| Submit your comments on this article |
| Terror Networks & Islam |
| America Defends Al Qaeda Websites |
| 2005-10-19 |
| October 19, 2005: American intelligence agencies are trying to keep al Qaeda on the Internet. Many patriotic (or just anti-terrorist or anti-Islamic) hackers constantly seek out pro-al-Qaeda websites, and try to shut them down. American intelligence agencies attempt, quietly, to minimize and mitigate these attacks, in order to keep these sites up. So what’s going on here? The American government is operating, behind the scenes, to keep al Qaeda websites online so that American spies can monitor who visits these sites, and what they do there. Al Qaeda knows this, and is trying to bring more of its web activity into the inter net underground, a shadowy zone normally inhabited by criminals and the hackers who keep us all supplied with spam and PC damaging worms and viruses. That area is harder to keep under surveillance, or even easily find. For that reason, terrorists maintain the public sites as a way to recruit new people, and then gradually ease them into the cyber-underground. No one (at least in the U.S. intelligence community) will say anything official about the war against al Qaeda on the Internet. But if you keep tabs on Islamic web sites (and especially if you have someone to translate some of the Arabic stuff for you), you will notice the attacks, and the strange instances where hosting services will not only tolerate the Islamic sites, but will go to great lengths to defend them. Something is obviously going on behind the scenes. And that something is nothing more than a desire to keep actual, or potential, Islamic terrorists, out in the open, where they can be watched, for as long as possible. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #14 amen, Robert and Zenster. It's a good idea to keep them out in the open but it's a bad idea to just take notes as they increase the size of their army and entrench. I think my point was that it failed for the Mafia and it failed in the drug war. They bombed OKC and both WTC's while the Fed's kept them out in the open. It doesn't work. It's a myth. It's broke. Fix it. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-10-19 22:12 |
| #13 #12  How about we just kill them as soon as we ID them? Once it becomes apparent that shouting "allahu akbar" in response to an atrocity results in being a thin red smear on the pavement, I bet the jihadi networks will dry up Real Quick. Robert Crawford, we are in total agreement. This is what I've been saying ever since I found Rantburg, much to the displeasure of many (who seem to have As to the topic, I'll quote Montgomery Burns: "I keep my friends close, and my enemies even closer." |
| Posted by: Zenster 2005-10-19 16:28 |
| #12 How about we just kill them as soon as we ID them? Once it becomes apparent that shouting "allahu akbar" in response to an atrocity results in being a thin red smear on the pavement, I bet the jihadi networks will dry up Real Quick. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-10-19 13:58 |
| #11 Why don't they track these guys down and hire them? What makes you think they DON'T, on a selective basis? |
| Posted by: lotp 2005-10-19 13:15 |
| #10 you pick your battles fair enough. But perhaps it's time they ramped up the fight. And what makes you so sure they haven't done just that? Like ARMYGUY said, you want these sites out in the open. That doesn't mean you don't track them, including locations, servers, posters etc -- and use that info in a variety of ways not obvious to people reading RB. TW, in 2003 the Red Lion virus brought down many servers and clogged the web with a 'denial of service' attack plus infiltration of some unpatched servers here and especially, ironically, in Europe and Asia. It started from China. Officially, hacking is a capital crime in China. Many people added 2 + 2 and got 4 as to Chinese government sponsorship of the attack. |
| Posted by: lotp 2005-10-19 13:13 |
| #9 I'm technology challenged but it seems to me they could locate the source of the websites and take the operators out, as they seem to always find the teenage hackers. Sitting in an office and monitoring it has some value but the intel guys on the ground seem to be lacking. The requirement that they have done drugs no more than 15 times eliminates most of the sleaze-bag world and anyone that understands it enough to infiltrate the underground. Why don't they track these guys down and hire them? |
| Posted by: Danielle 2005-10-19 12:43 |
| #8 Lots has been going on since the Chinese launched the Red Lion virus attack a few years ago .... I must've missed that one. What happened? (yes, I'm serious, so stop snickering, oh knowledgable ones!) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-10-19 12:40 |
| #7 you pick your battles fair enough. But perhaps it's time they ramped up the fight. And I understand the point of keeping them in the open as long as possible. That is different than allowing them to root and spread - which is what they do on a regular basis. Besides - if the idea works so well, how come the Mafia operates so openly. These guys are no different than organized crime. If we try to stop them the same way we stop the Mafia in our large cities, God help us all. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-10-19 11:09 |
| #6 If they're that easy to hack they must be running Microsoft. Finally something to thank Bill Gates for. |
| Posted by: Cragum Jalet2721 2005-10-19 11:07 |
| #5 ARMYGUY is right. Much as I understand the emotion behind Internet Hagganah and similar efforts, the intel community is right and the freelancers are wrong on this. As far as going into the underground and sweeping it clean, you pick your battles -- but info warfare has been a hot topic and desired skillset for some time in the intel community, both uniformed and not. Lots has been going on since the Chinese launched the Red Lion virus attack a few years ago .... |
| Posted by: lotp 2005-10-19 11:03 |
| #4 Hey 2B, are you an intel analyst??? Keep them in the open for as long as possible!!! |
| Posted by: ARMYGUY 2005-10-19 10:37 |
| #3 this is wrong on so many levels. How about this; How about you go get into that shadowy zone normally inhabited by criminals and the hackers who keep us all supplied with spam and PC damaging worms and viruses and you get a broom and you sweep it out? This is one of my greatest pet peeves of all times. The myth in our intelligence services that the best way to fight crime is to allow it to root and spread in order to pull out the root. It hasn't worked in fighting the Mafia - they are visible and operate openely in all of our cities. It is a complete and total failure in fighting drugs - in fact, this idea allowed the idea of "recreation drugs" to create powerful cartels in the late 70's. It's as stupid as attempting to fight speeding by encouraging speeding, so you can catch speeders. Hello FBI and intelligence services. It doesn't work. It's a myth. How long will it take you to grasp this? The TV show, America's Most Wanted Criminals, does a better job of catching the most wanted than our FBI does. Megan's Law does a better job of catching child abductors. Timothy McVeigh was able to pull off the Oklahoma City bombing and the terrorists pulled off both trade center bombings right under your noses. Get a clue. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-10-19 10:27 |
| #2 I can understand the intel folks' position, but a part of me wonders if it isn't too clever by half. We have seen, on a number of occasions, how after a terrorist attack, intelligence agents will have a suspect in mind because they had him under surveillance for months before the attack. Yet, that suspect always seems to drop out of sight just before the attack, which begs the question of the efficacy of surveillance operation. Perhaps the attacks on the al quaeda websites are still doing some good by forcing them to divert resources to defense or replacement of these sites. I guess I can see the benefits to both approaches. |
| Posted by: dushan 2005-10-19 10:21 |
| #1 I wonder, also, how many of the jihadi sites, and how much of the jihadi Internet underground, are false-flag operations by our boys. Hpoefully, just enough to make it hard to be sure who to trust if you're one of the bad guys. |
| Posted by: Mike 2005-10-19 10:21 |