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Researcher Says Social Networks Link Terrorists
An anonymous reader writes "At the International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 in New York, Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator and private consultant for Global Terror Alert, claimed that a new breed of terrorists are using online forums to recruit people who align themselves with the mission of Al Qaeda, creating global networks of would-be terrorists."
Just another article stating FUD. Nothing to see here, move along. Might as well also get rid of online forums, USENET, and telephones.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
I see a new agency to observe / control these.
There may be some stupid enough to use social networks, but they are most likely red herrings, intending to mislead governments.
You really think that terrorists are that stupid?
I've heard that terrorists also speak to people to recruit new members!
We should stop right now the use of language.
Technically, I've created a network if I plug a crossover cable between two machines.
Technically, there is "a global network of would-be terrorists" if a jihadist from Pakistan uses a social site to contact anyone else in the world.
Technically, paranoid people are really stretching the definitions of the word "network".
John
Is there eventually going to be a facebook group of terrorists? It would almost be too easy to find them then.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
How many stories like this do we have to read? When will the internets finally be recognised as a medium rather than an entity?
As soon as government agencies begin to properly recognise this fact, they will be able to operate within the medium, making use of its strengths and weaknesses, instead of fearing it the whole damned time. Did it never occur that social networking sites offer an excellent means of infiltrating "would-be terrorist" networks? Anonymity works both ways.
Just my 0.02.
Meta will eat itself
The Zarkman was not impressed with the quality of recruits and supporters garnered through the interwebs. . .
What?
ANY means of meeting people can be "used by terrorists", if you think about it too hard. If we listen to these guys, we'll first take down Facebook and MySpace. Then the chat rooms, and the public forums. Once the internet is expunged, cell phones would be banned, because "terrorists use them to meet and plan." Eventually, land lines would follow too. Should we also extend this fear to shortwave radios, pencil and paper? How about coffee shops? People can meet there too. And plan "terrorist activities." Now personally I prefer my latte without terror, but there's no accounting for taste I guess. Make mine fanaticism free please.
It was also announced at the International Conference of Asshats (Those with heads in ass) that today's terrorists may also link using 2 tin cans and a piece of string!
The networks also link the exact same people to well adjusted, middle aged Caucasians.
Weirdly enough, this positive influence doesn't seem to be mentioned in the study.
No sig today...
...many of these recruited members seem to lurk in dark basements, mostly in control and owned by their paternal or maternal relations.
I guess this means my plans for a terrorist network group on facebook is not going to work?
Once SOMEONE in that "network" performs any terrorist act, the logs would be collected and EVERYONE in that "network" would be discovered.
It wouldn't even take that. Just one of them being investigated for doing something stupid.
If anything, the government should be encouraging this.
There was a FUD about terrorist using PGP, there was FUD about terrorist using cell phones, there was even FUD about terrorist using Skype to communicate.
Anyways, what's the fuss? Terrorist on Facebook? Police should cheer, it'll be a lot easier for them to infiltrate these groups and identify their members.
So the jist of this article is several semi-permanent chatrooms have been identified where proto-terrorists gather to recruit and discuss strategy, and they want to take these down??!!!
That's perverse. Why on earth would you want to take out honeypots that your foes are kind enough to set up for you?
This made me visualize not X number of terrorists planning attacks and recruiting in these chatrooms, but X number of spooks gathering info on another in the belief that the other spooks are the real thing.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
So does:
Telephones
Radios
2 cans and string
Smoke signals
Hand gestures
Grunting
Any communication of any type..
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
Same song, different lyric. Will they never learn?
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Osama Bin Laden has sent you some anthrax using the super poke application. Would you like to reply?
If there's a real cause for concern, it's within the prison system in the US. Many are short on chaplains, and they're being filled with muslim chaplains with better funding. It's one aspect of how Christians are failing domestically with the Great Commission.
Isn't the CIA a social network?
