Kerry and the rats won't be happy until they turn all of our allies against us with their traitorous comments. Hey, if our own Senators are out there speaking against the Iraq war, Musharaff figures he may as well jump on the band wagon.
Hunt for source of terror images
Ewen MacAskill and Bobbie Johnson
Friday September 24, 2004
The Guardian
US and British intelligence services were yesterday hunting for the site of the computer used to post on the internet the video of British hostage Kenneth Bigley pleading for his life.
Intelligence and computer analysts confirmed it was technically possible to identify the home, office or internet cafe from which the video originated. But they said it was a time consuming exercise and that the terrorists responsible were likely to only use a computer once before moving to another location.
Rita Katz, director of the Washington-based organisation Search for International Terrorist Entities, said yesterday there were dozens of such sites and message boards used for propaganda, recruitment and training.
She said: "By the time the government subpoenas a company to get the information [about an individual computer] it can take two to three months."
The website run by the group holding Mr Bigley, Tawhid and Jihad, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been up and running for five weeks, according to a London-based Arab journalist. The videos are quickly distributed among other terrorist websites and that further makes it difficult to close them down.
Ms Katz, the Iraqi-born author of Terrorist Hunter, said that on one message board there was discussion immediately after the beheading of one of the two Americans about the fate of Mr Bigley. This included a suggestion that Mr Bigley should make a plea to Mr Blair.
A security analyst who requested anonymity because his firm deals with kidnappings said: "The internet has become an important tool for the mobilisation and training of jihadists. We have seen more and more because the internet puts the main media in the hands of an individual."
The Foreign Office has a team monitoring the jihadist websites 24 hours a day.
The video of Mr Bigley, although superficially sophisticated with the use of elaborate graphics, is in fact quite crude and it is relatively easy for anyone with some computer expertise to post such a video on the internet. Using a video camera and appropriate software, even low quality film can be turned into a digital file in a matter of minutes.
That file can then be transferred to the web using any reasonably powerful computer with an internet connection. While Iraq does not yet have much high-speed broadband web access, video uploading could easily take place at one of the country's many internet cafes or via a private telephone line. There is even the possibility that the kidnappers are able to transfer videos by sending them from a mobile phone.
"Even under Saddam such technology was much more widespread than people thought," said Paul Eedle, another specialist on terror groups on the web.
Since the fall of Saddam there has been an expansion in technological uptake, especially among middle-class Iraqis. While greater technical expertise is required to try and prevent information being traced back to its source, such knowledge is relatively common in the Middle East. Neighbouring Saudi Arabia is considered a leading fountainhead of internet expertise in the region.
The chief consideration for those trying to track the videos to their source is to discover where and when the files were put on the internet.
Mr Eedle shares Ms Katz's scepticism that tracing the source to a location may not prove successful in catching the kidnappers. He said: "Al-Zarqawi's followers are definitely exposing themselves by uploading material at roughly the same time every night - but ultimately they'd be taking more of a risk by physically dumping a body on a Baghdad street."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1311834,00.html