[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Kristof: Terrorists in Cyberspace

Terry W. Colvin fortean1 at mindspring.com
Fri Dec 23 02:11:16 UTC 2005


A crucial first step in fighting terrorism is to patrol cyberspace

much more aggressively. Islamic extremists run rings around us on the Web.

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/opinion/20kristof.html

The New York Times
December 20, 2005
Terrorists in Cyberspace
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Until you see a video of Iraqi insurgents taking a terrified, hogtied man
and sawing off his head with a butcher knife, you don't know what
"blood-curdling" truly means.

Yet the jihadis themselves release these "beheading videos" on the
Internet as part of their booming propaganda machine, and they are
wrenching not only for their brutality but also because they underscore
the insurgents' increasing technological edge. If there's any area where
we should have the supreme advantage fighting terrorism, it's the Internet
- yet Islamic extremists sometimes run rings around us in cyberspace,
using it to recruit and train terrorists and to communicate with each
other in amazingly sophisticated ways.

When insurgents stage an attack these days, they sometimes film it from
several angles so as to make better propaganda, which they then distribute
on jihadi Web sites and on DVD's. Aside from promotional videos like
those, there are the how-to variety, like one with step-by-step
instructions for making a suicide vest. At the end, the filmmakers made a
makeshift bus and put the vest on a mannequin to blow it up.

"The person who is wearing the explosive pouch, when entering the bus and
wanting to blow himself up, his face must be to the front and his back to
the rear," the video instructs. That's because there's much less explosive
power on the sides.

The jihadis also use the Internet for communications. They know that the
American intelligence community uses sophisticated computer programs that
scan e-mail messages, so some of them share a single e-mail account, and
the person writing the message doesn't send it but saves it as a draft.
Then the recipient logs in and reads the draft without it ever actually
being transmitted.

Likewise, the jihadis have communicated on gaming forums and even once on
a bike forum. Sometimes they use the "live chat" function on Japanese
gaming sites, where the only eavesdroppers are teeny-boppers.

Iraq's election last week was a great success, but it's still much too
early to see how that will play out. What is clear is that Islamic
extremists are not the troglodytes we think they are, and we need to
retool if we're going hold our own.

Jihadi Web sites change their U.R.L.'s constantly and are often
password-protected, and they may block access to viewers in Western
countries. They're also language-protected, in that the communications are
in Arabic - and the U.S. intelligence community has a desperate shortage
of people with good Arabic skills. Sometimes the jihadis simply spell
U.R.L.'s in the Arabic script, so that Arabs understand the address but
U.S. computers or nonnative speakers may not. What they're not shy about
is galvanizing terrorists.

"My Muslim brothers, you know that the enemies of Islam are malicious to
Islam," one person wrote on a jihadi site. "What helps them is their
knowledge of chemistry, physics, mathematics and programming languages, as
well as their knowledge in the sciences of cartography, electronics and
others. So if you possess knowledge in any of the aforementioned sciences
that would benefit Islam and Muslims, say so."

Sure enough, one woman replied that she was skilled in English, cytology
and molecular biology. A man said that he would be happy to share his
skill in chemistry and explosives.

"There is this expectation that they're not being watched, or that if they
are it won't be translated for six months," said one expert who monitors
the traffic for the U.S. government, and who shared these examples partly
to help draw attention to the problem.

Unfortunately, the insurgents are right - they often aren't being watched.
The intelligence community has historically downplayed Osint (open-source
intelligence). Robert Gates, the former C.I.A. director, once told me
ruefully that intelligence is sometimes undervalued if it hasn't been
stolen.

We also need more flexibility. In parts of the intelligence community,
it's very difficult to get authority to pretend to be a jihadi on a forum,
which is the only way to get anywhere. To avoid tipping off terrorists,
I've been asked not to mention one other similarly foolish constraint.

So if we want to fight back effectively, the focus needn't be on
preserving the right to "water board" detainees. A crucial first step is
to patrol cyberspace much more aggressively - because we seem to be losing
ground against terrorists in our own high-tech cyberspace backyard.



-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
     Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com >
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