What a shock, SO much is reliant on the lack of good guys who are literate in the various dialects of the middle eastern languages, and the jihadists' communication techniques we should be pushing to close this gap, and especially on an educational level.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usterr0821,0,1052328.story ?coll=ny-nation-big-pix Terror network flourishes on Web Internet's speed, anonymity has made it an ideal place for al-Qaida to set up training and support Email this story <http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usterr0821,0,5229531,emai l.story?coll=ny-nation-big-pix> Printer <http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usterr0821,0,4897287,prin t.story?coll=ny-nation-big-pix> friendly format Photo <http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-osamabinladen-pic,0,19688 79.photo?coll=ny-nation-big-pix> Osama bin Laden <http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-osamabinladen-pic,0,19688 79.photo?coll=ny-nation-big-pix> Osama bin Laden (AP Photo) BY STEVE COLL AND SUSAN B. GLASSER THE WASHINGTON POST August 21, 2005 WASHINGTON -- In the snowy mountains near Jalalabad in November 2001, as the Taliban collapsed and al-Qaida lost its Afghan sanctuary, Osama bin Laden biographer Hamid Mir watched "every second al-Qaida member carrying a laptop computer along with a Kalashnikov" as they prepared to scatter into hiding. Nearly four years later, al-Qaida has become the first guerrilla movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs, in secret hide-outs and at Internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought to replicate training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with new locations on the Internet. "The Internet is the ideal medium for terrorism today: anonymous but pervasive," RAND Corp. terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman said. Al-Qaida suicide bombers and ambush units in Iraq depend on the Web for training and tactical support, relying on the Internet's anonymity and flexibility to operate with near impunity in cyberspace. Western terrorism specialists have concluded that the "global jihad movement," sometimes led by al-Qaida fugitives but increasingly made up of diverse "groups and ad hoc cells," has become a "Web-directed" phenomenon, as State Department terrorism expert Dennis Pluchinsky put it. Hampered by the nature of the Internet, the government has proved ineffective at blocking this online presence. Further, realizing that fixed Internet sites are vulnerable, al-Qaida is turning more to bulletin boards and Internet sites that offer free upload services where files could be stored. Al-Qaida and its offshoots are building a massive online library of training materials, some supported by experts who answer questions on message boards or in chat rooms. An al-Qaida video library discovered on the Web and obtained by The Washington Post from an experienced researcher showed in a series of high-quality training films shot in Afghanistan how to conduct a roadside assassination, raid a house, shoot a rocket-propelled grenade, blow up a car, attack a village, destroy a bridge and fire an SA-7 surface-to-air missile. During a practice hostage-taking, the filmmakers chuckled as trainees herded men and women into a room, screaming in English, "Move! Move!" "Biological Weapons" was the title of a 15-page Arabic language document posted this spring on the Web site of al-Qaida fugitive leader Mustafa Setmariam Nasar. His document described "how the pneumonic plague could be made into a biological weapon," if a small supply of the virus could be acquired, according to a translation by the Terrorism Research Center, a company with U.S. government clients. Jihadists seek to overcome in cyberspace specific obstacles they face from armies and police forces in the physical world. In planning attacks, radical operatives are often at risk when they congregate at a mosque or cross a border with false documents. They are safer working on the Web. "It used to be they had to go to Sudan, they had to go to Yemen, they had to go to Afghanistan to train," said Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA unit that tracked bin Laden. Even when such travel is necessary, he said, an al-Qaida operative "no longer has to carry anything that's incriminating. He doesn't need his schematics, he doesn't need his blueprints, he doesn't need formulas." Everything is posted on the Web or can be sent ahead, encrypted, "and it gets lost in the billions of messages that are out there," Scheuer said. The number of jihadist-related Web sites has metastasized since Sept. 11, 2001. When Gabriel Weimann, a professor at the University of Haifa in Israel, began tracking terrorist-related Web sites eight years ago, he found 12; today, he tracks more than 4,500. Al-Qaida's move into cyberspace is far from total. Physical sanctuaries or unmolested spaces in Sunni Muslim-dominated areas of Iraq, in ungoverned tribal territories of Pakistan, in the southern Philippines, Africa and Europe still play important roles. Most violent al-Qaida-related attacks -- even in the most recent period of heavy jihadist Web use -- appear to involve leaders or volunteers with some traditional training camp or radical mosque backgrounds. But the Web's growing centrality in al-Qaida-related operations and incitement has led analysts such as former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin to describe the movement as primarily driven today by "ideology and the Internet." Dan [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.terror-hunters.com/> www.terror-hunters.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <font face=arial size=-1><a href="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12hilt93a/M=362329.6886306.7839369.3040540/D=groups/S=1705323667:TM/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1124850871/A=2894321/R=0/SIG=11dvsfulr/*http://youthnoise.com/page.php?page_id=1992 ">Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back!</a>.</font> --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
