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Al-Qaeda Web Sites Go Offline
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Oct 18, 2008 04:52 PM
from the i-hack-you dept.
from the i-hack-you dept.
thefickler writes "Four out of the five Al-Qaeda online forums have disappeared. The terrorist group used these forums to relay messages to its supporters. The four that have gone missing seem to have taken a hit back on September 10, the day before the annual video marking the 9/11 attacks was due to be disseminated. No one knows who is responsible for the sites' disappearance."
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good. (Score:4, Funny)
but you know it means they're doing something else now.
I suspect it's how Sarah Palin jokes are strung together that is the new medium. they're ubiquitous and cannot be stopped by any force known to mankind.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think you didn't RTFA carefully enough. It says it's talking about private, password-protected sites. So even if they did provide links, all you could "verify" is either that they have indeed linked to a site that doesn't exist (and how would you be able to tell whether it really had been an al-Qaeda site before?), or to some kind of login page (and, without a password, how would you be able to tell whether it was really an al-Qaeda site or just a random anonymous login page?)
This is nothing to do with
Yeah... so what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yeah... so what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Yeah... so what? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Yeah... so what? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Yeah... so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The government budget to run these sites has been transferred to bailing out the banks.
This is probably the smartest commend I've read here!
Al-Qaeda was a CIA DB name for the mujahedin back in the 80's.
They are 100% CIA asset, commanded and funded by the CIA.
Now lets joke on the truth:
So either they removed the funds, or Al-Qaeda ppl are too busy growing heroin for the NYSE bubble.
Americans be aware: You are a great nation, awesome people, and your government is making you look really REALLY bad. When the BIG shit hits the fan "they" will bail out, and you will take the heat! Don't you feel your freedom fading away? The world will hate you.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
which is more useful ? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, really. Apparently.
In one of the most transparently stupid "LOOK! TERRORISTS!" stories to date, The Times has "exclusively" published a report claiming terrorists are hiding their secret terrorist messages inside child pornography [timesonline.co.uk]. Because, y'know, obviously you're going to hide your messages somewhere already illegal rather than in wedding photos or LOLcats.
I'm pleased to say that the commenters on the article - and UK newspaper online comments are one of the purest sources of raw stupid on the planet - are already condemning this as obvious Home Office press-release ware.
The Times has been spotted running press releases for the Home Office before [blogspot.com] with jawdroppingly stupid scare stories. Coincidentally, the Home Office's call for the police to be able to hold people 42 days without charge just got rejected. Obviously not linked.
I wrote a blog post [today.com] on it, but I'm not sure it's obviously a parody of a stupid thing that someone actually tried to seriously push.
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, and there's a firehose story [slashdot.org] on the subject which could do with clicking up. Blithering stupidity is best dealt with by wide exposure.
Parent
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Blithering stupidity is best dealt with by wide exposure.
Turns out that that is not the case [washingtonpost.com].
Parent
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, really. Apparently.
In one of the most transparently stupid "LOOK! TERRORISTS!" stories to date, The Times has "exclusively" published a report claiming terrorists are hiding their secret terrorist messages inside child pornography [timesonline.co.uk].
OH MY GOD! Those long nights where I stared intently, deeply into into the Goatse image. I knew there was something else there. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!
Parent
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:5, Insightful)
I read that terrorists, and by terrorists I'm going to go with Radical Islamic Fundamentalists since the
Utterly stupid since law enforcement already targets this channel, there is no 'free speech' when it involves child porn, and there's news all the time about how these rings get busted, suppliers and consumers alike.
Utterly brilliant because it is a known channel that has a clientele that takes lots of precautions, they try their best not to get noticed. With the ubiquity of unsecured wireless spots they could effectively get into these rings and do their thing with a high level of anonymity and have the provider of the hot spot be the main target of any fuzz scrutiny. This would also be incredibly disheartening to the investigators, whereas they used to just have to send the messages to decoders and translators, now that message is in a despicable photo or video that someone will have to watch, tell me that isn't going to leave a few scars.
Then again it could be a cash grab by the agencies that investigate child porn, nothing wrong with more money to fight that evil.
Parent
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:4, Insightful)
The police are all over that. What this is is a push by the Home Office to take more civil rights away.
Parent
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, ofcourse. It's obviously so much easier to get all your fellow terrorists into a closed child-porn ring in order to exchange messages via steganography than to just install FireGPG and use any friggin' public message board, usenet or, *gasp*, e-mail.
Seriously, how brain damaged do you have to be to buy into such bullshit?
Parent
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:5, Funny)
This would also be incredibly disheartening to the investigators, whereas they used to just have to send the messages to decoders and translators, now that message is in a despicable photo or video that someone will have to watch, tell me that isn't going to leave a few scars.
So the terrorists should use the goatse guy for hiding their messages. He seems spacious enough.
Parent
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:5, Funny)
So the terrorists should use the goatse guy for hiding their messages. He seems spacious enough.
As an added bonus, their fellow terrorists will lose the will to live after staring at the goatse guy long enough to decode the message, making them perfect recruits for suicide bombings.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously, if I were him, I wouldn't want to be associated with terrorists. I'd want to clear my name of such despicable behavior.
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:5, Insightful)
But isn't child porn on their list of immoral acts?
Yes. It fails the critical thinking test entirely. Islamic fundamentalists don't even like regular adult nudity -- possession of child pornography would likely get you executed in Islamist countries.
It's like saying that Islamic Terrorists are hiding their hidden messages in pictures of Allah.
Governments pray on public stupidity.
