Authorities from Western Balkans, Moldova, and Ukraine Build Capacities in Social Media Intelligence

SEESAC just completed the four-day Regional Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT) Training in Belgrade, Serbia on 21-24 March 2023 organised for the Firearms Focal Points from the Western Balkans, the Republic of Moldova, and the authorities from Ukraine. The training strengthened strategic and operational capacities of the authorities from South East and East Europe to conduct firearms investigations.

The Firearms Focal Points are the key teams for gathering, analysing, sharing, and improving the information flow regarding the criminal use and trafficking of firearms into, within or through their jurisdictions.

During the training, through practical tabletop exercises, the authorities developed and exercised operations for addressing specific risks and intelligence-led policing products such as problem profiles, subject profiles, criminal market analyses and operational and strategic assessments.

Social media intelligence or SOCMINT is a set of tools and solutions that enable law enforcement agencies to analyze conversations, react to social media cues, and combine social media data points into significant trends and analyses, according to investigation requirements. As such, it plays a pivotal role in finding links to cases or individuals and in using the collected information for prevention of crimes involving firearms.

SEESAC is supporting the authorities from the Western Balkans, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine to strengthen their capacities in the framework of the regional project Support for Enhancing the Fight Against the Illegal Possession, Misuse, and Trafficking of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) in the Western Balkans funded by the European Union through the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA II).

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