The shaping of covert social networks: Isolating the effects of secrecy

Contemporary understandings of organized crime networks based on routine activities theory see strong parallels between criminal organizations and legitimate business organizations. This article focuses on the limitations of understanding covert networks solely on their own terms and seeks to re-assess the role of covertness in criminal organizations. The article profiles the principal models of organized crime and differentiates models concerned with ‘organization for activities’ from models concerned with ‘organization for social relations’. It then considers the role of covertness in the core business of organized crime and the implications this has for law enforcement. Empirical evidence about covert networks is scarce, conceptualisations of the effects of covertness on how networks form and are organised are contradictory, and systematic comparative analysis of covert and overt networks is lacking.

De-Classified CIA Training Film: Car Surveillance

This formerly classified CIA training film covers techniques used to surveil cars using multiple vehicle-based teams communicating by radio.

Where the Insurgent Groups of the World Get Their Weapons

But examining the role that international arms transfers are playing to fuel violence in other post-Arab Spring states is an effort severely undermined by the lack of transparency governing such shipments. Since civil war arrived in Syria in 2011, several world powers have attempted to curtail arms shipments destined for forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Nonetheless, the report notes that media accounts indicate that Russia, Iran, and North Korea continue to supply the regime with weaponry. While the EU has imposed an arms embargo, Russia has blocked the creation of a similar U.N. measure.

FP-45 Liberator

The Liberator was shipped in a cardboard box with 10 rounds of .45 ACP ammunition, a wooden dowel to remove the empty cartridge case, and an instruction sheet in comic strip form[4] showing how to load and fire the weapon. The Liberator was a crude and clumsy weapon, never intended for front line service. It was originally intended as an insurgency weapon to be mass dropped behind enemy lines to resistance fighters in occupied territory. A resistance fighter was to recover the gun, sneak up on an Axis occupier, kill or incapacitate him, and retrieve his weapons.

Deer Gun

The Deer gun was loaded by removing the barrel and placing a 9 mm cartridge in the chamber. The striker was then cocked, and a small plastic clip placed around the striker to impede the forward motion of the striker to prevent accidental discharge. The barrel was then screwed back onto the receiver. The gun was fired by removing the plastic clip, placing it on the barrel where it would become the sight, and pulling the trigger. At this point the user would take the victim’s equipment if opportunity presented itself, and then flee. Later, the user would reload the gun by unscrewing the barrel and ejecting the spent case with the provided barrel rod, and follow the outlined procedure.

Are Gang Members Using Military Training?

CBS News has learned that military police have briefed local authorities in major cities, including New York, about the rising danger that gang members in the military could share their skills with gangs on the streets. That could include combat, logistics, and even emergency medical skills.

“We heard about it in other places,” Lott said. “We didn’t think Columbia, South Carolina would be a place where the military would have influence on our gangs, but we had it.”

Organizing Insurgency: Networks, Resources, and Rebellion in South Asia

The theory argues that the social networks on which insurgent groups are built create different types of organizations with differing abilities to control resource flows. There is no single effect of resource wealth: instead, social and organizational context determines how these groups use available resources. A detailed comparative study of armed groups in the insurgency in Kashmir supports this argument. A number of indigenous Kashmiri insurgent organizations received substantial funding, training, and support from Pakistan from 1988 to 2003, but they varied in their discipline and internal control. Preexisting networks determined how armed organizations were built and how material resources were used. Evidence from other South Asian wars shows that this is a broader pattern. Scholars of civil conflict should therefore explore the social and organizational processes of war in their research.