Tracking International Arms Dealers withPython and pieces of string:When bloggers declared war on Viktor Bout

Alexander Harrowellhttp://yorksranter.wordpress.com/

ULU, Malet Street WC2 - 5th July 2008

Who is Viktor Bout?

World's leading gunrunner

Ex-Soviet intelligence officer

Linguist

Stationed in Mozambique in the 1980s

Why should you care?

Starting in 1993, became the leading supplier to a generation of genocidal civil wars

The only business that can sell you a resource war in a box

How's that work?

Aircraft

Fleet of (mostly) ex-Soviet heavy lift planes

Constantly shifting registries

Integrated logistics

Weapons from ex-Soviet stockpiles in eastern Europe

High-value exports from conflict zones (diamonds, electronics minerals, drugs)

Impunity

Flags of convenience for aircraft and corporate registry

Dubai and Sharjah Airports the base and critical network node for the whole system

Sharjah Airport Free Zone economic development area which may have been designed with Viktor Bout in mind

Why aren't you in jail?

Key deception tactics:

Registration of aircraft and companies in weak and corrupt polities

Fast-fluxing entire jets between jurisdictions

Typosquatting lots of very similar names, different enough to defeat trivial database searches

But that's not the half of it....

Key deception STRATEGY:

Make yourself useful to both sides

Or rather, N>1 sides this is fourth generation warfare...

For all to be safe, all must be implicated

1994 Logistics for Operation TURQUOISE in Rwanda

1996 Same for the Taliban (and Abdul Rashid Dostum)

1998-2001 Same for Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh

1996-2004 Same for DRC Warlords

2001-? - Same for US Dept of Defence in Afghanistan

2003-Today Same for Coalition in Iraq

2008 Same for FARC

Why aren't you in jail(2)?

So what the fuck is it to do with ME?

May 2004:

Le Monde and FT stories

TYR starts researching...

DESC Fuel contracts

TYR efforts to identify aircraft and companies

Early 2005:

Revelations over CIA rendition flights

End 2005:

UNSC asset seizure list issued

Operation Firedump

End 2005:

Effort to enforce compliance with the UNSC resolution

Bloggers search for aircraft registered to banned firms

3C-QRF

BAC111 aircraft used by Chichakli as private jet

Location of meetings with JP Bemba

SEIZED EARLY 2006 AFTER CAMPAIGN

Irbis Air Company ceases ops

EU Blacklists

First EU Blacklist issued 2006

A whole complex of companies based in Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria named

Despite their bases being in Sharjah, they shut down

Original effort to shut down Aerocom in 2004 didn't stick

This did

Second EU blacklist issued May, 2007

Second swath through the system

Biggest in terms of aircraft

Automation (Yes, the bit you're waiting for!)

In mid-2004 I realised..

SHJ and DXB put all their movements on the Web!

Started checking them daily

Matching real activity with political claims

Matching aircraft and locations with other data

Didn't do much with this for a while....

....

Eventually, wrote a Python script to scrape both airports

Filter the good guys

Report to me

First cut, June '08 (IBM ManyEyes)

What do we know about these places Khartoum, Kandahar, Kabul, and Baghdad?

But soon I wanted more...

I wanted to see as well as hear..

So I realised I needed geocoding

Next thought that's actually difficult

BIG problems cleaning up and standardising data

Much munging of strings

How many ways CAN you spell Kandahar?

In Unicode!

Solution BeautifulSoup, SQLite, Pyparsing

the aim visualise the data and DISCOVER yer NETWORK!

If you can see this...The live demo has gone wrong....again

If you can see this...The live demo has gone wrong....again

Viktor Arrested....

Bout was arrested in Thailand...

Andrew Smulian awaiting trial in New York

Bout awaiting extradition

Chichakli on the run in Russia some say he's dead

But the planes fly on....

so the work goes on (to coin a phrase)

Thank you

Thanks to everyone who helped...

Cargodog

Carlos

747-100

SpeshAlphaAlpha

Kathryn Cramer

Angus Gascoigne

DuaneG

Soj

Laura Rozen

and many others

Our inspiration

Chris Lightfoot RIP (1978-2007)

PRESENTE!