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
This is just the government looking for a new way to view the people's email in any way they can. They will keep making new stories and attach the work "terrorist" to it, so that they can get a free pass to peek inside the area. First it was phones (obviously), and now they do warrantless wiretaps (and get away with it). Then it was laptops, now they can confiscate your laptop at the border for about as long as they want to. Now it's social sites... Anyone see a trend here? Now before I finish I will say that the government does need some of these options under certain circumstances, but not a free pass to view whatever they want, whenever they want.
Yeah, thanks to websites like Myspace, terrorist groups like "Fans of Panic at the Disco" have been able to organize and terrorize the rest of the web.
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
This is an unintended consequence of the internet. There has long been a network of domestic terrorists. Before there was an internet they had books and magazines to recruit with. Remember Timothy McVeigh moved among a network before committing the largest act of domestic terrorism.
One aspect of this is that with the internet you can reach anyone. With books and magazines you can only reach the people who go into places where the items are available. So some instances of greater productivity and efficiency in the market are unwanted.
I hve a somewhat different take on that come from being a gay activist (of sorts). The Proposition 8 fight in California energized the gay rights movement across the US by involving people from across the country who were opportunity to donate and to comment on social networking sites. Since the passage of Prop 8 the internet has been used to organize protest nationwide. Each act strengthens the beliefs of the participant. Unfortunately, there is another side - the people who believe the lives of gay people are not equal to the lives of heterosexuals (remember all about AIDS, with people fretting that the disease should never spread to any people whose lives count? Well, it's progress when things move to the argument that it is just your relationships that don't count.) are also organizing on the internet.
So where is the opposition to international terrorists? Who is advancing a different agenda in social networking sites?
If Evan Kohlmann were to link to examples of this would he then be put on a watchlist? Would we if we followed those links?
If we were, who is the real terrorist then? Perhaps the ones making the watchlist.
Dont have any sense neither, but at least could be a good excuse to send to Guantanamo all the spammers.
Hey samzenpus! Fox News called, they want their journalistic integrity back.
Wouldn't you take the opposite approach and encourage trust in your fake user ... and then use the logs to track the IP addresses of the other participants ... and then tap (legally) their phones ... and find the people who have real connections with real terrorist organizations and crack THEM?
This is the kind of intel that our government doesn't get anymore.
And it would be a LOT more effective and efficient then simply trawling through random phone conversations.
Being on same planet links terrorists. More at 11.
.... oh yeah, and I am a would-be sex symbol multi-millionaire with a wit to rival George Bernard Shaw's. Maybe I should also set up a chatroom or Facebook group for like-minded Would-Be Witty SSMMs so we can plan how to bed blondes and make more millions.
Now if you can't spot the flaw in there you should look up "would-be" in a dictionary.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
So I guess Osama Bin Laden's 'friends' page makes a good place for the intelligence agencies to start their work.
Given the general technical superiority the U.S. has, I suspect not everyone thinks this is bad.
Ways to infiltrate terrorist groups
Option #1, send agent into caves of Afghanistan
Option #2, recruit armies of men pretending to be teenage girls to pretend to want to kill American infidels.
Option #3, Send police offers to peace activists (Hey, works for Maryland coppers).
A/S/L/T
(age, sex, location, target)
Anyone stupid enough to read this article and decide avoid the Internet because it is a hive of scum & villany is just one less stupid person on the net in the first place. So much the better.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
faceplant.com
What good is freedom of expression if there is no freedom of response. So-called democratic states attempt to suppress descent on social networks by painting them as havens for terrorists. It's curious as both the capitalists and the communists are dead scared of people talking to each other, without the moderating influence of some state-run or private-enterprise owned media.
Yoani Sanchez and her blogging comrades are now the targets of the Castro regime's censors--and police.
davecb5620@gmail.com
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Terror: "One that instills intense fear".
How is this continual stream of "they could be EVERYWHERE" news not spreading the terror? Seriously ... every once in awhile they fly a plane into a building or blow up a bus, which is horrible!! But having our media and our politicians say, "forall x. x can be used by the terrorists (watch out|let's get rid of it)" is doing way more damage to our lives.
