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FERMI stand_RISE-SD2024
3 minutes

The FERMI project’s insights were shared with a distinguished audience of fellow EU-supported consortia, “high-level representatives of the EU, governmental representatives, researchers, industry, practitioners and European security stakeholders” at this year’s “Research and Innovation Symposium for European Security 2024” (RISE-SD 2024), which took place on 16-17 October in Chalkidiki, Greece. RISE-SD is one of the leading European Research and Innovation events in the field of Fighting Crime and Terrorism, Disaster and Crisis Management, Critical Infrastructure Protection, Cybersecurity and Border Management Research.[1] Sven-Eric Fikenscher from the Bavarian Police College, the project’s coordinating partner, and Joaquín Garcia from ATOS/EVIDEN, one of the technical partners, participated in the meeting on behalf of the FERMI consortium. 

RISE-SD 2024

RISE-SD 2024 was a continuation of a preceding “EU Research and Innovation show in the field of Civil Protection & Defence”, with a specific “focus on the field of Civil Protection”. The meeting’s lead organisers were the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas - CERTH, the Bulgarian Defence Institute and Satways Ltd with the support of numerous EU-funded projects. FERMI proudly joined the ranks of co-organising consortia, engaging with the co-participants via its own stand in the exhibition hall and further facilitating the exchange among consortia that address pressing issues in the area of domestic security research. 

More than 200 participants from across Europe signed up for the event that was centred around the following focal points:

  • “Better protect the EU and its citizens against Crime and Terrorism 
  • Civil Protection and Disaster-Resilient Societies 
  • Effective management of EU external borders 
  • Resilient Critical Infrastructures and Smart Cities 
  • Increased Cybersecurity 
  • Strengthened Security Research and Innovation.”[2]

Presenting the FERMI Project and its Technical Outputs 

FERMI presentation at RISE-SD 2024

Sven-Eric Fikenscher from the Bavarian Police College presenting FERMI at RISE-SD 2024

In their presentation of the FERMI project, Fikenscher and Garcia made the case for examining the growing toll disinformation, especially if shared on social media, has taken on domestic security. Whilst the public discourse about the implications of disinformation campaigns has mostly centred around foreign manipulation efforts (such as Russian activities aimed at undermining Western elections), the impact of disinformation on crime has often-times been overlooked. 

Apart from the impact of disinformation on domestic security, the presentation placed a special emphasis on FERMI’s technical solutions. More specifically, advancing LEAs’ capabilities to rein in illegal disinformation activities and the ramifications thereof requires innovative technological solutions that mitigate the following challenges: 

  1. Facilitate investigations by 
    • examining whether an account is likely to be human- or bot-operated (crucial to enabling LEAs to determine whether they can launch an investigation into an actual social media user),
    • capturing all re-tweets, quotes and replies to an initial disinformation message on X (which advances evidence-gathering), and
    • rating the influence of each social media user involved in said exchanges (which can equip LEAs with further evidence to make their case in court, if charges are filed). 
  2. Perform near real-time threat assessments, so LEA personnel can be dispatched to areas of concern in due course by
    • capturing the sentiment of all social media posts at stake (indicating the atmosphere in the disinformation community) and 
    • crime estimation together with privacy-preserving data protection tools that can estimate changes in the crime landscape (focusing on crimes likely to be particularly influenced by extremist ideology).
  3. Take proper counter-measures that stem the tide of disinformation campaigns causing social tensions, unrest and even violence by 
    • measuring how the estimated number of crimes presumably translates into the likelihood of crime occurrence leading to costs. 
    • In the event said costs are categorised medium or higher the platform proposes counter-measures that are informed by intense LEA feedback collected in a series of focus groups-like expert interviews.


 

[1] For more information about RISE-SD please consult the symposium’s website at https://rise-sd2023.eu/. 

[2] RISE-SD, About the event. Available at: https://rise-sd2024.eu/the-event/.