In Internet’s Way : Jihadism on the Free Highway

1. Raphael Cohen-Almagor In Internet’s Way:Jihadismon the Free Highway

2. 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

3. 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.

4. Definition • The word “terror” comes from the Latin “terrere,” meaning “to frighten” or “to scare.” • Terrorism is defined as the threat or employment of violence against noncombatant targets for political, religious, or ideological purposes by sub-national groups and/or clandestine individuals who are willing to justify all means to achieve their goals.

5. 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

6. YounesTsouli • 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.

8. September 11, 2001 September 11 and other terrorist operations were facilitated by the Internet.

9. September 11, 2001- M.G. Interview • 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.

10. September 11, 2001 • 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.

11. September 11, 2001 • The operation was scheduled for the Fall of 2001. • MohammadAtta 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.

12. 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.

13. Charity • 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.

15. E-jihad • 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.

16. Al Qaeda • 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

17. Terror Videos

18. Haganah (Defence) • 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

19. Jihadi Net – P.M. Interview • 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.

20. Jihadi Net • 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.

21. jihadi websites • 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.

22. jihadi websites

23. jihadi websites • 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

24. jihadi websites • 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.

25. jihadi websites • 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.

26. 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;

27. 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;

28. 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.

29. Use of Internet by Terrorists • Recruitment – a growing phenomenon; • Cyber-terrorism

30. Bomb Making • 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. 

31. Bomb Making • 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”.

32. Bomb making instructions • Pipe bombs are fairly easy to make, but you can also make them out of cars, trucks, stink bombs, mail, fuel-air, 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

33. The Nuremberg Files

34. Shutting Down Websites

35. 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;

36. 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”.

37. 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”.

38. Monitoring 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: 50,000 members about 10% are the "active minority" who are of concern, that's 5,000. It is possible to identify these people.

39. 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.

40. 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.”

41. ISP’s Responsibility • 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.

42. Encryption • 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.

43. Encryption • 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.

44. 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;

45. 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.

46. 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;

47. Remedies • Cooperation between public and private sectors: International cooperation between governments as well as between governments and ISPs; • International cooperation: Cracking terror-crime networks • Legislation and Precedents • Monitoring Websites

48. Remedies • Removing illegal Content – what is illegal offline is also illegal online; • CleaNet • Introducing a different rationale: • Instead of free highway, social responsibility

49. Who’s Responsible? Individual/ISPs The Threats of the Internet Global solution for global problem Terror & Crime Monitoring sites, Finance Intelligence

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