20MAY2011 - Military Weapons Discovered at Airport (being smuggled out on international flight)

Articles about Bioterrorism, health risks, and possible contamination of the food supply:

• 01APR2011 - Mass Animal Deaths
• 18APR2011 - CDC Publication on Bioterrorism (Publication from CDC about risk of bioterrorism in food supply)
• 20APR2011 - Animal Deaths in City Caused by Microbes
• 25APR2011 - Terrorism Expert Speaks Out (Jose Thom speaks out but nobody listens)
• 10MAY2011 - High Instance of Brain Tumors Prompts Amoco to Shutter Lab
• 19MAY2011 - Dead Fish Reported in River

The Edward Patino saga (he could be a 'powder keg' waiting to explode).

• 11APR2011 - Manufacturing Dangerous Microbes (Talk on bioterrorism & problems with Citizens for the Ethical Treatment of Lab Mice)
• 26APR2011 - Robbery at Vast University (Somebody stole his lab equipment)
• 18MAY2011 - University Professor Walks out of Class ("Loses it" and walks out of class. Bought laptop)

Articles about hackers & computers:

• 29MAR2011 - Local Panel Will Oversee Protection Of Systems From Hackers
• 10APR2011 - Library Computer Theft (roomfull of computers stolen)
• 28APR2011 - Mad Hacker Sends Message By Burying Enemies in E-Mail

Sounds like some inmates escaped from the mental hospital, and are trying to cause a little mayhem:

• 27APR2011 - Convicts Escape Center for the Criminally Insane
• 12MAY2011 - Bomb Makers Apprehended (escaped from Center for the Ciminally Insane)
• 14MAY2011 - Suspicious Turkey Found with Man at Airport