There's been something that's been nudging me at the back of my skull for a long time, saying something's very wrong here.
Yesterday's
Washington Post describes what I'm talking about:
Terrorist groups, which for years have used the Internet and its various tools to organize and communicate, are paying more attention to addressing security and privacy concerns similar to those of other Web users, counterterrorism experts say.
The Internet has long been a convenient gathering place for radical Islamists advocating violence against Western influences, known as jihadists. Through online chat, e-mail and Web postings, communities of people have relied on one another for advice, political debate, even movie reviews and biographical information on suicide bombers and religious leaders.
The WaPo article talks about how these online jihadis are becoming more "savvy" about their internet usage but what I want to focus on is the first paragraph: this unquestioned fact that terrorist groups regularly use the internet.
Two years ago when I was chasing down the Nick Berg story (which ended up being more difficult to nail down than jell-o), I found one of those online jihadi websites. I don't understand a word of Arabic but I still managed to get registered and peruse through the message boards. Even if I couldn't read what was being said, I could download/view the photos and the videos. So yes I know terrorist websites are out there (and I still get Arabic-language spam to this day).
However it seems to me that this would be one of the easiest things to monitor and prevent. There's a big story out today about the megalith internet provider AOL managing to censor emails containing a link to a website that criticizes it. Megablog Boing Boing has been monitoring how certain countries (including China and Arab nations) block access to their site using off-the-shelf American filtering software because they consider BB "pornographic".
Without being a computer expert, it seems to me it would be extremely easy to block access to jihadi websites. This could be done via three ways. One would be for countries to install filters that would block websites with certain words and phrases, similar to how China/Saudi Arabia currently does with pornography and sex and "Tibet" etc.
The second method would be even easier, which is for the ISP's themselves to block access to both specified websites as well as block ANY website with certain words. It wouldn't be foolproof of course, as even in China people manage to evade the strict censorship, but it would certainly make a serious impact.
The third choice of course would be for a country, perhaps the United States, to employ people full-time to find these websites and "hack" them, disrupt them or block access to them with denial-of-service attacks etc. I'm not sure I'm advocating this third route, but it seems to me like it would definitely be a fairly easy option to implement.
I realize that not all terrorists chatting and sharing information online are Arabs and/or speak Arabic, but clearly the ones the west are most focused on right now are. A few weeks ago I found this article:
Why, with such a young population, is the Arab world still lagging behind when it comes to the digital revolution? Less than four per cent of people in the Arab world are internet users, according to ITU data. The penetration rate is just 3.7% - in a region with an 8.59% penetration in landline subscribers, and 14.51% in mobile subscribers.
While many Arab governments are undeniably keen to promote e-government services and increase tech literacy, there is great unease about some of the internet's capabilities: such as the expression of political dissent, or the exposure of issues they are not ready to tackle.
Where then are all these Arabic-speaking terrorists logging on from? I realize some may be in Europe or the United States, but it seems quite clear that most Arab governments have serious limitations on the internet in place on banned forms of speech and I know for a fact that countries from Algeria to the UAE use very widespread filters to block out what it deems pornographic websites, or those which defame Islam.
The question that has to be asked is, do these Arab countries with nationwide filtering also block out terrorist/jihadi websites? Has anyone ever asked this question? And if the answer is "no", why isn't there pressure on them to block it? If it's ok for them to block out sites like Boing Boing and sites which contain "blasphemous" material against Islam, why not go ahead and add jihadist keywords to the filter as well?
Furthermore, I've been very curious exactly how many terrorists/insurgents in Iraq are logging on to use the internet. From a variety of blogs, including Baghdad Burning, we know that electrical supplies are unreliable and undependable. Most of Iraq's infrastructure from water to oil pipelines are in shambles, so are we to believe that the internet is a major tool in the terrorist/insurgent's arsenal? Logging on means both electricity and a working connection, usually either phone or broadband but also some satellite.
How many ISP's are there in Iraq anyway? And couldn't these ISP's monitor the traffic going through their system, even if they don't block it? Couldn't they track who is logging on to jihadi websites and figure out who the user is pretty easily?
I don't know how accurate this is, but it looks like the majority of the internet traffic in Iraq is going through lines controlled by America and Britain. Of course some of that is the soldiers themselves but how much of it is the terrorists?