Preaching to the converted, I know, but that's why we comment on Slashdot after all :)
Don't you just love this 'align themselves with the mission of...' line? Who needs evidence? Al Capone's 'mission' was to accumulate wealth. Most of us seek to accumulate wealth by working, etc. Therefore, we've aligned ourselves with Al Capone! We're part of the gang!
This just seems to be another way for the middle class fear mongers to make the internet into a dark and terrible place that should be avoided at all costs, to provoke parents to remove access to the internet from their kids. Make the internet a dangerous evil place where in every site where people go to converse (albeit in a very annoying way on facebook) there is a cabal of terrible folks doing terrible deeds. Let's face facts - the internet is a microcosm of real life - just magnified because of it's relative compactness. You are going to get potential nasties in any place - we are creatures that like to communicate. As someone else has posted here - let's just think ourselves lucky that it's a damn sight easier to keep an eye on people online than it is real life. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, isn't that the saying?
T-Harmony dot com.
am I the only one who thinks this is obvious? isn't social networks supposed to connect?
its like telling the world that terrorists also use the streets to drive their vehicles on. What is significant about this?
You speak London? I speak London very best.
Terrorists have persistent habit of breathing in oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
"Kohlmann outlined Operation Praline, a sting operation in the U.K. that ultimately uncovered a would-be terrorist network in three countries led by Aabid Khan, a then-19-year-old Briton"
..
"Evan Kohlmann, a U.S. terrorism analyst who advised the prosecution at Khan's trial, said"
"Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza were reported to the police by their own university and detained for six days last May. Sabir had been studying extremism and had asked Yezza to print out a document for him."
--
PROTHERO
Do you believe this crap, Dascombe?
DASCOMBE
It's not our job to believe it,
Lewis. Our job is to tell the
people --
davecb5620@gmail.com
...If OBL has more MySpace friends than I do.
So let's cut the oxygen off!
I for one, welcome any plan that shuts down myspace and facebook...
Oh noes! Communication networks allow people to communicate with other people!
this just in:
literacy enables terrorist to communicate more effectively
related news:
troops in Afghanistan will begin rooting out insurgent teachers who are instructing the next generation of terrorists the techniques of reading and writing (arithmetic, aka math, had been banned long ago once it was discovered that 3rd grade Afghans were surpassing the proficiency of US high school grads)
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seus
I think I may be dislexic, every time I see the word terrorist or terrorism all the words of the sentence blur and become the word fearmongering. Then I realise the words mean roughly the same thing in a etymological sense.
In fact saying on a major news network "The terror threat for this week is very high, code red" or some such nonsense is by most definitions of the word a form of terrorism. It causes fear, and it does so for political reasons.
Now we have a much more scary article we can write "Terrorists have infiltrated the mainstream media!!!11!!" We at fox recommend you lock your children in the basement and sit in front of the door with an assault rifle. Keep those cyanide pills handy, don't let them take you alive.
Obviously the number one method for recruiting, arming, and gathering terrorists is good old green backs! Money the number one tool for terrorism; guess we need to ban that shit too.
Religious fanatics using technology created by western consumer whores to organize attacks against western consumer whores in the name of religious fanaticism. I guess in their culture, the ends _do_ justify the means. In any case, I'm sure if they use it enough, they'll become so distracted by the addicting nature of checking your wall, and leaving clever bumper stickers for friends that they'll forget all about their religious convictions.
OMG, Terrorists use the mail to communicate.
Well, duh. Look how well it worked for the Democrats.
Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
The type of genocide that the U.S.-Israel just love to carry out against muslims is the main factor behind the "linking" of islamic terrorists. http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/al-fakhoura-school-bombed-42-killed.html
Just ban all communication between 2 people without authorization, and monitor any attempts.
If you get caught, you go back for re-training.
Oh, and burn all the books.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
shhh! dont say anything but i heard that the terrrists also use cellphones to communicate!!! GASP!!! SHOCK!!! EXTREME!!! OH THE HUMANITY!!! DEATH TO THE CELLPHONES!!!!
And on another note, it's been proven , that telephones keep family members talking more then they used to.....more news at eleven.
"Sometimes if you have nothing intelligent to say, ...post your story on slashdot"
Teenagers are, like, totally terrifying.
