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.'"
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
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.
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.