An innovative cross-European 36-month project that supports the fight against radicalisation to prevent future terrorist attacks was launched in May, 2021.
With funding from the European Commission’s H2020 programme, 19 organizations from 11 member states united efforts to counter radicalisation and violent extremism through the CounteR Project.
The project’s full name is: CounteR – Countering Radicalisation for a Safer World: Privacy-First Situational Awareness Platform for Violent Terrorism and Crime Prediction, Counter Radicalisation and Citizen Protection. The CounteR consortium brings together an illustrious group of international subject-matter experts in counterterrorism, radicalisation and privacy law, six European law enforcement agencies with practical infield knowledge, as well as a group of technical SMEs and academic partners.
Under this project, an open platform for analysis and early alert – the CounteR solution – will be launched, collecting and analyzing data from dispersed sources in order to predict critical communities at risk of radicalisation and violent extremism and aid law enforcement to more easily detect radicalisation processes. Radicalisation, enabled by propaganda online and offline indoctrination, has been the main driver for violent terrorism in virtually every terrorist attack, in Europe and globally, over the last decade.
The ultimate goal of the CounteR solution is to provide law enforcement agencies, Internet providers and social media platforms with an early-warning tool to be used in the detection of potential radical content for the prevention of radicalisation spread and, ultimately, life-threatening terrorist attacks.
The CounteR solution will target hotspots of radicalisation rather than surveilling individuals. This is a key point in protecting the privacy of citizens, an issue that has been of great concern to policymakers and law-enforcement agencies alike, who must balance the important work they do with the need to comply with legal, regulatory and ethical frameworks
Catalin Trufin, Head of EU Projects at ASSIST Software SRL