Al-Qaeda's Growing Online Offensive

andy1307 brings us a story from the Washington Post about al-Qaeda's technological capabilities and the methods they use to protect themselves and their networks from opposing military forces. Quoting: "US and European intelligence officials attribute the al-Qaeda propaganda boom in part to the network's ability to establish a secure base in the ungoverned tribal areas of western Pakistan. Analysts said that as-Sahab (AQ's propaganda network) is outfitted with some of the best technology available. Editors and producers use ultralight Sony Vaio laptops and top-end video cameras. Files are protected using PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, a virtually unbreakable form of encryption software that is also used by intelligence agencies around the world. [Al-Fajr, a propaganda distribution network] is heavily decentralized, with its webmasters generally unaware of one another's true identities for security reasons, intelligence analysts said. It also has separate 'brigades' devoted to hacking, multimedia, cybersecurity and distribution."

Comments

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[something_wicked_thi]

It's from a reputable source. Besides, there's nothing really strange about this. The idea of using PGP and decentralized servers makes perfect sense. The dubious bit is that warning lights go off in my head every time someone mentions Al-Qaeda because usually it's someone trying to scare me for political reasons.

Aw, c'mon.

[leoofborg]

Why *wouldn't* AQ have all this stuff? We pay $$$$$ to the house of sa'ud, some of that money makes it to Pakistan. We outsource and train people in that region of the world and expose them to the best tech we have here. Why wouldn't *some* of them have a hobby? The next thing the Washington Post fearmonkeys will tell us is they use PEX bittorrent, SSH, and twofish crypto. And they embed marching orders in Flash and Postscript files. [yawn] Next!!

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[MrNaz]

As a Muslim, I'm calling you on that one.

After having lived in Saudi Arabia for a year (admittedly 14 years ago, but I doubt the view has changed hugely since then) I can tell you that the primary gripe the population have there is the U.S. propping up an unpopular monarchy that is mismanaging and/or stealing the country's wealth. The U.S. could make friends of the Saudi people by simply telling the Saudi government that they're on their own. Then the Saudi royal family would need to either make the people happy, or prepare to be overthrown as soon as the last shipment of U.S. supplied weapons started rusting.

I don't know *anyone* (with the possible exception of that crazy lunatic in charge of Iran, who is about as representative of Iranians as the Saudi royals are of the Saudi people) who thinks the West is some evil regime that needs to be toppled. Heck, I live in a Western country quite happily. I've traveled extensively to Middle eastern countries and (remember I'm Muslim, with Muslim friends and relative and we all travel to Muslim countries, so I'm not pulling this out my backside) it's utter BS that Muslims have some kind of chip on their shoulder with regards to the West. The problem is Western interference in Muslim countries' politics, and that primarily is the propping up of the Saudi government. I think I can speak for the majority of Muslims when I say that Muslims don't like the Saudi government. They call themselves "custodians of Islam", yet they are a corrupt, self-serving bunch of monarchical fascists.

Oh, and we don't need the U.S. to come in and "liberate" the place. Just butting out will do the trick. They'll save the hundreds of millions spent on military support and they'll make friends of the majority of the Arabian peninsula to boot. Bargain!

Bullshit

[brxndxn]

This is just more made-up generalized bullshit to get the easily-influenced people to go with more government spending on counteracting the nonexistent problem of terrorism. When was the last time terrorism was in your back yard? When did it affect you personally? How often is it happening?

And.. if it did affect you, chances are that your back yard is in Iraq..

The government keeps pushing 'Our enemy is huge, organized, centralized, and powerful' but we are seeing more and more than 'Our enemy is a disorganized populace tired of what the US is doing.'

It's like we're building a tank to try to destroy a wasp.. while the wasp keeps stinging everyone because we're sitting by its nest.

Re:Bullshit

[Curtman]

There are a few thousand dead people from a few years back who, if they could be asked, would tell you that it's hardly a 'non-existant' problem.

There's also a few hundred thousand dead people in another part of the world who would tell you to put things into perspective and realize which is the greater tragedy.

the boogie man will get you

[petes_PoV]

What this article boils down to is that the analysts (whose job it is to talk up any threat) reckon there's a guy up a mountain 10,000 miles away with a laptop and a video camera. He's downloaded some free software to encrypt his emails and that's a "propaganda boom".

Now I realise it's the government's role to instill fear, uncertainty and doubt in the population but, if that's all they've got then I reckon we're all pretty safe.

Freedom protects freedom

[mlwmohawk]

The more I see this stuff the more I remember a philosophical point my history teacher told me once. In the revolutionary period, the "news papers" were far more attacking and had far more offensive rumors and accusations.

Now we see freedom being abused to spread "their" propaganda better than "our" propaganda. Whether or not we have the monopoly of truth is debatable. However, we are in a fight here and the *only* way to win a war of ideas is the freedom of expression of these ideas and hope that your ideas win.

As an american, I'm not sure our ideals, as currently practiced, will win. We have to do a better job of things. Al Qaeda is only winning the war of ideals because we, the western world, have turned its back on democracy and society in favor of raw and savage unregulated capitalism which is destroying our economies and an aggressive preemptive war strategy designed to suppress any dissent in foreign nations which is emptying our treasury.

Suppressing information is not a way to win the hearts and minds of people, especially while we are doing such a bad job living up to our ideals.

Censorship is bad, OK?

[myCopyWrong]

It is surprising that the Washington Post would run editorial against free press as a news article.

"In many, many ways, the damage has already been done," said Evan F. Kohlmann, an expert on al-Qaeda's online operations who serves as a consultant to the FBI, Scotland Yard and other agencies. "It certainly would have been a lot easier if the U.S. government had taken this seriously back in 2004. Back then, these guys were looked upon as miscreants and cretins, like they were just Internet terrorists and not for real."

