Transcript Research Activities - University of Hull

Raphael Cohen-Almagor
IN INTERNET’S WAY:
RADICAL, TERRORIST
ISLAMISTS ON THE
FREE HIGHWAY
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Internet Contains Worse of Humanity
The Internet contains the best products of
humanity.
Unfortunately, the Internet also contains the worse
products of humanity:
 Child Pornography, Pedophilia
 Terror
 Racism, Hate speech and Holocaust denial
 Crime-facilitating speech
 Cyber-bullying
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The Internet as Facilitator
 The Internet is a great socialization tool.
 The anonymity factor plays a significant role.
 The Internet helps people who conspire to
carry out vile actions to explore and try
violent activities.
 It brings together like-minded people and
creates a forum for them to discuss and
exchange ideas.
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Relevant Factors
 History
 Culture
 Law
 Morality
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Methodology
 Literature review;
 Analysis of terrorist websites;
 Interviews designed to gather information on
how terrorists are using the Internet and what
is done to counter their activities.
 Semi-structured, in English and Hebrew, in
the US, the UK and Israel
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Younes Tsouli
 Arrived in London in 2001;
 Studied information technology;
 Irhabi (terrorist) 007;
 Published manuals, home videos,
propaganda;
 Became the main distributor of al Qaeda in
Iraq;
 Stole more than 2.5 million Euros until his
arrest in October 2005.
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September 11, 2001
September 11 and other terrorist operations
were facilitated by the Internet.
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September 11, 2001- M.G.
Interview
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Al Qaeda gathered information from the Internet
about the US, learned the methods US dealt
with terrorism, its soft spots, targets.
Al Qaeda adjusted their operations accordingly.
Its activists refrained from using cell phones, as
they knew cell phones could be traced.
Instead, they used prepaid phone cards.
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September 11, 2001
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Al Qaeda used email to transmit messages between the
terrorists.
AL Qaeda activists were looking for American flight
schools on the Internet, while they were in Germany.
They made some of the flight reservations via the
Internet.
The terrorists used public libraries terminals for
communications and data.
In addition, they used phone cards, and face-to-face
meetings in Spain.
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September 11, 2001
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The operation was scheduled for the Fall of 2001.
Mohammad Atta wanted it to be after Labor Day, as one
of the targets was the Congress which resumes its
session after Labor Day.
They were looking for transatlantic flights, as they
wanted the airplanes to be with maximal oil load.
They preferred Boeing airplanes over Airbus, as Atta
believed they were easier to operate.
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September 11, 2001
They were looking for First Class seats for
20 passengers.
 At that time, Tuesday was the relatively
less busy day.
 Thus, September 11 became the day.
 It was a logistic decision, not symbolic.

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Charity
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Charity organizations in the USA were in the service of
the Hezbollah until they were closed down.
Hezbollah is known for using charity organizations in the
USA.
Al Qaeda did not use charity organizations for its
funding.
No connections were found between NGOs and Al
Qaeda for the planning and execution of 9/11.
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E-jihad
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The term E-jihad refers to the way
information technology is applied by groups
such as al-Qaeda in order to organize
logistics for their campaigns, through the
application of email and encrypted files, as
well as a means for developing their own
strategic intelligence.
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Al Qaeda
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Members of Al Qaeda are sending each other
thousands of messages in a password-protected
section of agreed-upon websites
Sometimes they simply take over legitimate sites
In the wake of September 11, Internet providers
shut down several sites associated with Dr.
Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, mentor of bin Laden
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Terror Videos
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Haganah (Defence)
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Haganah, http://haganah.org/, a US-based
pro-Zionist website run by Aaron Weisburd,
tracks down jihadi sites and informs their
ISPs that they are hosting a terrorist site,
which usually ensures it is closed down
immediately.
Haganah has shut down more than 700
jihadi sites
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Jihadi Net – P.M. Interview
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Young students talk in chat rooms about
jihadi issues.
Many of them are Muslims.
Their knowledge of Islam is limited.
Those young people are emotionally-driven
by images from Iraq and Palestine.
They become motivated and wish to
retaliate.
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Jihadi Net
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Generally speaking, they do not have
theological training.
In the chat rooms, they converse about
Islam, jihad, Iraq, Israel-Palestine.
The scope of this phenomenon is broad.
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jihadi websites
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Most jihadi websites have several sections.