I'm too terrorised to tell them to get off my lawn.
Technology is show to be poltically-neutral. The same websites that link peaceful people can also link criminals, terrorists, military personnel, and the CIA to each other.
The same gun can be used to terrorize or defend.
The same hammer can drive nails or bash in skulls.o
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled /.-ing.
Huh? They learned well that simple buzzwords and hype get the public all up in arms to support whatever idea you have to increase your power, anything left to be learned?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
OMG so do Telephones, Amateur Radio and the Postal Service...quick! lets shutdown all forms of two way communication to make us all safe.
Maybe someone could point me to the new definition of terrorist? Because the one that defines it as someone who creates fear and panic to get what he wants works far too well on current regimes in out "free world".
Why are they so afraid of people talking with each other? Sure, you had that freedom of speech for a while. But then again, you never had a voice to be heard. Yeah, you could speak. Here, take that soapbox and stand over there in the corner, speak 'til you're blue in the face. How many will you attract? A hundred maybe? Ok, great, our news outlet spinning a whole different story reaches a few millions. We win. So here's your freedom of speech, we let you have it because, well, it doesn't really matter in the whole picture. If you happen to attract more than a handful of listeners and your followership grows, we'll spin it to make you look like a loonie to the rest of the population so they don't wanna listen to you. Problem solved.
It's hard to do that if someone can actually reach a sizable portion of the people instantly. Even worse, silencing someone doesn't make a story go away because it's not a national "problem" anymore. If you have a "domestic" problem with someone, label him and his buddy terrorist, communist or whatever the craze of the moment and lock them away. Now do the same with a group that managed to organize internationally that can instantly mirror whatever information you want to suppress somewhere beyond your grasp.
This is, btw, also what the great Australien Firewall and similar projects are about.
Bluntly, if a government feels the need to shield itself from its people, it's time to kick the government out. Such a government is by no means any better than the communist regimes were, and when I was young we were taught to fight such oppressive governments.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
BARON:
Oh Thufir, I see they've installed your heart plug already.... Don't be angry.
Everyone gets one here.
take down all the corporate terrorist links now before they blow up our wallets and steal everything we own.
OMG terrorists are what using a cia fbi watched and created media , OMFG its wild to think they are that smart.
me thinks said researcher needs a reality check and if he really wants to know what and how terrorists are communicating perhaps he should talk to one some time see what they MIGHT really use
I can't find anywhere in the story where anyone is clamoring to take down this site, yet most of the comments in this thread have made the leap in logic that is what is happening. The closest I could find to a call to take down the site is this:
they really need to start re-considering their security policies.
So I'll stick to what the article actually says instead of filling the blanks in for my own self-serving ideology.
you know another thing that's been linking terrorists together for the past 50+ years right? *cue hitchcock-like music* THE TELEPHONE!!!!! *end music*
Insert_Ending_Here
Communications medium used by people to communicate. Authorities in a panic!
The internet is no more effective or effected by anything remotely negitive in the forms of terrorism, drugs, murder or any other violent crime then the following. Email, United States Post Office, UPS, FEDEX, Off the shelf pay-as-you-go minute cell phones, walkie-talkies, word of mouth.
2 cops to spy on person for a year ( 60,000$ )
1 state lawyer to prosecute ( 15,000$ )
5 year jail sentence ( 19,000$ per year )
Avg cost of a jury of 20 ( 5,000$ per day )
Avg cost of a business without there jury employee ( 1,000$ - 30,000$ per day )
The crime, obscenity publication charges.
It is important to realize that law enforcement has decided that Facebook or MySpace 'friend' status is an acceptable threshold to connect people that they want to make subjects of investigation, i.e. the status of 'friending' meets some legal or procedural threshold to open a file on someone. This is going to be an important element of political pressure upon radical and social change organizations, in particular.