It is unfathomable to me why terrorists worldwide are finding it so easy to use the internet, even to chat. When someone like me, with no hacking skills and absolutely no Arabic skills, can find these websites then you know it is just too easy.
The United States already controls a vast majority of the internet. It's nearly impossible to even send an email without having part of it route through the United States. We already know that the NSA is plugged right into this backbone and is monitoring the use of the internet by Americans. Why aren't they able to find and shut down these terrorist websites?
Anyone with a blog and Site Meter (or anything similar) can see where the visitors to a website are coming from. Why can't the United States find out where these people are coming from who log onto these jihadi websites? Are we to believe they all live in North Korea or Belarus, that the governments won't cooperate in the war on terror with the United States? Are you telling me that if the U.S. says to the Italian government, we've got a potential terrorist logging on via such-and-such ISP, can you check him out, that they wouldn't do it?
No one can stop non-electronic means of communication, from paper letters to hand-delivered messages. I realize that low-powered radios can't often be intercepted. I know people sometimes meet clandestinely and discuss terrorism. The fact that the internet is being used to regularly, easily and frequently to spread terrorism is a clear sign that the U.S. and the world are not doing a very good job at protecting their citizens, something they've supposedly made their "number one" job.
Before you gnash your teeth at me, I'm not recommending that the U.S. become China, with an imposition of heavy-handed censorship. I just note that the some law enforcement agencies are damned good at finding child predators online (including some who work at DHS). Why can't we find terrorists online in a similar manner? Why is the NSA spying on Americans and not catching these people?
Why should it be easy for a two minute digital video of a suicide bomb(er) to be posted online where hundreds of thousands can download it? Why is it so damn easy to discuss how to build bombs and IEDs to inflict the most casualties?
There are some (esp in the world of talk radio) who liked to blame Al-Jazeera and other networks for being the terrorist's "friend" for airing their video and audio statements. But western networks do it too. And they get a LOT of what they find, from videos to written statements of responsibility for attacks, on the internet. Imagine if it wasn't so damned easy for Mr. Mystery Terrorist in Iraq to post his videos and statements on the internet. First, he'd have to either mail it to a TV station or else have it hand-delivered. That would give the authorities a chance to trace it back to the source, which might lead to some actual arrests.
Furthermore it is far too easy to post false videos and statements on the internet. Spoofs in English get posted online all the time and picked up and disseminated by the traditional media. How do we even know that terrorist X is really responsible for that video or that attack? It could just as easily be terrorist Y looking to misdirect the blame or even another group altogether (perhaps even a different country's intelligence service). It's ridiculous to continually get all of our intelligence on Abu Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden from the internet, inherently the least reliable medium available.
On a side note, did you know that Osama bin Laden denied involvement in 9/11 at least three times in actual interviews, where he spoke to a human journalist? It was only three months afterwards in a crappy video that he first responsibility. And why do so many of his statements afterwards emerge from the internet?
I'm tired of hearing about how frequently and easily terrorism is discussed on the internet, how terrorists are chatting online. If you're monitoring them chatting about security, why not find them and arrest them? Why allow them to post entire catalogs of videos of suicide bombs and attacks on Americans and everything else, downloadable to thousands of people? Rumsfeld likes to talk about a "war of information" but these jihadis are winning the internet war hands down. There are already enough dead people out there - a "war" on the terrorists online would not result in a single death to an innocent person and hopefully catch some real terrorists.
This administration's "defense" of the American people is a joke. This week we read how journalists are buying top secret information from computers stolen by Afghan janitors. The Pentagon's counter-terrorism unit (CIFA) spends more time spying on Quaker and vegan protesters than it does protecting military computers. And the WaPo and every other traditional media source keep trotting out these stories about the terrorists' online usage, without anyone ever asking the question, "what are we doing to stop this?". Well I'm asking, right here, right now.
Postscript: I swear that if I knew someone who spoke Arabic, I'd put a beard on 'em, dress them like Osama, soften the filter and shoot a 2 minute digital movie of "Osama" claiming responsibility for something, just to test how easy it is to put a spoof on the internet and see who falls for it.
Cross-posted from the doubleplusungood crimethink website Flogging the Simian
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