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this article was published by "Intelligence e Storia Top Secret" n° 8/2008 – www.centrostudiintelligence.org
by Giovanni Nacci2
Until recently, the leitmotif of the political debates about "security" seemed to be focused on the
theory - bipartisan - that for a more effective contrast to crime and terrorism troubling the today
society would have been necessary "to do more intelligence". Roughly speaking, this thesis seems
to be really difficult to refute, but just because it is presented in a so general way, becomes a
useless theorization. Hardly ever in fact, after the proclamation, the issue was seriously studied in
depth with an organized method and no clear, precise and flexible proposals were put forward.
Doing so, there's the danger that we give too much importance to images - not too much truthful -
that the current perception of intelligence tends to evoke among people.
And it's too easy and convenient to let intelligence pass as the "final solution" for the anxieties that
other means of control, prevention and investigation - even if legitimate and legal - (as provided by
a democratic system) can evoke in the collective imagination. Thinking to intelligence as something
to replace any other function, procedure or institution entrusted with security is a cultural error and
mainly a strategic one; it’s even worse to rely on its estimated low profile emotional impact.
Doing more intelligence does not imply the reduction of other security activities in any way. Indeed
- and is not a paradox - more intelligence we do, greater and more incisive the work of all other
institutions, engaged of public order and citizens’ protection in different ways, could be.
Intelligence is not a substitute to the investigative action of police or to its material and visible
presence in the territory (checks, searches, holding for questioning, arrests, even maritime
surveillance, etc..) or it cannot make this presence less necessary. Intelligence cannot be used as a
"good" method, politically correct, almost homeopathic, to let all agree on problems that everyone
tackles (when it happens) in diametrical opposite ways. The manipulation (more or less political) of
intelligence3 is the most harmful thing that can happen to a democratic nation.
In other contexts, however - especially certain academic circles, that in different ways are sheltered
from the background noise too often generated by a too much self-referential policy – comparing
research activities on the issue of possible similarities and potential points of contact between
investigation and intelligence are rich. The conviction that it is necessary to arrive at some best
form of integration between the two instruments, very different but complementary, urges scholars
and researchers.
Certainly institutional tasks of organizations, activities, practices and operational purposes - for
many well-known reasons - continue to remain separated, but intelligence and investigation - even
before being institutional functions of the state – are scientific disciplines that, as such, will use
scientific methods. Therefore there is no reason not to think about mutual transfers of knowledge
and experiences, at least from a methodological and technological point of view.
If we forget for a moment the concept of intelligence as a governmental function or as a set of
bodies and institutional activities generally attributable to the thought of the State security, we can
focus on intelligence as a discipline and a method, whose main purpose is to provide the best
11 www.commissariatodips.it
12 The Guidelines for the digitalization of Public Administrations approved by the Committee of Ministers for the Information Society at its meeting
on February 13th, 2002
13 Please visit http://www.epractice.eu/cases/olps website
14 The system is implemented by Sytnema Text Mining Solutions of Pisa. Www.synthema.it
15 For example databases, chats, forums, blogs, mailing lists, emails or texts derived from speech to text functions of the spoken language etc.
This allows the deep exploration of enormous quantity of documentary information operating a
certain type of research, which is always language independent16, based on the functional role of
each concept, semantic relation or word and not - as happens in the current Internet search engines -
only through the simple matching of words or keywords.
The canonical example in these cases is the following sentence:
«ti piace la pesca?»
Well then the system can identify subjects and objects, disambiguate concepts and also interpret
whether the sentence is interrogative or affirmative, turning it into four ontologically pure cases17:
1. question [acceptance [pesca [fruit of peach]]]
2. question [acceptance [pesca [the activity of fishing]]]
3. question [acceptance [pesca [quantity of draught]]]
4. question [acceptance [pesca [type of lottery]]]
Besides allowing a significant efficiency and reliability in the categorization and clustering of the
information, this also allows an increased capacity of the operator to explore less obvious aspects of
the information at his disposal, letting him identify relationships between objects that otherwise
would remain latent.
The ability to interpret some texts and recognize and represent the concepts (including people,
objects, events, places, etc.) and relations in a database, is a very important mean of help to
detectives, always struggling with the need to discover, understand and make a logical sense to the
famous five "W": who, when, what, where, why.
From an investigation point of view, such an instrument is useful - as mentioned before - to increase
the perception of the appearance and performance quality of the information that the operator has at
his disposal. The clearer the framework of knowledge is, the better you can use the information to
make decisions. From a point of view of pure intelligence, (but always oriented to investigation) it
is important to underline the possibility that these technologies give access to an inexhaustible
spontaneous and cooperative source: individuals.
The project of the Italian Ministry of Interior, structured in this way, either puts the citizens at the
heart of the institution, classifying them both as users of the services (assistance, complaints online,
information, etc..) or - far more important from a strategic point of view - as suppliers of
information or, in other words, as a privileged source. Just think about the value of that incredible
base of knowledge that will be built thanks to the complaints that citizens daily fill online and how
important it is for the detectives’ activity - especially in particular cases of crime – to have access to
all that information with the analytical capabilities of the instruments we mentioned18.
The transformation of the role of the citizens from simple users of security to proactive subjects
integrated into the information security system, is perhaps the greatest innovation in recent years.
For years experts have been examining – through an Open Source point of view - about what may
be or become the concept of Citizen Intelligence, how and how much the citizen can somehow
become a distributor of security for himself and his family, for his neighbourhood, for his country
16 In other words independent from the language the document or information is expressed in
17 The example was made using the Italian version of Wordnet, available at this address: http://www.ilc.cnr.it/iwndb/iwndb_php/wnit.php?
word=pesca
18 Especially when dealing - for example - to investigations related to child pornography offences, fraud on the Internet, recycling and cybercrime in
general
and also of how this can be framed in a broader concept of eDemocracy19.
The commissariatodips.it example is emblematic. It is the first step toward a collaborative
integration of methods and systems that hopefully will grow and develop putting the importance of
citizens at first place. This time Italy certainly is the first in Europe for sure and probably in the
world. A clear demonstration of absolute excellence in Italy among others that exist - in institutions
such as in factories - even in this area.
Let us be proud of it and persevere.
19 For further information: “L'Intelligence, le reti e... l'e-Democracy” di Giovanni Nacci, in RDEGNT, Rivista di Diritto, Economia e Gestione delle
Nuove Tecnologie”, anno III, n° 2 – Aprile ~ Giugno 2007, Editore Nyberg – www.nyberg.it