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British Intel Shuts Down al-Qaeda Sites 824

Posted by timothy from the your-hosting-contract-has-expired dept.
DarkWolf0 writes "I guess it should not be too surprising -- the British Times Online discusses the recent shutdown of multiple websites associated with al-Qaeda. I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism.'"
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British Intel Shuts Down al-Qaeda Sites More

British Intel Shuts Down al-Qaeda Sites

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  • Who and How? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous@ya h o o .com> on Sunday July 31, 2005 @07:36PM (#13210207) Homepage Journal
    TFA doesn't discuss how the sites were shut down: whether this was a DDOS, the government got the hosts to yank them, or if the sites themselves were hacked somehow.

    If the government got the hosts to yank them, then the government's hand would be tipped because they'd have to get legal orders which would eventually be released by some leak. But if it's through hacking or DDOS'ing, it raises the question of whether the government really did it (or if public-spirited hackers went vigilante), and if the government did it, where do we draw the line on the illegality of such tactics?

    Can a judge issue an order allowing the takedown of foreign sites via hack or DDOS if they are deemed harmful to national security? Can such an order be sealed and kept from the public?

    Perhaps the point is moot as no one has surfaced a smoking gun, pointing to British intel. TFA just quotes Israeli sources saying the hand of British intel was detected, but not stating that any direct evidence has been presented to prove this.

    I'll be interested in seeing how the story develops. There's a certain visceral satisfaction in seeing advocates of hate and violence silenced, but at the same time it's frightening to think of any government covertly silencing voices of dissent, as that starts a society down a slippery slope of oppression.

    I'd be much more willing to believe that the Israelis have a covert and capable corps of hackers than the British. And if these corps, regardless of national origin, were capable of initiating DDOS attacks, I'd be curious as to where/how they got their zombies. It would be sad to think that a source of worms and viruses were government-paid hackers, building bot nets for black ops.

    - Greg

    • Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Transcendent ( 204992 )
      Can a judge issue an order allowing the takedown of foreign sites via hack or DDOS if they are deemed harmful to national security? Can such an order be sealed and kept from the public?

      Yes, and yes.

      And if these corps, regardless of national origin, were capable of initiating DDOS attacks, I'd be curious as to where/how they got their zombies.

      You don't think they can get ahold of 16-20 year old computer geeks who dwell in their parent's basement?

      There's a certain visceral satisfaction in seeing advocates of

      • Re:Who and How? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bigman2003 ( 671309 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @07:44PM (#13210247) Homepage
        I don't think they are shutting down, 'Voices of dissent.'

        What they are doing is shutting down a conduit for the organization of groups whose purpose it is to kill civilians, disrupt society, and bring down the current government.

        If all they were doing was 'voicing dissent' then most Western governments would allow that. It's when they go a step further, and start killing people, that it becomes a problem.

        • Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Maxwell'sSilverLART ( 596756 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @11:04PM (#13211084) Homepage

          What they are doing is shutting down a conduit for the organization of groups whose purpose it is to kill civilians, disrupt society, and bring down the current government.

          Well, without the "killing civilians" bit, I can think of any number of groups who would love to disrupt our society and bring down our current government. Matter of fact, I'm not sure that a few of them don't have the right idea.

          Of course, the government would disagree; natural, really, having an interest in self-preservation. What is the threshold for shutdown, and how do we maintain transparency to ensure that the government isn't abusing the power to shut down non-violent (but strongly critical) sites?

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
            Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Shaper_pmp ( 825142 )
            First off, who says it's definitely the British government? The article passes on one bit of unsubstantiated hearsay, with no references whatsoever, from unspecified "Israeli intelligence agents" (who could well be doing it themselves and looking to avoid consequences). Now I don't mean to come off as one of the tinfoil hat brigade, but that's hardly definite - the article makes the accusation then immediately veers off into discussions of who's being shut down and a philosophical discussion on whether te

        • Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Theatetus ( 521747 )

          What they are doing is shutting down a conduit for the organization of groups whose purpose it is to kill civilians, disrupt society, and bring down the current government.

          Yeah, and they're also shutting down one of our best sources of intel on an organization of groups whose purpose it is to kill civilians, disrupt society, and bring down the current government. So you'll forgive me if I'm not applauding this. (There's a saying about counterterrorism: every time there's a cheer in the J Edgar Hoover bu

      • You don't think they can get ahold of 16-20 year old computer geeks who dwell in their parent's basement?

        Far more likely, I think they'd get hold of a 35+ year old's computers that they use for letter writing and browsing the web thing.

