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04 January 2020 Beginning 2020, time for budgets. In the fight against terrorism, child pornography, cybercrime, racism and xenophobia, the Postal Police has achieved some really important results.Sexual exploitation: 650 suspects
As part of the crimes related to the sexual exploitation of minors online, 650 people were investigated by the Postal and Communications Police. This is the balance of the activities carried out in 2019. The investigations relating to the phenomenon of the solicitation of minors online, however, have made it possible to investigate 180 people. Among the judicial police activities, 8 particularly important operations were carried out, conducted by the territorial offices of the Specialty and coordinated by the Center, some of which carried out in undercover online mode and resulting from reports received as part of the international cooperation activity carried out by the National Center for the fight against online child pornography which, in total, made it possible to investigate 151 people in a state.
32170 web spaces monitored, fight against radicalization
The activity, functional to the fight against radicalization and cyber terrorism, led the Postal Police in 2019 to monitor over 32,170 web spaces and the removal of hundreds of contents. This was revealed in the report on the activity published today. The web monitoring activity carried out in recent months - reads - has made it possible to find that the current central structure of the Daesh propaganda apparatus, with more or less constant media production over time, appears to be made up of various Media Centers insistent in the provinces of the Caliphate which, while in the past had their own communication channels, today they rely on the so-called Supporter Generated Content for the dissemination of propaganda material.
It is, therefore, a structure based on a myriad of accounts, activated daily by individual cyber mujahids (supporters of the Caliphate in the media) or in an automated form through special structures dependent on the Daesh and responsible for maintaining media operations, to cope with the restrictive action implemented by the administrators of the Social platforms, with the aim of divulging online Caliphate magazines, updates on the activities of the fighters in the operational theaters, videos, documents, manuals or publications of leading exponents of the Islamic radical current, infographics of threat etc.
The activities put in place made it possible to obtain a massive "take down" of thousands of groups, channels and accounts (many of which were the subject of previous unauthorized access and subsequent use as bots) which were the subject of prior notification by the law enforcement, as they are considered responsible for the publication of the sector weekly al-Naba. The Postal and Communications Police Service, as the national contact point of Europol's Internet Referral Unit (IRU) (Unit responsible for receiving reports from the Member States on the contents of jihadist propaganda disseminated on the web and directing its activity), he also participated in the "Cbrne Action Day" at the Europol headquarters at the end of November.
Based on the analysis of the tragic terrorist events that took place in Europe in recent years, starting from the attack on the Manchester Arena on 22 May 2017 to the recent episode of Halle (Germany) on 9 October, it has been found that more and more often the lone wolves (both of jihadist matrix, as well as of neo-Nazi matrix) have resorted to explosives and armaments made following the instructions in manuals and guidelines published online.
Activities to combat terrorism and radicalization via the web
In 2019 over 32170 spaces monitored and hundreds of contents removed # PoliziaPostale participated in Action Day to fight IS communication strategy, carried out at @Europol with Member States and major Internet Service Providers pic.twitter.com/dZeDOKsn1V
During the "Cbrne Action Day" the joint operation was aimed precisely at the online identification of manuals and terrorist-type "Tutorials", in which it is explained how to prepare improvised explosive devices using radiological, biological, chemical and nuclear materials. Over 1,700 online resources of investigative interest have been identified and have been reported to Internet Service Providers for their removal and for obtaining useful evidence essential for the continuation of the investigations. The joint operation included investigative activities, also within the Dark Web, in order to identify the purchase and sale of materials necessary for the preparation of devices, with the subsequent analysis of suspicious transactions relating to the sale of chemical precursors on generic online platforms.
Still in the context of the fight against jihadist terrorism, the Postal Police also reports the investigation activities carried out by the staff of the "Emilia Romagna" Postal and Communications Police Department of Bologna, as a result of which the Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Bologna issued a local, personal and IT search warrant against a 24-year-old Tunisian citizen. The investigations, resulting from the activity of undercover operators of the Specialty in the fight against cyber terrorism, led to the identification of a Whatsapp account, attributable to the suspect, inserted within groups of explicit support for the ideologies of the Islamic State . In relation to these facts, the Prosecutor of the Republic of Bologna has registered against the Tunisian citizen the hypothesis of crime of apology of crime in relation to the crimes of "Terrorism and crimes against humanity" committed by means of telematic tools. And again, after the search, several smartphones were found, one of which contained the telephone user associated with the WhatsApp account and the various Telegram channels used for the dissemination of jihadist propaganda, also computer equipment in which there was material multimedia with the same tenor, as well as some Arabic manuscripts praising the Islamic State.
Racist and xenophobic extremism on the rise
In the year just ended, the Postal and Communications Police recorded a significant increase in activities in the sector of online propaganda linked to racist and xenophobic extremism, finding a trend of forums and discussions dedicated to the topic in constant increase.
Indoctrination, as in the case of jihadist radicalism, takes place also in this area almost always on the network, through a gradual self-training that begins with the display of content spreads of numerous boards, different from the main social networks. Furthermore, within these boards, messages published by unknown persons are also used, through which terrorist actions are threatened (in most cases turned out to be fake).
Among other operations, thanks to the good collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, operators of the Cyberterrorism Section of the Postal Police and Communications Service, have identified an Italian subject who, through the 4Chan platform, had threatened the execution on 30 August 2019 of terrorist action on the Rome / Milan railway section; in particular, the investigators were able to carry out the search against the real author of the message on 29 August 2019, ascertaining the inconsistency of the threat.
And again, during 2019, thanks to the collaboration of the Departments of Florence and Perugia, two subjects were identified and investigated who, respectively, were the authors of an online message with which a mass murder was threatened in New York for on November 26, and a message in which the author would have said that the next day he would become a killer and adding that the Columbine massacre - massacre occurred on 20.4.99 at Columbine High School in the USA, where they came killed many students - by comparison it would have seemed a joke.
Furthermore, in order to contrast the presence on Italian territory of groups having among their purposes the incitement to discrimination or violence for racial, ethnic and national reasons, the staff of the Postal and Communications Police collaborated with the Police Offices of Prevention for the execution of computer searches against over 28 subjects located throughout the country.
288 people investigated for stalking, harassment and threats on social networks
In the context of crimes against the person perpetrated on the web in 2019, 288 people were investigated for committing sexual extortion, stalking, harassment and threats on social networks. This is what emerges from the report of the activities of the Postal and Communications Police in 2019. Online defamations are constantly increasing, especially against people who hold institutional positions or in any case known to the general public: 2426 cases treated and 738 people investigated.
514 cases of online blackmail have been reported since the beginning of the year. A particular relevance - highlights the postal police - has taken on the activity of contrasting the revenge porn, a phenomenon in continuous growth, for which 24 people are investigated. Unfortunately, the data do not reflect the seriousness and extent of the phenomenon, due to the reluctance to report of many people.