http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?Story...04-035224-1159r
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>US gets creative in online battle against Al Qaeda</b>
May 4, 2007
WASHINGTON -- US officials championing freedom and democracy are well aware that they cannot try to silence Islamist militants by censoring or blocking the burgeoning number of Al Qaeda related Web sites.
But they are attempting to exploit potential weaknesses in the <b>terror network's skyrocketing use of online media to spread its ideology, raise money, and recruit and train new followers.</b>
"It is not possible to capture, kill, or incarcerate ideas," Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Felter, director of the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States military academy at West Point, told a Senate hearing on homeland security Thursday. "But we can do a better job of understanding how the Internet facilitates these processes so we can monitor and thwart those who join the jihadi movement."
Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, said that the Internet has created a "largely borderless world."
"Internet chat rooms are now supplementing and replacing mosques, community centers, and coffee shops as venues for recruitment and radicalization by terrorist groups like Al Qaeda," he said.
To fight that, Cilluffo outlined a number of tactics for tapping into the online community and using its very nature to US advantage.
For one, <b>"it is possible that an intelligence officer posing as a sympathizer could infiltrate an online extremist community," he said. "Seeds of confusion, doubt, and distrust could then be planted in order to chip away at the ties that bind individual extremists into a cohesive and dangerous group."</b>
(I thought they were already using this method on many online communities?)
Other tactics that he proposed included "deepen[ing] our understanding of the process of radicalization."
Michael Doran, deputy assistant secretary of defense, said that the anonymous nature of the Internet makes militants difficult to track, and the speed with which messages are broadcast and copied onto other sites compounds the challenges.
<b>"Because individuals can access the Internet anonymously from virtually anywhere on the globe, the use of the Web by terrorists is a constantly moving target," he said. "From a handful of terrorist Web sites in 2000, today there are many thousands of terrorist-related Web sites in existence, with more appearing each week.</b>
"Our deep commitment to a free society and the very nature of the Web make it virtually<b> impossible to prevent terrorists from using the Internet altogether</b>," he added.
Felter concurred that attempts to close down the sites have proven futile.
"Attempts to shut down Web sites have proven as fruitless as a game of whack-a-mole. <b>An open society in the information age offers opportunities for asymmetric warfare that cannot be taken away, only countered."</b>
Felter said that <b>militants use the satellite mapping site Google Earth to plan attacks in Iraq, and gather specifications on US tactical vehicles used in Iraq based on the manufacturers' Web sites, techniques that US intelligence can use, too.</b>
"Know your enemy - read what the terrorists are telling us online," he said.
<b>"Exploit enemy vulnerabilities made publicly available on the Internet.</b> One of the most effective ways to hurt the jihadis is to use their own writings, discourse, and Web postings against them," Felter said. <b>"We can monitor them ... follow the networks and assess their operational capacity. We can sabotage them by infiltrating their networks and flooding the Web with bogus information.</b>
<b>"And we can anticipate their attacks by reading their strategic literature and following trends on their Web forums and discussion boards."</b>
Cilluffo advised offering "a compelling narrative that pulls potential extremists back from the brink," but warned that such a narrative "should not be confused with efforts to improve America's image," rather it should "offer a 'dream.'"
He also lamented the lack of Arabic-speakers in US intelligence services.
"The ability to speak, understand, and translate Arabic is crucial to prevention and response efforts, yet US government capacities in that regard are much weaker than they should be."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(a) Doesn't the US already flood the web with bogus information? Wackypedia is unlikely to be the only source of utter drivel.
(b) Glad they've <i>finally</i> caught onto what everyone already knows, and are now intending to start monitoring islami forums: the islamists are unashamedly advertising on forums what they're going to do to kafirs and kafiristans. Someone just needs to read all that boring hatespeech to find out what. Wrongly thought US was already on this.