      • Re:Who and How? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by olgrandad ( 903182 )

        How about having the offending sites removed from the Wayback Machine? What if the significant content of these sites were posted to a popular forum, say Slashdot? Where will the big eraser hit next?

        I believe the sites they took down were just propoganda sites, which IMO isn't incredibly significant. It's more of a visible, 'See, we are doing something.' I mean, it's entirely possible that some recruiting occurs online, but it's not likely to be a primary source.

        Besides:

        Ironically, the most readily

        • Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @09:21PM (#13210662) Homepage

          Exactly. Clarke is right there.

          Al Qaeda and most of its adherents are old-style "shoot 'em and blow 'em up" terrorists - no different and less sophisticated than most other groups thirty years ago.

          The idea that they have some sort of advanced biochem/nuke weaponry is horseshit. They jack off to that stuff - they don't actually have any.

          It's trivial to bring a city to its knees with some guns and some hand grenades - you just have to pick your targets and, most importantly, KEEP DOING IT. This business of pulling off one attack, then either not doing anything else for three years, or screwing up a second attack, just makes the first attack worthless.

          Terrorism does not work unless it is CHRONIC. Look at Italy and Turkey in the 1970's - THAT was chronic terrorism and it nearly brought down the governments of those countries. Or the IRA in Northern Ireland.

          The stuff done in Europe and the UK, let alone the one significant attack in the US, simply isn't on anybody's radar screen on a day-to-day basis.

          Everybody's dancing around now because four bombs went off in London. Three months from now, nobody except the relatives of the injured and killed will remember it happened (and those relatives probably will get screwed out of any compensation they have coming by the bureaucrats in charge.)

          Meanwhile, though, it will be used as an excuse to ramrod more laws giving the UK government control of everything. And the US will follow suit.

          Look at the idiocy of starting random searches on the New York subway. Totally braindead. Nothing but CYA for the idiots running New York.

          Anybody can walk into any crowded transit vehicle in the US with two hand grenades in jacket pockets, pull them out, pull the pins, flip the levers, say "Imshallah!" and toss them - and twenty people within twelve feet of him will die or be seriously injured. Get five guys to do that in New York - totally bypassing the cops (unless these guys really LOOK wacko) - and there will be no New York subway the next day. Do it on San Francisco's BART and cripple the city's transportation system for months.

          As Rutger Hauer, portraying a "Carlos" type terrorist in "Nighthawks", said: "Remember - there is no security!"

          There are only TWO ways to stop terrorism:
          1) Find them and kill them BEFORE they act (only works for small, geographically concentrated groups.)
          2) Remove the social and political reasons for their acts.

        • Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by stephanruby ( 542433 )
          How about having the offending sites removed from the Wayback Machine?

          If you ask nicely, the way back machine and google will remove anything personal of yours that is on their server.

          For something like that especially, since it involves the government and their national security, I'll bet that it wouldn't require more than an email from a government official to have both of those organizations take down those materials.

    • Re:Who and How? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by USSJoin ( 896766 )
      Frankly, it's much more likely that it was done by MI-5 or MI-6, the domestic or foreign intelligence services, respectively. TFA *does* point out that evidence points to the British government, even though it doesn't disclose methods. The advantage of the MI groups, just like our NSA and CIA (respectively the equivalents) is that they really don't need pesky little things like the "law" on their side. That's why the government set them up; to have a nice little veil of "reasonable deniability."

      • Re:Who and How? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by DarkWolf0 ( 902658 )
        More then likely, it was done by MI-5 in my opinion. A good corelation is MI-5 being the FBI, and MI-6 being the CIA. The CIA is not "supposed" to be allowed to operate in the US, thus, they do not have to be burdened with some of the legalities that we do. And of course there is the reasonable deniability, because lots of stuff happen in the background that no public typically wants to see their government doing. Its not surprising that they shut down the sites either, because people are frightened, and a

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @07:37PM (#13210209)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Strange (Score:4, Insightful)

      by astrashe ( 7452 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @07:44PM (#13210243) Journal
      I'll bet they were doing that.

      Whether or not allowing the sites to stay up for the intelligence info was probably a hard choice all along, and after the recent bombings, they probably just changed their minds.

    • Maybe they were already doing that for some time, and decided they had all the info they needed and the sites had outlived their usefulness.

    • Re:Strange (Score:2, Interesting)

      by sploxx ( 622853 )
      You will find only the casual websurfer like you and me - and brand them as terrorists. Brilliant.

