UK To Train Pro-West Islamic Groups To Game Google

Hugh Pickens writes "The British government's Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), a 200-strong Home Office unit created 18 months ago, has said in meetings it wants to 'flood the internet' with 'positive' interpretations of Islam and plans to train government-approved groups in search engine optimization techniques, which it is hoped will boost their profile online and battle radicalization. A Home Office spokesman confirmed search engine optimization training is part of the government's anti-radicalization strategy. 'In order to support mainstream voices, we work with local partners to help develop their communication, representational and leadership skills. This support could include media training, which can help make their voices heard more widely, and support the development of skills which allow communities to be more effective in debate.' However the effectiveness of search engine optimization in reducing traffic to extremist websites has been dismissed by academics. A report produced by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) said young Muslims were much more likely to be directed to extremist material online by web forums and offline associates than by Google or other search engines. 'Tweaking the results for supposedly extremist terms would be largely ineffectual, not least because it is unlikely that any but the most callow wannabe terrorist would use a mainstream search engine to find banned material.'"

Comments

biometric01

[biometric01]

Much has been discussed about Identity Theft, user ID's and Passwords stolen or hacked, credit cards being used without the owners knowledge and so on. Now there is a safe way of protecting your passwords and identity online from being copied, stolen and hacked by keyboard trojans, using your biometric fingerprint and face recognition, and even voice, to log on to web sites. By simply scanning your finger or face or voice you can log on to a web site, log on to your computer, and even encrypt files and folders. No more worrying about who might hack into your online accounts or even your email. No more remembering passwords or using the same passwords on many sites. This is an exciting new innovation from myBiodentity and they have about fourteen products that are enabled with biometrics including email encryption, password manager, virtual disk, and many more. You can read more at http://www.mybiodentity.com/

Home Office in Internet propaganda war

[David Gerard]

Home Office counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit nu meeja websites to "channel messages through volunteers in Internet forums" as part of a campaign to "taint the al-Qaeda(tm) brand," according to a document accidentally posted to Wikipedia this morning.

"We understand that people on Internet forums have no experience whatsoever of participants paid to advocate a position or product," says the report. "A single image macro exchange of 'U R TERRIST' 'NO U' 'O RLY?' 'SRSLY' could save countless lost souls."

The unit is also targeting the BBC and other online news outlets. The main obstacle appears to lie in writing messages stupid enough to pass for genuine reader comments. "Some of our top fake news writers have burnt out their brains on the task and now sit shaking and gibbering about real life being worse than any parody. And house prices."

Other work includes faked reports of al-Quaeda branded Zunes on Gizmodo, suitably on-message mouseover popups on XKCD and photomanipulations of Osama bin Laden as Pedobear on 4chan.

The initiative was spearheaded by a Home Office civil servant asked to account for the number of work hours he seemed to be spending on Internet message boards. His latest proposal is to fight al-Qaeda on MP3, BitTorrent and pornographic websites. "I've bought a new 500 gigabyte USB portable disk drive on expenses to store this important confidential data," he said.