Israeli tech firms invent big-data anti-terror systems

WHAT IF the Met Police had detailed aerial video footage of 80 sq km around Southwark before, during and after the terror attack on June 3? What if officers could zoom in and out, as you do with a photo on your smartphone?

New Israeli technology is allowing some countries to have exactly this “eye in the sky” capability, a Haifa-based company revealed on Monday.

“Elbit Systems’ SkeEye WAPS system is a game-changer in homeland security, enabling forces to analyse and retrace the steps of terrorists and criminals in an extremely large area,” said Elbit president and CEO Bezhalel Machlis.

He added that the system provides “timely and valuable data in life threatening situations”.

It allows police and security agencies to monitor and record a wider area than ever before, and view locations up close either live or using a “back in time” video function.

The system is also preventative: it can be used to pick up potential terrorist activity and provide alerts when unusual movements are recorded. Operators can also zoom in on different areas while monitoring the entire scene.

As Elbit boosts anti-terror capabilities using airborne devices, another Israeli company, Rafael Advanced Defence Systems — developer of the famous Iron Dome — is helping intelligence services make sense of the mass of data that comes from ground-level cameras and online activity.

“We produce a lot of data, from Facebook, Instagram and CCTV — such as the half a million cameras in London. The biggest challenge is how to take all this data and make something of value out of it,” said Rafael’s line manager for big data systems, Yudi B, who cannot be identified for security reasons.

“Big data” is the term for the massive amounts of information that require analysis to become useful. Rafael has come up with Wisdom Stone, a system in use by law enforcement agencies worldwide, which picks through this tsunami of data to provide tangible information that can be used to foil terror plots.

Yudi said: “Even at 9/11, all the data was there, but people didn’t know how to sift it in order to understand there would be an attack. The computing wasn’t there to find the needle in the haystack.” Wisdom Stone finds the needle, he added.

“We are learning in real time about people’s behaviour and can find out from the information where will be the next criminal, the next crime,” Yudi said.

“We can combine face and voice recognition to know where terrorists are located, and adding information from Facebook and Instagram.”

With all of this, he said, “you can try to stop the next terrorist”.

This technology finds the needle in the haystack’