      Is it now illegal to look at such websites? I don't know. But I surely googled 'jihad' etc once.
      What did I found? Unreadable arabic websites and some english ones which only enforced my view that these people are really such assholes as you can also see by looking at their actions.

      But the fact that you nowadays could 'get flagged' or even get a very nasty visit by looking at such content is silly. More, it make

      • Re:Strange (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Luddite ( 808273 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @08:31PM (#13210457)
        >> But the fact that you nowadays could 'get flagged' or even get a very nasty visit by looking at such content is silly. More, it makes me both afraid and angry. Terrorists attacking our freedom. Oh yes, it seems that they are very effective now.

        The focus of any act of terror is typically not to maim or kill a few dozens, but provoke reactionary policies by the government, inconveniencing millions. Look at the basque movement for classic example of this, where concilliatory gestures from the spanish government were met with increasing violence. Admittedly they were attacking targets within their own country, but the dynamic is identical.

        No terrorist organization can do a fraction of the damage to a government that it will do to itself in reacting... How many lifetimes worth of hours have the American public lost in increased airport security checks alone? There are no bombs going off on US soil, but you're getting screwed every day to prevent it.

        Either way the terrorists win a little bit.

        • Re:Strange (Score:4, Insightful)

          by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @09:06PM (#13210609)
          No terrorist organization can do a fraction of the damage to a government that it will do to itself in reacting... How many lifetimes worth of hours have the American public lost in increased airport security checks alone? There are no bombs going off on US soil, but you're getting screwed every day to prevent it.

          And yet a government cannot do 'nothing' in response to a terrorist act or threat. That would merely invite ever increasing acts, until they HAD to do something. (WTC I, Khobar, USS Cole, Nairobi, WTCII)

          Either way the terrorists win a little bit.

          Exactly. In this sort of dissimilar warfare, 'winning' by the 'good guys' is extremely difficult, if possible at all. It may take decades or centuries.

          But in the meantime....ignore it at your peril.

          • Re:Strange (Score:3, Interesting)

            by steelfood ( 895457 )
            But in the meantime....ignore it at your peril.

            Nobody says to sit around and wait to get blown to bits, or get turned into another +1 for the next bodycount.

            Vigilance is the best defense. If there's a bag on the floor and nobody seems to be claiming it, say something. If somebody's acting suspicious (like a good friend suddenly gone strange), confront the person. If somebody wants to ram the plan you're riding in into a building (and has a gun) stop that person. Terrorism is not a war against a nation, it's

          • Re:Strange (Score:5, Insightful)

            by demachina ( 71715 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @11:27PM (#13211171)
            "And yet a government cannot do 'nothing' in response to a terrorist act or threat."

            Simple answer. The U.S. should have used everything it had to swiftly and massively crush Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, using every civilian airliner and ship it could find to get the forces there as quickly as it could. If Pakistan objected they should have been crushed too because the Pakistan secret service more than any other organization help nurture and create the Taliban and Al Qaeda and they are still unscathed today. They are also most probably still sheltering the Taliban and Al Qaeda today possibly including Bin Laden.

            Instead they fought a weak proxy war in Afghanistan using local war lords, with very dubious motives and loyalties, mixed with special forces and air power(though there were very few actual targets to bomb). They managed to scatter Al Qaeda and the Taliban instead of ruthlessly crush it. They certainly failed to strike a crucial blow at Tora Bora. Once Al Qaeda and the Taliban made it to sanctuary in the tribal areas of Palestine and the mountains of Afghanistan they have gone largely untouched for the last four years.

            Where did the U.S. focus its attention, and the lion's share of its military, money, and resource instead, Iraq which had NOTHING to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda.

            So today Al Qaeda is alive and well, spread around the globe, and using Iraq as a recruiting poster for the malevolence of the U.S. towards the Muslim world. Instead of crushing the problem at the source, the U.S. and British are engaged in a futile strategy to try to stop attacks which are by nature nearly impossible to stop. Israel has been trying for decades, using much harsher measures in a much smaller country and failed. The effort is costing a fortune and its mauling civil rights.

            All in all it was a strategy conceived by morons who, to cover their tracks, constantly tell everyone what a great job they are doing, and what great war time administrations they are. In fact they are making no headway in the war and seem to mostly be playing right in to Al Qaeda's strategy. One of Al Qaeda's main goals is to launch a small number of attacks and let the U.S, Britain etc. mangle their own economies and political standing in the war with misguided overreaction.

