Posted on 07/19/2010 4:12:11 PM PDT by metmom
A popular website that hosted more than 70,000 bloggers was shut down suddenly last week after the FBI informed its chief technology officer that the site contained hit lists, bomb-making documents and links to Al Qaeda materials, it was reported on Monday.
When the WordPress platform Blogetery.com went dead, the initial explanation from the site's host, Burst.net, was that “a law-enforcement agency” had ordered it to shut down, citing a “history of abuse.” The explanation caused a wave of conspiracy theories in the blogosphere.
But according to a report on CNET Monday, Burst.net shut down Blogetery.com when it became spooked by a letter from the FBI, in which the bureau detailed the presence of terrorist materials among the blog posts.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It was still the owner of the site who pulled it, the FBI/GOVT did not. That answers a few questions.
I had a heck of a time getting any of them to pay any attention to one built by a group in Detroit (with a ME theme name) that had such goodies as:
flying schools near DC
flying schools near Boca Raton
Flying schools near Boston
Where crop dusting planes could be rented
Beach sand quality (like the stuff you might want for high quality silicon for whatever eh)
Rents by the month suites in Boca Raton
Rents by the month suites in Northern Virginia
Rents by the month suites in New Jersey
Mosque locations
Halal butcher locations
etc.
Pretty incredible site. Took several months to get the right guys to take a look at it.
It still seems like a strategy that someone could use against other unpopular sites. Post stuff that is likely to put the site in the cross hairs of Homeland Security, and then blow them in.
I feel so safe with the feds watching out for our backs like that. Don’t you?
If it was that serious the FBI should have immediately shut down just the offending blogs, taken all the information, and used that information to find other links and track down people.
The fact that the site owner pulled EVERYTHING doesn’t jive with the story that the FBI found a bunch of terrorist stuff. No way would FBI and Homeland Security leave something like that to the discretion of a site owner.
Anything’s possible but this doesn’t pass the smell test to me.
The Fox article links to a CNET article which ends with this:
“A source with knowledge of the investigation said that the material allegedly found on Blogetery’s server is connected to an online magazine called “Inspire,” which debuted recently. Numerous news outlets reported over the past weekend that “Inspire” is designed to help recruit new members to al-Qaeda and is edited by Samir Khan, a 24-year-old North Carolina man who moved to Yemen last October. According to Fox News, the title of one article was “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”
Citing intelligence sources, Fox reported that Khan is Web savvy and his magazine represents “al-Qaeda’s most ambitious terrorist recruitment tool to date.” “
Why didn’t they just shut down “Inspire”? Seems like a no-brainer.
Tech list PING!
As for Inspire, I think it's a masterstroke of propaganda. Those guys aren't dummies. We're up against some pretty sharp cookies.
smelly I agree. Why shut all of them down? Are they all done for now? All their material? I mean all the non-terrorists.
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