The most important and largest is usually the
religion section, which contains fatwas
explaining who can be targeted legitimately.
Quranic references to jihad, the different ways
jihad can be expressed, aspects of martyrdom,
and online doctrinal consultations with religious
sages.
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jihadi websites
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jihadi websites
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In the jihad section, would-be recruits are
encouraged to join the battle.
Some general advice is given, e.g., the best
routes into Iraq, names and locations of
sympathetic mosques in neighbouring countries.
Galleries of martyr portraits are accompanied by
their last wills and testaments, often in the form
of a video
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jihadi websites
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Most sites have IT section where contributors
are urged to share their knowledge and develop
new ways of using cyberspace to further the
cause of jihad.
The bulletin boards or chat rooms are by far the
most popular forums on jihadi websites.
Visitors can add comments or reply to ongoing
conversations and debates.
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jihadi websites
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Many jihadi sites have a women’s section.
Wives and mothers are urged to support
their men in jihad and help them in the
psychological battle against what one site
described as that disease –
the weakness which loves life and hates
death.
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Use of Internet by
Terrorists
 Providing Information (English, Arabic, other
languages, according to the audience);
 Facilitation – like us, terrorists use the Internet to
organize their travel, to communicate, to find
information;
 Seeking Legitimacy and support;
 Propaganda and Indoctrination – use of cameras,
chat rooms;
 Psychological warfare – videos to evoke fear;
violence;
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Use of Internet by
Terrorists
 Socialization, networking and motivation - use
chatrooms to create virtual community, and
motivate people to take violent actions against
the West;
 Spreading tactics – the first beheading in Iraq
showed on the Internet motivated copy-cat
actions in other countries. Beheading is not part
of the culture and tradition in Thailand. The
Internet facilitated this knowledge and idea.
 Instructions and online manuals; spreading
tactics;
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Use of Internet by
Terrorists
 Planning of activities and
coordination;
 Training how to build bombs –
significant but not as the uses of
propaganda and motivation.
 Fund raising and Money laundering;
 Jihadists are involved in fraud,
forgery, theft and drug trafficking.
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Use of Internet by
Terrorists
 Recruitment – a growing phenomenon;
 Cyber-terrorism
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
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On March 23, 1996, the Terrorist's Handbook
was posted on the Web, including instructions
on how to make a powerful bomb.
The same bomb was used in the Oklahoma
City bombing.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Robert
Litt, of the U.S. Justice Department's Criminal
Division, observed that only hours after the
Oklahoma City bombing, someone posted on
the Internet directions -- including a diagram -explaining how to construct a bomb of the type
that was used in that tragic act of terrorism.
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
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No doubt that some of the bomb cases were
inspired by the Internet.
The criminals and terrorists took the recipes
from the Internet.
But the US is willing to pay this price. It is a
free speech issue.
“The government should not tell us what to do.
We cherish freedom in this country and wish to
retain it to the maximum”.
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
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Pipe bombs are fairly easy to make, but you can also
make them out of cars, trucks, stink bombs, mail, fuelair, laser guided, fertilizer, molotov, dust, flour, pipe,
M-80, you name it. You can make bombs out of all sorts
of things, but I'm not going to tell you how. In fact, I
haven't got a clue how, but that doesn't stop people
from stopping by to ask. I used to have "bomb making
instructions" as the title of my home page (even though
I have no idea how to make bombs and never
distributed such information). I just love salting search
engines with titilating drivel. It was always interesting
to crawl through the web log files looking for how
many people followed links from search engines
looking for bomb making information. There are
sometimes a few government and news sites in the
logs. More recently, I found entries for people from the
following
Source: http://www.swcp.com/~mccurley/bomb_making.html
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ABORTIONISTS: the baby butchers
Lawson Akpalonu (CA)
Ben Graber (FL)
Norman M. Neches (DC)
Edward Allred (CA)
William Graham (LA)
James Newhall (OR)
Kevin W. Alexander (DC)
Marshall Grandy (TX)
Richard S. Newman (DC)
Eduardo Aquino (TX)
Richard P. Green (DC)
Mark Nichols (OR)
Gostal Arcelin (FL)
Thomas H. Gresinger (VA) Mario Ochoa (TX)
(SEND US MORE NAMES!) David A. Grimes
(SEND US MORE NAMES!)