            In Iraq Al Qaeda no doubt sees a replay of Russia in Afghanistan. Tie up the U.S. there with an insurgency for the next 10 years and inflict massive economic, political and morale damage on the U.S and Britain. The U.S.S.R's misguided war in Afghanistan was the single biggest contributor to its ultimate collapse. Al Qaeda came in to being figthing that war with CIA backing and they no doubt want to repeat their victory in Iraq against their former benefactors.

            • Re:Strange (Score:4, Insightful)

              by shplorb ( 24647 ) on Monday August 01, 2005 @02:54AM (#13211962) Homepage Journal
              If you haven't already, you should download and watch the BBC documentary series "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of Politics of Fear".

              It has an interesting take on how basically, the cronies behind Bush have created the current situation.

              After seeing the Panorama show "The War Party" I'm rather inclined to agree with it.

        • Re:Strange (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Malor ( 3658 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @09:53PM (#13210769) Journal
          Are you kidding? The terrorists spent a couple years planning their op, and spent 19 lives (and plane tickets) to take out the towers.

          Let's ignore the direct casualties and property damage, and instead look at the whole picture.

          In response to what twenty people did, we have, in response, killed tens of thousands of people, lost about twenty thousand of our own soldiers (dead and wounded), and have spent nearly two hundred billion dollars in a War On Terror, with no end in sight. For the money we're paying, we could lose a World Trade Center EVERY OTHER WEEK and STILL be ahead on costs.

          Our first war front, Afghanistan, at least isn't a complete disaster. The government is not in tight control, but we could 'win' there, where 'win' is defined as leaving behind a stable, democratic government. Now, we probably won't LIKE a stable, democratic Afghan government very much, nor they us (if they're free, one of their fervently-exercised freedoms will be to dislike us), but we don't have to like them... we just have to be reasonably sure they won't bomb us. That's still possible.

          Iraq, on the other hand, was completely and totally bungled. It IS a total disaster. We have created the world's best training center for terrorists, where disaffected Iraqis can learn to fight Americans in the comfort of their own homes.... we'll break right in! We face escalating violence in that country, to the point that some people are starting to talk 'civil war' instead of 'insurgency'. The American-intalled government is looking very shaky indeed. The problems there are getting worse, not better. We lost that war at Abu Ghraib; we showed the Iraqis just what kind of people run our country. The Iraqis will never, not EVER, accept any government we impose. It's just a matter of how many body bags we choose to fill before bailing out and watching that place turn into a firestorm.

          Back at home, we have lost rights by the score. The government now has many, many powers to intrude into our lives that it has wanted for years, but which we (rightly) refused them. We have few protections against unreasonable search. We are building a surveillance society, the thing we feared most as a country for so many years. We are IN a police state, it's just not one that has shown its fangs very much yet.

          We have lost habeas corpus. The government can call you an enemy combatant and disappear you.

          Win? The terrorists didn't "win". They hit the FUCKING JACKPOT.

      • Re:Strange (Score:4, Informative)

        by Maxwell'sSilverLART ( 596756 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @11:15PM (#13211123) Homepage

        Is it now illegal to look at such websites?

        A UK government clamp-down on internet abuse is being rushed through parliament following the apparent ease with which terrorists can obtain the wherewithal to make bombs like those used in the recent attack on London.

        'Terrorist and extremist use of the internet poses a significant threat,' a Home Office spokesperson told Chemistry World, 'We are already working with our G8 and European partners to find ways to tackle the sites and identify individuals and groups responsible. People who download bomb-making instructions and then try to follow them could well be guilty of the new proposed Act Preparatory to Terrorism offence, which we announced on 18th July, and will be taken forward into the new Prevention of Terrorism Bill.'

        http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2005/July/2 0070502.asp [rsc.org]

        It says "and then try to follow them," but it also says that they're going to try to find ways to find out who's reading them. Even if you don't follow them, you can expect to get a knock on your door (or, if it's anything like the American BATF, a battering ram knocking your door down) just for visiting such sites. It's for the chiiillldren, after all.

    • I would think hacking into the sites and logging everything would be more productive. Shutting them down will only cause them to find other means of communication...

      That's only if you assume that the "other means" will be as effective. I don't think they can be.

      I'm going to ignore the freedom of speech issues for the moment and say that shutting them down is the better option. Extremist websites (especially well-established, well-developed sites) are invaluable in giving the *impression* that a cause is l

  • Brilliant (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nokilli ( 759129 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @07:39PM (#13210214)
    We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

    Even from a tactical point-of-view this doesn't make sense. They cite one web site as offering technical instruction on how to commit terror, OK, but what about the rest which undoubtedly contain information authorities could be using to predict and prevent future attacks?

