Slashdot Mirror
Al-Qaeda Hacker Caught
anaesthetica writes "The Washington Post is carrying a story on a young man suspected to be the al-Qaeda hacker 'Irhabi 007'. From the article: 'Celebrated for his computer expertise, Irhabi 007 had propelled the jihadists into a 21st-century offensive through his ability to covertly and securely disseminate manuals of weaponry, videos of insurgent feats such as beheadings and other inflammatory material... The Internet has presented investigators with an extraordinary challenge. But our future security is going to depend increasingly on identifying and catching the shadowy figures who exist primarily in the elusive online world.'"
That's fascinating and all, but where is the cyber-terrorism we are quivering over? When is it going to be an offensive move rather than mere proselytizing?
this should be filed under your rights online, since that is what will be disappearing soon. the terrorists are on the interwebs now. start up the survillence at the ISP level. if we happen to catch a people downloading music and movies, doubleplus good. osama is laughing his ass off watching us burn up our own constitution.
"But our future security is going to depend increasingly on identifying and catching the shadowy figures who exist primarily in the elusive online world.'" Bullshit. If my future security depends on the governments ability to destroy online anonymity, I want a different government. Make the borders secure. Packets of data don't scare me.
Goebbels never killed anyone directly, but he was still a Nazi.
You can play semantics if you want, the rest of us will live in the real world.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
But I bet he's glad he wasn't caught by the *AA !!!
Kidding aside, its interesting how the PR against him makes him sound evil incarnate... Next, this will be used to hobble our on-line rights so they can catch more of the terrorists... not a good thing IMO. Of course, I can't speak for everyone, but the PR is a bad sign. Criminals are criminals, no matter how bad they are. Sensationalizing the story, or the criminal, only serves nefarious purposes IMO.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Well, to start with, conspiracy is a crime. Aiding and abetting criminals is also a crime. How and ever...
While you might argue (strawman alert!) that he is no more guilty of anything than for the sake of argument, the average NRA member. I would argue thatthe average NRA member is not providing information about weaponry for the express purpose of killing persons known and unknown. This specific Al-Quaeda member (seemingly) was. The NRA is not a proscribed organisation. Al Qaeda is. The NRA is not waging a war against civilization. Al Qaeda is. etc. etc.
While his actual physical actions may technically be no different to some NRA member's physical actions, actions don't take place in a vacuum. Everything has context, and you can't expect even the most reasonable and fair minded people to ignore the context of those actions.
Before anymore of you spout off about how this guy's use of his free speech rights is what got him into trouble, RTFA!
..."
"Tsouli has been charged with eight offenses including conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion, conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, conspiracy to obtain money by deception and offences relating to the possession of articles for terrorist purposes and fundraising. So far there are no charges directly related to his alleged activities as Irhabi on the Internet,
LOOK! No Internet-publishing charges! They found out who he (allegedly) was by accident!
My only question is where are the Internet spooks who should be hunting these guys? They break into servers in the US and put beheading videos on them, and no one bothers to check the logs? Where are the honeypot jihadi forums? Is anybody looking into wtf http://www.whois.sc/irhabi007.com is all about? Is the owner a fan or an identity theft victim?
The latest Slashdot meme.
"Also, I find it odd that this alleged hacker chose a moniker that would sound more familiar to Republican voters than to someone who would wholeheartedly reject Western ideals (ie: your average terrorist)."
The worst thing is that we will never know what actually happened, what this guy did, how he did it, why he did it.
There will not be a trial, the guy will be shipped off to some godforsaken place and be held forever under who knows what kinds of aweful conditions getting regular "pressure" from the CIA or the egyptian intelligence or whatever.
It's sick what has happened to our country. It's really really sick and aweful. The worst thing is that nobody really cares. Everybody will simply accept what the press and the president tells them. For all we know this could just be some high school student who thinks he is l33t. The president will call him a terrorists and the public will just buy it without any further evidence. We will never know.
evil is as evil does
RTFA, not only did this guy hijack servers for his own use (which is most surely a criminal act), but he did so in order to disseminate weapons manuals and the like not only propaganda material. It is a common and long-standing principle in Western countries that providing aid and comfort to the enemy, most especially in terms of technical assistance, is a crime. It would be wrong to view the arrest of this man as "one more erosion of our rights", because the right to support the enemy has never existed. Save your energy to defend real victims, not this guy.
