By the turn of the century virtually all known terrorist groups had a presence on the Internet. There is overwhelming evidence of terrorists groups utilizing the Internet to engage in psychological warfare, propaganda, data mining, fundraising, recruiting, networking, information sharing, and planning and coordination. CCITP will focus on investigations and operations centered on these uses of the Internet by terrorists.

The terrorists of today are highly sophisticated in their use of weapons, communications and planning techniques. They operate in a highly decentralized manner which makes it difficult to locate and track more than a small cell of terrorist at any given time. They are using the Internet to collect large amounts of open source information to be used for the preparation and execution of their operations. Many of these terrorists’ organizations have recruited members with highly sophisticated degrees in such areas as computer science, biology and chemistry. In order to effectively collect intelligence, conduct investigations and run operations against these threats we have to identify their methods and be able to operate within the same medium.

The Cyber Counterterrorism Investigations Training Program will give the criminal investigator the necessary tools and training they need to conduct cyber-based investigations and operations against terrorist targets. The target audience will be criminal investigators, detectives, intelligence specialists, and intelligence analyst from the federal, state and local law enforcement community who are tasked with performing intelligence gathering and analysis, investigations and operations against known and unknown terrorist targets or threats.