International journal of Terrorism & National Security

Technology in the digital age has become a new battleground for countering terrorism. The Internet has no time and space constraints, and it has established a cyber space that allows free expression of opinion, exchange of thoughts, rapid speed of sharing information, and building friendship with individuals from all walks of life and the place. This feature is why terrorist organizations use the Internet to achieve their goals and spread their propaganda. For this reason, the Internet has become an effective means of communication to maintain the terror network, and the spread of social media has led to the expansion of cyberspace and the multichannels of interactive communication. As a result, security threats such as the use of the Internet for terrorist purposes has also emerged. In this article, it aims to introduce how the international community has respond to the emerging threat focusing on the terrorist use of the ICT. In particular, it aims to illustrate and discuss Asia’s effort to counter terrorist use of the ICT. The international community including the United Nations is responding to security threats such as the use of the Internet for terrorist purposes by establishing a legal and policy framework, investigating cases of Internet use for terrorism purposes and gathering information, building international cooperation, and building public-private partnership(PPP). With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the scope of its effort has been expanded to the use of Internet and other technologies for terrorism purposes. The new type of security threat is not a single type, but the sum of a small variety of non-state actors who have relatively little influence from the traditional security perspective. In particular, the extreme terrorism based on religion has been pointed out as the most important security threat. The diversification of terrorist organization, which is characterized by new terrorism, and the worldwide spread of fear of terrorism due to informationization, developing active measures for counterterrorism is getting more and more difficult. Terrorist threats that exploit information and communication technologies in the era of globalization are growing and expanding, so a more comprehensive approach to terrorism related to the Internet and information and communications technologies is required.

Today, national security throughout the world is expanding and deepening the scope and types of transnational threats such as terrorism, cybercrime, weapons of mass destruction, and drug offenses. In recent years, transnational national security threats have been dominated by non-state actors, such as individuals or various interest groups within a country, multinational corporations, international organizations, and terrorists. As these non-state actors transcended borders, their importance and role in the international society increased. In the past, information activities were mainly conducted at the national level, but the task of collecting and analyzing information about non-state actors was added. On the other hand, potential terrorism threats that threaten national security is different from traditional security threats in response. Traditional security threats, such as war and military threats, could be resolved to some extent by a realistic approach that focuses on alliances, balance of power, and collective security measures across countries. However, transnational security issues such as terrorism are largely out of the realistic framework of consciousness, and information security cooperation among nations can be relatively smooth because of the low possibility of a security dilemma in the case of such a transnational security threat. Transnational crimes that threaten national security are far more difficult tasks than traditional warfare with traditional sovereign states. It is not easy to capture the target of the terrorist organization easily, it carries out the war in the form of defensive rather than the attack by nature, and even if the current leader of the terrorist organization is arrested or dies, the successor appears constantly and it is very difficult to reach the final crush. In addition, the bottom of the issue of terrorism is based on the assumption of religion and conviction that most terrorist organizations are convinced of their final victory and never accept defeat, so that the war on terror is much more difficult and persistent than the war between countries. In addition, terrorism is a deadly threat to national security because terrorist organizations do not limit their targets even in case of attacks against innocent civilians. The emergence of such transnational threats further demands a close link between the national intelligence community and the law enforcement community. Thus, national intelligence also demands a statutory understanding comparable to that of law enforcement, which is the incarnation of the rule of law. Therefore, only when it is accompanied by a lawful understanding and understanding of national intelligence, it will provide permanent and constant value to national intelligence activities. It can be said that it is a way to systematically develop democracy, openness and national intelligence, but it should be done within the scope that the purpose of counterterrorism based on rule of law is not undermined.

The reason why intelligence agencies investigating the crimes that threaten national security, such as terror-ism today, uses location tracking in its investigation is that it is the most effective way to investigate individuals, who were at the scene of crime, to identify suspects. In this case, the intelligence agency and the investigation agency will acquire the number of all mobile phones through the base station that is responsible for the area in question, and if there exist a certain phone number and a number of call records already known by the intelli-gence agency and investigation agency, information of a specific person to be responsible for the crime-related behavior, then the scope of investigation is limited to the telephone numbers of persons who have shown com-munication or conduct related to crime such as communication information that has been confirmed to stay in a nearby area for a long time or that they have also contacted other base stations related to the crime. However, location tracking using a base station will also get a minimum amount of calls for people who are not related to the crime. In some cases, the information that communicates with a particular base station is equivalent to the information that the communication was present near the base station. Therefore, even if the accuracy of the location information is low as long as the location information is obtained through base station investigation, the location information through base station investigation is strong. For these reasons, it is argued that it should be protected and should not be included in the communication confirmation data. Finally, if not included in the data confirming the communication, the protection of the level of the search warrants should be maintained, and related legislation on crimes that threaten national security, such as terror-ism, should be closely discussed and examined.