Parent
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:5, Funny)
Why not just hide their message in slashdot troll posts? Not like anyone reads them anyways...unless you know what you're looking for...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Shut up, Abdul.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No way. Everyone knows the terrorists are really hiding their secret messages in music and movies on BitTorrent sites and in easter eggs contained in cracked software. And the source code for the Linux kernel is also one big long top secret terrorist messages. And if you listen carefully to what Steve Jobs has to say, every third word is accented in a funny way so as to convey a hidden terrorist message.
The trouble begins... (Score:4, Insightful)
...when the drums stop.
rj
Re:The trouble begins... (Score:5, Funny)
"Why? What happens then?"
"Bass solo!"
Parent
Take down notice (Score:5, Funny)
Hrm... (Score:5, Funny)
From the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently he's not an expert on American communications - who get any information from the three sites he called out?
Re:From the article... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Oh my Gawd... (Score:3, Funny)
whoever shut these guys down (Score:4, Insightful)
we don't want them shut down
let them communicate openly. then track the fuckers. now their communication is more hidden, and thus our knowledge of what's going on
al qaeda doesn't call it a day (Score:3, Interesting)
you don't understand what motivates them
religious bigotry is bottomless pit of slime which constantly renews
all you need is arrogance and a feeling of superiority
and then "god" gives you the right to kill subhumans
subhumans are anyone who doesn't believe as you do
So what are the URLs? (Score:5, Informative)
The classic site was Voice of Jihad [sawtaljihad.com], but that's been more or less dead for a while. Back in August, it was apparently taken over by some McCain supporter. Now it's a misconfigured shared-IP site on Dreamhost.
bin Laden's annual video didn't get much press this year. He's released his 2008 video, and it's 87 minutes long, but it's hard to find. Reuters has a summary. [reuters.com].
I suspect that the main reason there's pressure to suppress his videos is that he always has something tellingly negative to say about Bush. This year, bin Laden's sound bite is "And in fact, the subject of the Mujahideen has become an inseparable part of the speech of your leader and the effects and signs are not hidden."
It's worth remembering that the bin Laden family supported Bush's first presidential campaign. [denverpost.com] In 1978, Bush and Osama bin Laden's brother, Salem bin Laden, founded Arbusto Energy, an oil company based in Texas. Sometimes one wonders if the plan was to get an incompetent into the US presidency, then apply enough pressure to make him overreact. A pre 9-11 bio of bin Laden, "The Man who Declared War on America", has quotes from him indicating that he felt America needed to be corrupted before it could be taken down, and outlined what needed to be done to make that happen. All the family had to do was to get someone in office who thought tax cuts would fix anything, get him to overspend on the wrong war, and wait for the US economy to collapse.
We may yet see a "Mission Accomplished" from bin Laden.
Re:So what are the URLs? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, I suspect the reason his videos aren't reported as much is that whenever Bin Laden shows his face, it energizes Americans and makes them more likely to vote Republican. The media is ridiculously pro-Obama this year and does not want a repeat of 2004 when Bin Laden released a video and threatened Americans a week before the election. We're in a media environment in which the New York Times will run an editorial by Obama but refuse to run one by McCain. Comedians mock Sarah Palin's apparent stupidity while ignoring that Joe Biden said Americans were huddled around television sets to see President Roosevelt [politico.com]. Palin is criticized for her religious views, yet Obama is a Christian who went to the church of reverend Wright for 20 years, and Joe Biden is a Catholic (amazingly, McCain is the least religious candidate).
So I wouldn't worry about any Bin Laden videos popping up to energize conservative voters this time.
Parent
Re:So what are the URLs? (Score:5, Insightful)
So someone like you who is holding on to a position that a lot of people are moving away from will think the shift in media attention is directed from the top down, instead of from the bottom up, that the media is changing things instead of reporting on changing opinions.
You are suffering from what I like to call the "Fringe Media Censorship Bias," which is where people with marginal or fringe beliefs often attribute their beliefs lack of representation in the "media" to some sort of censorship, rather then a lack of interest from the rest of society. Some, like Noam Chomsky, suffer from this condition to the extent where they write whole books trying to rationalize that it's the "media" ignoring them and not just society in general.
Osama probably didn't get the air time because he's old hat. Your example is from what? 4 years ago? Christ thats a generation in media years. And Palin is dumb, and that's a story that sells.
Parent
Yes, but no (Score:3, Insightful)
Washington did not claim to be a Christian (Score:3, Insightful)
In concluding the interview, Dr. Wilson said "I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges him self as a believ
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Reference on the family disowning him please? I recall something about suspicions that he was still receiving money from them... but have no references for that either.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You were marked troll for your foul language. Try harder next time bitch.
Restored by election time? (Score:3, Insightful)
If these sites are down, how will Al-Qaeda make its pre-election rant against the Republican candidate like they did four years ago? If they once again want the Republicans to win (more likely in their view to create the clash of civilizations that they're dreaming of) how will they pull that off this time?
We know that Hamas has endorsed Obama. Maybe bin Laden will do the same just to make sure that McCain is elected and the US can more easily be painted as the Great Satan.
hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Sites (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anybody know where to *find* these sites? Even Wikipedia won't supply links.
Anonymous forums (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:fp (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:fp (Score:5, Informative)
I think I speak for all of us when I say: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
No, you are just speaking for people with really high UIDs.
That post was a cut-n-paste of a tired, old troll posting with the slight up date of using Obama instead of some random jock twink type.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Athiest, Atypical (Score:5, Informative)
Though apparently this isn't the point of the discussion at hand.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Allah and God are the same entity. But batman and the Easter bunny are separate. But your comment was along the lines of Bob Dole did it along with the help of Bob Dole and some other people.