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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.'"
If they can get him, then they should be able to get a few more of the spammers.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
He was arrested in the UK. IIRC it is now illegal to even say anything that could even be construed as "glorifying" terrorism, we are already slipping down that slope. You can now be imprisoned for 3 months without even being charged with anything.
What a country.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
If you go to a "terrorist" website you're a terrorist! Several people in my department who were doing research on Hezbollah and Hamas (which are incidentally majority parties in two governments in the Middle East now, and thus have geopolitical implications beyond "terrorism") got a visit from the feds and have been made to feel very insecure about their ability to stay out of jail if they continue to visit related websites or write about them, even if its in the interest of academics or international political science. There appears to be a kind of zero tolerance policy for any online contact at all to these groups, no matter how innocuous (i.e. visiting their website to read their statements) or well-intentioned.
So he called himself "terrorist", and he was allegedly involved with a real-world bomb plot. So not so sensationalist.
Back in the old BBS days, I often went by the name Necromancer - not very original, but I was a teenager. In spite of that name, I never did try to raise the dead or anything like that. Just because I called myself a thing did not make me that thing.
Oh, come on, moderators, that goat's milk joke is funny...
And it makes a legitimate point that has been ignored in other posts -- calling himself 007 indicates interesting things about his view of himself.
The more interesting part of the writeup is that MI5-6, FBI, CIA and NSA are so effing inept that they could not catch him for 2 years and the only reason why his hacker identity was revealed was that someone correlated the fact that he was behind bars with the lack of messages.
Considering that he was arrested and the police had all the grounds to get logs from his ISP as well as run proper forensics on his equipment we are talking about incompetence of truly biblical proportions here.
This is a classic example why they should take their proposals about RIP act extensions as well as the new Anti-Terrorism act and shovel it where sun does not shine. There is no point providing someone who cannot use a rifle with an grenade launcher. With a rifle he will just shoot himself in the foot. With a grenade launcher he will make 3m crater killing a few innocent bystanders.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
"The short career of Irhabi 007 offers a case study in the evolving nature of the threat that we at the SITE Institute track every day by monitoring and then joining the password-protected forums and communicating with the online jihadi community"
Come on, RTFA closely. Given the proclivities of Slashdot readers this may make for interesting reading but it is neither news nor does it say anything about our "rights" nor any erosion of them.
The only question it raises is why has the Washington Post seen fit to allow the SITE people to write a press release directly into their news publication in a form similar to what their readers would believe is an actual news article.
If you don't give a fsck about Muslim lives then what the fsck are you doing in Iraq?
The UK on a slippery slope? Ridiculous! We tumbled and reached the bottom long ago. Now the government are just standing over us, pissing for enjoyment.
(Activist convicted under demo law)A new Enabling Act will allow government ministers to alter any legislation at will, as long as the do not create any new offences which carry a penalty greater than 2 years imprisonment.
(Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill)And just in case we haven't got the message yet, the government are going to create a vast database (like the Stasi one, but more frightening and much more expensive) and force everyone in the country to be photographed, fingerprinted, iris scanned and required to notify the authorities of their whereabouts. (Identity Cards Bill)
How wrong we were.flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
It Came From the Washington Post.
Listen: the Post has swallowed the hook, line, sinker, and fishing trawler for over ten years now. They gobbled down the fake Clinton scandals verbatim from Ken Starr, and for the last four years have spectacularly slurped down every worm dangled in from of them from the faked intelligence for weapons in Iraq to aluminum tubes to Colin Powell's magnificient self destruction in front of the U.N. presenting descredited notions from Cheney's little Special Office of special intelligence.
They and the NY Times have been shown that they've been hosed like third graders accidently playing in a Vegas poker game, BUT THEY STILL KEEP SWALLOWING THE SAME LINES OF BULLSHIT FROM THE SAME DAMNED LIARS. I think they're in too deep, there at the editorial offices of WaPo. They can't admit that they've been absolutely wrong on every worshipful point in this fake "war" against a common noun. The paper of record is in too deep.
The "terrorists" from 9-11 died in the damned planes. And there weren't enough in the whole world to man the twelve planes they wanted to fly that day, according to the 911 commission. The only real terrorists left alive after 9-11 were the head of al queda and bin laden (he was the financier of the attack, not the movementleader) and these "warriors" haven't caught them after five years.
Posting stuff doesn't make you a terrorist. That's a thought crime.
This is bull. They can't get the real men who had something to do with 9-11, so they manufacture these little "victories" against no-one who get to be tortured by farmboys in gulags around the world until they die.
There is no "Terror" you can have a war against. Every stupid move against the fringe and uninvolved MAKES men and women who want to kill you. We've torrtured thousands of probably innocent people. George and the WaPo will get their "terrorists" until the end of time. Like the "war" against the idea of "communism", they define who the enemy is, make a pile of money, control the zeitgeist, and declare it over when they find some new enemy after the last enemy stronghold is a mafia-run nation whose main export is prostitutes. Drugs, communism, atheism, terrorism, whatever, they'll always find some new thing to terrify and entertain people with, until the last superhurricane wipes out Washington DC.
I know your "Cause why would you want to be anonymous if you're not a commie/terrorist?" question was sarcasm, but I thought I would give a valid example anyway.
http://anonetnfo.brinkster.net/
People need to take the internet from the government before the government can take it from them.
-- http://anonet.org -- The internet the way it was meant to be. Check it out, you may be surprised.
I figure our future security is going to depend on our ability to prosecute top government officials who break laws with impunity resulting in many deaths mostly undocumented, domestic spying, torture, leaking Secrets, etc etc.
"Never say Never."
The terrorists we face today are born and bread of religions convictions. It's pure indoctrination. As such, they will only listen and govern by weapons. When you speak of peace, they use this as an exploitable form of weakness. When you use weapons, and defeat them, they show respect. I know it shouldn't "be this way", but that's how the human race works. Socially, we are all governed as "master and servant" be it subtle, or extreme.
The religious terrorists only know one rule. That is, live by the sword, die by the sword. Everything else just grants them opportunity at YOUR expense
Life is not for the lazy.