This is flabbergasting. Does the US stand for democracy and freedom of speech or is it a place where you can't get Al-Jazeera on cable TV? When you step over the lines of disrupting military communications into full blown censorship, you become the oppressor.

The disproportionate use of force is obvious because it's aimed at you. Domestic spying aims at identifying and disrupting communications deemed unfavorable to US interests as defined by GWB and corporate interests. The idea is to keep any opposition disorganized, despised and ineffective. If you want to know how far it goes, have a look at Fox News "mistakes" about the democratic presidential candidate, Osama Barak.

Which Al-Qaeda?

[Swampash]

I'm confused. Is this new decentralised online digital five-nines 256-symmetric multimedia Al Qaeda the same bunch of guys who are starving, cut off from support, and cowering in fear for their lives in caves?

Just wondering.

Re:Anyone could prove

[MrNaz]

You know, it may not be FUD. Imagine if Al-Qaeda and Anonymous joined forces! Then we'd be truly fucked. Their tagline would be: "Taking down the West for Epic Lulz"

Partly an ad for PGP?

[Futurepower(R)]

Proof that it isn't partly an ad for PGP, when GPG is available.

Do people who don't agree with the policies of the U.S. government really buy their encryption software online, using their credit cards? From a company in Menlo Park, California?

Shouldn't all encryption software be open source? Otherwise, how do you know it is secure? Maybe an unhappy employee built in a back door.

Oh, and TrueCrypt encrypts entire hard drives, including the boot partition.

The mention of political enemies of the U.S. government using closed-source software from a U.S. company makes me wonder about the entire article. Quote from the article: "Files are protected using PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, a virtually unbreakable form of encryption software that is also used by intelligence agencies around the world."

I'm VERY doubtful about that. The U.S. government, under the present administration, has established that it can require companies to cooperate, and to keep the cooperation secret. That means that any U.S.-made product could be suspect. That's one of the unintended consequences of being sneaky.

Mission Accomplished

[Doc Ruby]

To fight the Qaeda we must suspend the Constitution, take off our shoes and surrender our toothpaste getting on airplanes, invade Iraq (but not Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, but maybe Iran), pay $5 a gallon for gas. Rich people must pay no taxes, but everyone else must maximize oilcorp, pharmaco, telco, and bank profits, and hand Social Security and Medicare over to Wall Street. Free 12MPG Hummers for everyone with a credit rating, and subprime mortgages for everyone without one! Because that's the American Way that the terrorists hate us for.

I feel safer already.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

He's winning because censorship always backfires.

No, he's winning because it WORKS. Are you seriously claiming the west censors the muslims more than the muslims censor the west ?

I'll just post a link to how "the economist" looks in a muslim nation :

http://jturn.qem.se/2006/more-pictures-of-iranian-censorship/

Terror works, and so does censorship. Using violence to advance a political position works. So what went wrong in the beginning in Iraq ? To little agressiveness on the american side. This whole rules of engagement thing.

Al-qaeda on the other hand, placed bombs in a girls pre-school and detonated the bombs when american soldiers brought back a lost girl. 28 of the children died and both soldiers (and the girl they protected) survived.

And somehow the western press means by "proportionalism" that the US should be less agressive, imagine. The Iraqis know perfectly well how muslims fight : kidnapping kids, wives and old people and executing them en masse in hopes of demoralizing an enemy, have been normal features of muslim conquests everywhere.

All indigenous cultures of northern africa have been totally obliterated by islam : from the ancient egyptians (who still existed when the muslim caliph ordered the library of alexandria burnt down), to the pseudo-roman carthagens, to berbers and tons of other cultures.

Terrorism works. Sooner or later other people will start catching up to this message.

Absolute Rubbish

[Karem Lore]

I am sorry, I can not believe this utter rubbish. The US and UK governments can shutdown international bank accounts, can trace mobile phones, phones, internet connections. They can track the electricity usage of areas, they can use electro magnetic weaponry to take out computers, they can use heat source signature to identify target computers. In other words, if they use computer attached equipment, they know where you are and what you do. This story stinks, and so does the current US administration.

Karem

Re:Don't miss the point.

[hjrnunes]

Terrorism works huh? No shit? Everybody knows that. What's new is the fact that this new democratic-free-speech-politically-correct ruling mentality in the US and Europe that wants to convince us that it doesn't and that it's evil. Yet you look back in History and you see all kinds of terrorists being praised. Example: Menachem Begin, orchestrator of the bloodiest terrorist attack of the 20th century in King David Hotel in Jerusalem, with a death toll of around 90 people, men women and children both Jew and Muslim. Yet he became Prime-Minister and, here's the funny part, won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Hilarious. Now, who are you and the rest of the blindfolded puppets that share your opinion trying to fool? Apart from yourselves of course...

how muslims fight : kidnapping kids, wives and old people and executing them en masse in hopes of demoralizing an enemy

Hiroshima/Nagasaki anyone?

the ancient egyptians (who still existed when the muslim caliph ordered the library of alexandria burnt down)

Yeah. That's what you say. Others say otherwise. Besides, the attack on science is not a muslim thing. It's a religious thing.

So you can crawl back to your hole again and stay there until you figure out how to properly make a point instead of swinging flawed biased pseudo-arguments around. Oh and while you're there, remove the blindfold and read a couple of things. History books are advisable though read more than one author. Books written in the last and before last centuries are also advisable (There were not any neocons back then, only imperialists).

There is no al qaeda

[DragonTHC]

it's faceless monster created to give us a common enemy.

it doesn't exist.