Terrorism Watch

  There have been substantial concerns within policy and the media that online technologies present a challenge to counter-terror finance. This is particularly the case for virtual currencies – the  US Department of Treasury  notes that such financial services are “vulnerable to abuse by terrorist financiers because they enable potentially anonymous cross-border person-to-person fund transfers.” Similarly, the  Financial Action Task Force  (FATF) is concerned that “electronic online and new payment methods pose an emerging [vulnerability]…Many of these systems can be accessed globally and used to transfer funds quickly… [while being] difficult to identify the actual end-user.’ Although the FATF highlight several anecdotal case studies which demonstrate this, they note that the prevalence of such technologies is unclear. In essence, policymakers are highlighting a  potential  concern, yet there is little robust data to either support or challenge it. A recently  published open access ar