If for example, Person A is hosting some radical political meeting, and is friends with Person B on MySpace, then the government can initiate an investigation of Person B because they seem to be 'associated.' This of course is much easier for lazy agents to carry out, and additionally it is 'open source' information in the legal sense as well. (we are not even including the vaunted Facebook/CIA venture capital backdoor business or whatever people speculate about)
This is a VERY big deal but has not been examined. VERY big - it is going on now. We are all getting more and more 'control files' developed by them (and their contractor buddies) to control us, and this type of data is elemental. There has been no reckoning about what it means.
Also informants and provocateurs also now are getting things like MySpace pages. That has been the case here in Minnesota, in particular. Part of their personas.
All of this is now being called I2 or Identity Intelligence, a new school of INT like SIGINT, etc.
--hongpong.com
By declaring affiliation with a group, what have you lost?
Dignity and freedom.
The dignity associated with being a self-actualized individual and the freedom to choose brutality and death over enslavement and conformance.
Not utopian. The world behind bars is amplified by density of oppression - but the oppressions and choices in and of themselves are not exclusive to prison - neither is the choice to escape them by pretending to be part of the group.
Case in point: I have long hair and wear flip-flops to work as weather permits. The group hates this as does my employer. Individually, each one privately says that they wish that they could get away with what I do. And they could have - but they chose group conformity - and thereby have become hypocrites without freedom of expression.
Whether it's flip-flops or beatings (and I am speaking as someone gang beaten and left for dead because I would not say a few words of cowardice) - it all comes down to the exact same thing: join any group that you don't belong to in order to conform and thereby profit from that joining and you have said goodbye to your dignity and freedom.
Give me liberty or give me death - some of us get that, some of us don't.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
I was going to respond to this post by saying something like, "Researchers Discover Social Networks Link Plumbers" but the rest of Slashdot has done such a great job of tearing it to shreds by pointing out all of the other things terrorists can use to do their evil deeds that I no longer need to respond to TFA. Thanks :)
Let's just cut to the chase and say any form of communication is a terrorist threat. If you disagree with the policy of any government acting at the behest of corporate interests then you're suspect.
Did this really make it into PCworld and /. front page? It has been a lot of time since I last felt my time was so severely wasted as with reading this article.
The internet, where men are men, women are men, and thirteen year old sex kittens and bloodthirsty jihadists are government agents.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Of course social networks link terrorists. So do phones, cell phones, voip phones, telegrams, telegraphs, postal mail, internet chat rooms, private meetings, restaurants, pubs/bars, radio, carrier pigeon, etc.
They also use cars, busses, trains, planes, sidewalks, toothbrushes, beds, houses, eat food, watch movies, read books, wear clothes, listen to music, have jobs, have friends, come from families, etc.
Get it? They're human, just like us. Except that they have evil intent. They will use the same tools we use. They will just use them for nefarious purpose.
The real question isn't how true all of this is, but what to do about ``the big lie'' that's successfully being spread: We are all possibly potential terrorists and therefore we all need lots of oversight to ensure we cannot become terrorists, evar, for our own protection.
In that sense, the FUD is quite effective. Where are the Common Sense Institute, the League Of Rational Beings, the Alied Axis Against Evil, and all those other NGOs that can gang up one to one to protect us from the governments, quangos, ngos, and terrorists that are using terrorism to take away other people's (our) freedoms and civil liberties?
Just as the oppressors are more effective when they gang up on us one against many, so are we more effective if we turn the same principle around on them.
Hal9000: I'm sorry John but I cannot link with Paltalk, they're recruiting for Al-Qaeda.
John: MY GOD! IT"S FULL OF TERRORISTS!
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
Social networks link people.
Guess what: terrorists are people too.
All these laws to combat terrorism are mostly indiscriminate, in that they hurt non-terrorists just as badly, maybe even worse (probably).
Remember when you were young, and you kept getting the shit kicked out of you for being a nerd ? Did people never teach these "counter terrorists" how to deal with bullies ? You take away their motive. Terrorists are pissed the fuck off about something. Get rid of that "something" and the terrorists will go back to being normal happy humans.
"Fighting" terrorism only creates more.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
i say we set out to bomb all that hasnt achieved sid meyers intellectual integrity ... al qaeda omg .. can you believe the guy was actually an engineer ... consider the grudge on that one
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)