"i don't care what happens to him. he picked the wrong side."
Unfortunately many americans feel like you do. They have lost their all common sense. "I don't care what happens to him" justifies all kinds of torture and evil.
I do have one question for you though. How do you know? How do you know if anything they say about this guy is true? How do you even know if he exists or not? Do you even care? I suspect not. All somebody has to do is to say is that he is a terrorist and you believe it.
Unfortunately there are too many americans like you.
evil is as evil does
Oh come on. Google his name. His name came up after they arrested another guy with a working suicide belt. This isnt a case of the slippery slope, this is how you bust terrorist cells.
You create terrorists by wrongly imprisoning people. Preventing crime is not about putting people behind bars. It is about improving people's environment and standing so that they are less compelled to commit crimes. You have to be pretty damned pissed off about something to blow yourself up and kill innocent people. Maybe we ought to work on what is pissing said people off.
It is funny that the city actually involved in the 9/11 attack is one of the most liberal cities in the country.
I think the actual reason for him being such a threat is his ability to dodge censorship. Seeing how much media attention the videos he (supposedly) spreads recieve, you can kind of guess of what importance he is. This will, of course, again be used to push forward with laws cutting down on internet anonymity. Cause why would you want to be anonymous if you're not a commie/terrorist?
There are some people that are going to be pissed off no matter what. If we followed this attitude, we would still have Jim Crow laws because people like you would be trying to placate the KKK.
Instead of coddling the KKK (terrorists), let us make sure that these groups have a ready outlet to protest the discrimination and poverty they undoubtably face. We need less Bin Ladens and more MLK Jrs from the Middle East, and no more Western apologists.
The more you know, the less you understand.
"Looking further, they found that the cards were used to pay American Internet providers on whose servers he had posted jihadi propaganda. Only then did investigators come to believe that they had netted the infamous hacker. And that element of luck is a problem. The Internet has presented investigators with an extraordinary challenge. But our future security is going to depend increasingly on identifying and catching the shadowy figures who exist primarily in the elusive online world."
The "investigators" didn't trace the well-known propagandist's Internet packets from his well-known websites to his terminal, to his person. No mention of a labyrinth of anonymizing proxies, or ever-changing public login terminals. They busted a credit fraudster and discovered his other, more dangerous gigs.
Meanwhile, the NSA, Echelon and other global "security" agencies are snooping on hundreds of millions of people's traffic. Supposedly to protect us from people like this Qaeda asshole. But they don't do even the basic network forensics a corporate IT department would immediately do when trying to find a bad guy.
Maybe if they caught the few, highly destructive bad guys like this Qaeda asshole, their "security" budgets would dry up. Maybe they've got their own reasons not to hit too hard against online credit fraudsters - collusion with international mobs, spooking the insurers, stumbling across covert finance networks for national "intelligence" agencies.
They're getting $HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS, invading our privacy, imprisoning people without evidence they're suspect, invading unrelated countries, breaking laws to spy on us at home. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard's traditionally tight nets of reasonable evidence and human intelligence have caught a terrorist operative. Who actually spreads terror, publishing the propaganda about terrorist attacks widely.
The demonstrated answer to these terrorists is our well understood police techniques. The justice system we've developed over hundreds of years, that is based on evidence and logic. Not only does it prove who did what when, but it avoids the damage caused by destroying liberty in the name of protecting it. Now we'll watch the mass media pump this arrest for more money and power for secret government operations that don't actually work.
--
make install -not war
And you've decided that strictly from the report the government released.
Why do you have so much faith in the government's honesty, veracity and accuracy?
If anything, the events of the past few years would seem to indicate that governments are not to be trusted as you seem to trust them.
"They" being, of course, the "terrorists". The vast majority of muslims, i imagine, just wish we'd stop fscking around with their lives so they can get on with them (which might include participating in some of that freedom we all enjoy).
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
i don't care what happens to him. he picked the wrong side.
And, I'm sure he doesn't care what happens to you. After all, to him it was you that picked the wrong side.
The only real difference is that he's working to bring down the evelolution of 2500 years of of western culture, philosophy, and legal tradition from the outside. You're working on bringing it down from the inside.