Of course, nothing's stopping the salamis from flooding the web with bogus islami info just to fool the US monitoring agencies. I like the idea of CIA and jihadis wasting their time creating and reading each other's nonsense. I mean, they were already creating nonsense, but never before did they have such dedicated readership for it <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>US gets creative in online battle against Al Qaeda</b>
May 4, 2007
WASHINGTON -- US officials championing freedom and democracy are well aware that they cannot try to silence Islamist militants by censoring or blocking the burgeoning number of Al Qaeda related Web sites.
But they are attempting to exploit potential weaknesses in the <b>terror network's skyrocketing use of online media to spread its ideology, raise money, and recruit and train new followers.</b>
"It is not possible to capture, kill, or incarcerate ideas," Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Felter, director of the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States military academy at West Point, told a Senate hearing on homeland security Thursday. "But we can do a better job of understanding how the Internet facilitates these processes so we can monitor and thwart those who join the jihadi movement."
Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, said that the Internet has created a "largely borderless world."
"Internet chat rooms are now supplementing and replacing mosques, community centers, and coffee shops as venues for recruitment and radicalization by terrorist groups like Al Qaeda," he said.
To fight that, Cilluffo outlined a number of tactics for tapping into the online community and using its very nature to US advantage.
For one, <b>"it is possible that an intelligence officer posing as a sympathizer could infiltrate an online extremist community," he said. "Seeds of confusion, doubt, and distrust could then be planted in order to chip away at the ties that bind individual extremists into a cohesive and dangerous group."</b>
(I thought they were already using this method on many online communities?)
Other tactics that he proposed included "deepen[ing] our understanding of the process of radicalization."
Michael Doran, deputy assistant secretary of defense, said that the anonymous nature of the Internet makes militants difficult to track, and the speed with which messages are broadcast and copied onto other sites compounds the challenges.
<b>"Because individuals can access the Internet anonymously from virtually anywhere on the globe, the use of the Web by terrorists is a constantly moving target," he said. "From a handful of terrorist Web sites in 2000, today there are many thousands of terrorist-related Web sites in existence, with more appearing each week.</b>
"Our deep commitment to a free society and the very nature of the Web make it virtually<b> impossible to prevent terrorists from using the Internet altogether</b>," he added.
Felter concurred that attempts to close down the sites have proven futile.
"Attempts to shut down Web sites have proven as fruitless as a game of whack-a-mole. <b>An open society in the information age offers opportunities for asymmetric warfare that cannot be taken away, only countered."</b>
Felter said that <b>militants use the satellite mapping site Google Earth to plan attacks in Iraq, and gather specifications on US tactical vehicles used in Iraq based on the manufacturers' Web sites, techniques that US intelligence can use, too.</b>
"Know your enemy - read what the terrorists are telling us online," he said.
<b>"Exploit enemy vulnerabilities made publicly available on the Internet.</b> One of the most effective ways to hurt the jihadis is to use their own writings, discourse, and Web postings against them," Felter said. <b>"We can monitor them ... follow the networks and assess their operational capacity. We can sabotage them by infiltrating their networks and flooding the Web with bogus information.</b>
<b>"And we can anticipate their attacks by reading their strategic literature and following trends on their Web forums and discussion boards."</b>
Cilluffo advised offering "a compelling narrative that pulls potential extremists back from the brink," but warned that such a narrative "should not be confused with efforts to improve America's image," rather it should "offer a 'dream.'"
He also lamented the lack of Arabic-speakers in US intelligence services.
"The ability to speak, understand, and translate Arabic is crucial to prevention and response efforts, yet US government capacities in that regard are much weaker than they should be."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(a) Doesn't the US already flood the web with bogus information? Wackypedia is unlikely to be the only source of utter drivel.
(b) Glad they've <i>finally</i> caught onto what everyone already knows, and are now intending to start monitoring islami forums: the islamists are unashamedly advertising on forums what they're going to do to kafirs and kafiristans. Someone just needs to read all that boring hatespeech to find out what. Wrongly thought US was already on this.
Of course, nothing's stopping the salamis from flooding the web with bogus islami info just to fool the US monitoring agencies. I like the idea of CIA and jihadis wasting their time creating and reading each other's nonsense. I mean, they were already creating nonsense, but never before did they have such dedicated readership for it <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->