Carl L. Armstrong (OH)
Jay M. Grodin (MD, VA)
Soo-Young Oh (MD)
Ali Azima (FL)
David Gunn (Fl)
Tati I. Okereke (NY)
(SEND US MORE NAMES!) R.V. Guggemheim (OR)
(SEND US MORE NAMES!)
Fritz Bailey (CA)
Tom Gunter (CA)
Kathleen A. Olson
Carlos Baldocedas (IL)
Moshe Hacamovitch (TX) G.W. Orr (NE)
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Shutting Down Websites
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Arguments for and against
Shutting Down Websites
 Against Shutting Down:
 Free expression
 Futility – mirror sites, different servers
 Source of information for security officers
 Difficult to track down sites, hence there is
interest to keep them viable
 For Shutting Sites:
 facilitate criminal activity;
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Shutting Down Websites
 From discussions with security experts I gather
this is not the preferred option.
 They would like to keep an eye open on such
sites
 “We shut down a website on an American server
and they might reopen the same site on a
Chinese server. Then it might be more difficult
for us to track it.
 I want to watch certain people, how they use the
Internet”.
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FBI Strategy
 “Our general approach is to look at people.
 We receive information about individuals who
might risk security and follow their actions,
including on the Internet.
 We examine the sites they surf. Typically we
do not monitor the Net.
 We go after people who we suspect, not
websites. If the bad people go to sites, we
follow them”.
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
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The official American stance is: “We do not monitor”.
The problem of monitoring is perhaps less daunting
than it might first appear.
 Weisburd’s latest count of members of jihadi forums:
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50,000 members
about 10% are the "active minority" who are of
concern, that's 5,000.
It is possible to identify these people.
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US Strategy
 Internet providers are -- generally speaking --
helpful and cooperative.
 They don’t want to have terrorist contents on
their servers.
 But they do not see it as their responsibility to
monitor their server for such content.
 The communication between US security
agencies and them is sensitive.
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US Strategy
 The security agency’s recommendation might
be perceived as pressure.
 They had some issues over the interpretation
of their requests.
 They said “Think it over” and the providers
were alarmed by the fact that the security
agency approached them and considered
such approach as “pressure”.
 “It is a delicate issue.”
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Internet providers should have integrity
teams, instructing providers to take off
inappropriate content.
 There should be, for example, internal
mechanisms against posting bomb recipes,
against vile video clips like beheadings.
 The US government is unlikely to impose
liability on them.
 There should be awareness, and discussions
about moral responsibility.

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
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The careful terrorists use encryption
when they exchange images;
Al Qaeda developed its own advanced
encryption program called Mujahadeen
Secrets;
Without the key, it is very difficult to
decode the image;
Encryption is the best friend of all
people involved in illegal activities:
Child-pornographers, terrorists and
criminals.
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There is no form of encryption that
cannot be cracked by someone,
somewhere, given enough time and
hardware
 However, decrypting what you need
to decrypt, when you need to decrypt
it, may not be possible.

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Remedies
 Education;
 Denying Legitimacy;
 ISPs Responsibility – adopting codes
of conduct and enforcing them;
 Readers’ awareness and responsibility;
 Non-governmental Hotlines –
cooperation between government and
NGOs;
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Remedies
 We need to better understand the Internet’s
social networking.
 My Space, Facebook, Yahoo! Groups,
Geocities.
 What are the implications of these tools on
terrorism?
 People tend to say on the Internet things they
do not usually say or write via other
communication means in public.
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Remedies
 Understanding cultural differences;
 Ability to assess threats in accordance with
terrorists’ eyes, using their concepts and
systems of belief;
 Knowledge of languages that terrorist
speak;
 Follow the money;
 Zero tolerance to incitement both offline
and online;
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Remedies
 Cooperation between public and private
sectors: International cooperation
between governments as well as between
governments and ISPs;
 International cooperation: Cracking terrorcrime networks
 Legislation and Precedents
 Monitoring Websites
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Remedies
 Removing illegal Content – what is
illegal offline is also illegal online;
 CleaNet
 Introducing a different rationale:
 Instead of free highway, social
responsibility
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The Threats of the Internet
Global solution
for
global problem
Terror & Crime
Monitoring sites, Finance
Intelligence
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Thank you
Blog: http://almagor.blogspot.com
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email: [email protected]
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