Arizona team’s tool could help track down terrorists

The quivering images and militant writings are frightening: an exploding Humvee blankets passing cars with dust...

The quivering images and militant writings are frightening: an exploding Humvee blankets passing cars with dust; a lab technician makes explosives, step by step; hatred oozes from A guide to kill Americans in Saudi Arabia.

Tens of thousands of web pages are now devoted to terrorist propaganda designed to attract followers. On the surface, the messages and videos reveal little about their creators. But programmers and writers leave digital clues — the greetings and other words they choose, their punctuation and syntax, and the way they code multimedia attachments and web links.

Researchers at the University of Arizona are developing a tool that uses these clues to automate the analysis of online jihadism.

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The Dark Web Project aims to scour Web sites, forums and chat rooms to find the Internet’s most prolific and influential jihadists and learn how they reel in adherents.

Lab director Hsinchun Chen hopes Dark Web will crimp what he calls “al-Qaeda University on the Web”, the mass of websites where potential terrorists learn their trade, from making explosives to planning attacks. Experts said they are not aware of any comparable effort, though some said the project may have only limited applications.

Donald Trump may replace H-1B lottery with wage-based selection process

World6 hr ago

Days after hiking the fees for new H-1B applications to $100,000, the Donald Trump administration has proposed to overhaul the visa process for high-skilled non-immigrant workers. The Trump administration has suggested a wage-based selection process for the H-1B programme, instead of the current lottery system.

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