Posted on 07/30/2005 5:46:03 PM PDT by Ooh-Ah
Over the past fortnight Israeli intelligence agents have noticed something distinctly odd happening on the internet. One by one, Al-Qaeda’s affiliated websites have vanished until only a handful remain, write Uzi Mahnaimi and Alex Pell.
Someone has cut the line of communication between the spiritual leaders of international terrorism and their supporters. Since 9/11 the websites have been the main links to disseminate propaganda and information.
The Israelis detect the hand of British intelligence, determined to torpedo the websites after the London attacks of July 7.
The web has become the new battleground of terrorism, permitting a freedom of communication denied to such organisations as the IRA a couple of decades ago.
One global jihad site terminated recently was an inflammatory Pakistani site, www.mojihedun.com, in which a section entitled How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down. However, Islamic sites believed to be “moderate”, remain.
One belongs to the London-based Syrian cleric Abu Basir al-Tartusi, whose www.abubaseer.bizland.com remained operative after he condemned the London bombings.
However, the scales remain weighted in favour of global jihad, the first virtual terror organisation. For all the vaunted spying advances such as tracking mobile phones and isolating key phrases in telephone conversations, experts believe current technologies actually play into the hands of those who would harm us.
“Modern technology puts most of the advantages in the hands of the terrorists. That is the bottom line,” says Professor Michael Clarke, of King’s College London, who is director of the International Policy Institute.
Government-sponsored monitoring systems, such as Echelon, can track vast amounts of data but have so far proved of minimal benefit in preventing, or even warning, of attacks. And such systems are vulnerable to manipulation: low-ranking volunteers in terrorist organisations can create background chatter that ties up resources and maintains a threshold of anxiety. There are many tricks of the trade that give terrorists secure digital communication and leave no trace on the host computer.
Ironically, the most readily available sources of accurate online information on bomb-making are the websites of the radical American militia. “I have not seen any Al-Qaeda manuals that look like genuine terrorist training,” claims Clarke.
However, the sobering message of many security experts is that the terrorists are unlikely ever to lose a war waged with technology.
"Since 9/11 the websites have been the main links to disseminate propaganda and information."
MI Ping
Yup, no agenda there...
From this site: http://cds.ipi.kcl.ac.uk/C010601.htm
"He is a member of the Board of Trustees for the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva."
Ironically, the most readily available sources of accurate online information on bomb-making are the websites of the radical American militia. “I have not seen any Al-Qaeda manuals that look like genuine terrorist training,” claims Clarke.
No AQ genuine terrorist training manuals???
ON THE NET... http://www.truthusa.com/911news.html http://www.truthusa.com/911.html
Let's make those links clickable:
http://www.truthusa.com/911news.html
http://www.truthusa.com/911.html
It's about frikkin time!!!
"[F]rom my perspective, we could be wadging a cyber war - which is completely different than the boots on the ground aspect."
I'm sure this is already happening behind the scenes.
Too bad you don't write articles which are distributed as widely as this writer's!
Well, come to think of it, probably more people read your comments and input on FR and your site(s) than this this writer's one little article.
:-)
The US already does! The site is called "moveon.org"
JamesBond@aol.com has a wierd ring to it.
Well thanks Little Jeremiah.
After 9/11 I quite writing except for one article entitled "Information Overload."
Other than that, it's just research these days.
Of course the U>S. controls the backbone of the internet. Nothing goes very far without going through an American switch. It would be fairly easy to block DNS for any site, and not too difficult to block the IP address.
I sure British Intelligence gets the double post police.
Did'nt we hear of "patriotic hackers" going after A Q websites shortly after 911?
More proof Clarke is an idiot lap dog of the Klinton's.
My guess is they got the sites from the computers of the punks in London...
What took them so long to close these sites down!
Easy: "At least twenty", or perhaps "Twenty or more".
I have never in my life heard or read a native English speaker using the word "tens" in place of "dozens" to denote an indefinite number thought to lie somewhere between 20 and 99. (except perhaps in a technical setting like mathematics or computer science.)
Whenever I see it, I assume the author grew up speaking Arabic or another language that does use "tens" in this fashion. So far, I have never been wrong.
But maybe things are changing in England. About five years ago I realized that British English had discarded the comma before "not" sometime since my childhood. "I like tea, not coffee" became "I like tea not coffee" without most of us noticing the change. Also, abbreviations over there have lost their full-stops. There are no more M.D.'s in England, only MD's. So perhaps this is a new British usage.
I pinged a few UK Freepers to see if they could tell us: are people over there now commonly using the word "tens" in this manner?
-ccm
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