    Do they actually think that this will hurt their recruitment efforts? That some guy who is already of the mind to commit suicide for the cause is going to change his mind when his browser gives him a 404?

    How is it in this most important of issues we see the least intelligent people making all of the decisions for us?
    --
    Why didn't you know? [tinyurl.com]

    • Re:Brilliant (Score:5, Interesting)

      by zxnos ( 813588 ) <zxnoss@gmail.com> on Sunday July 31, 2005 @07:50PM (#13210282)
      We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

      their speech is intended not as a civil discussion but as a way to communicated the means and methods for murder of innocents. in the u.s. groups are allowed to say what they want... ...until they start calling for the murder of other people.

      i agree with a post above, better to try and trace the communcations and run raids.

    • Re:Brilliant (Score:3, Insightful)

      by superyanthrax ( 835242 )
      Yes, we are squelching the terrorists' speech, but think about what they're talking about. They're talking about killing us all in a massive holy war and taking over the world. There are limits on what is acceptable speech, and I'm certain most would agree that talking like this is not acceptable.

      On the other issue, I think there is a very delicate balance. On one hand, we could just hack the web site/servers and monitor them to monitor the terrorists' movements. However, letting those web servers stay u
    • If you have a problem with it then why not join the 'people making the decisions' so you can make decisions too. Or share your vast intelligence with them so they will make the 'right decision'.

      Your armchair rant is cute but pointless.
    • We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

      These sites where not for the ability to speak, as you imply, about "political opinions", but the ability to encurage and coordinate the kind of violence that we have recently seen.

      • Re:Think it through... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cahiha ( 873942 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @08:17PM (#13210401)
        How do you know what those sites actually were about? I certainly don't.

        Furthermore, "encouraging" violence is part of everyday political opinions: US politicians do it just about every day.

        So, do you have a specific argument for how shutting down those sites is going to make us all safer? Because, a priori, restricting free speech and political discussion would seem to only strengthen the arguments of the terrorists.

        • Soviet Army Recruiting in London (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @08:40PM (#13210491)
          So... it is a-okay to bomb a terrorist camp and kill everyone in it... but suddenly their 'rights' are violated if someone knocks out their websites? Get a little fucking perspective please.

          As to what is accomplished, that is easy. First, it makes low level support more difficult. You want to prevent casual supporters from throwing a few bucks in their direction.

          Second, it is a propaganda war. If a terrorist blows himself up in London, murdering a pile of innocent civilians, it is best to deaden whatever benifits they get out of it by making it harder for them to get their message out.

          The reason why this is being done is the exact same reason why Britian didn't let the USSR set up a Soviet Army recruiting station in London. Is it going to make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. Is it worth while to try and disrupt a terrorist's cells propaganda machine? Sure, why the hell not.

          Put another way, if a British rapist made a website and posted movies of him raping 13 year old girls, would you be terribly upset if it got shut down? Get some fucking perspective.

    • Re:Brilliant (Score:2, Interesting)

      by DarkWolf0 ( 902658 )
      I believe the problem they had with the websites taken down wasnt because they were afraid of them spreading a hateful message, but more of them becoming virtual control centers, where they could spread out messages to operatives throughout the world with ease, chat boards to discuss upcoming operations, plans freely available for them to use, etc. Of course, it may not have made a huge dent, but you have to start somewhere. The part about recruitment is moot, because I dont know many people that speak Ara

    • Re:Brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eil ( 82413 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @08:33PM (#13210469) Homepage Journal

      We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

      A bit of googling would reveal hundreds, maybe thousands of web sites promoting hate and violence against some group of people or another. Many have been online for a very long time. Al-Qaeda is unique in that they're the only group currently organizing to act on their promises. It's not their ability to speak that's causing concern, it's their open willingness to kill innocent people.

      To a degree your argument makes sense. But also look at it from the government's point of view. Jon Stewart interviewed Fareed Zakaria [comedycentral.com] (click to watch) a few days ago on The Daily Show. Fareed appears to be an expert on the things which drive terrorism in general and al-Qaeda in particular. Currently, there's no evidence that the group that staged the bombings in London were actually linked to the "official" al-Qaeda group at all. They were in fact probably just "disaffected youths" who took al-Qaeda's idealogies to heart and acted on them. Right now authorities are seeing much more activity from these tiny unaffiliated groups than from al-Qaeda itself and these are the groups that they're having the toughest time countering.

      How to stop them? Cut off their information and inspiration. This of course would probably not magically cure disaffected young Muslims in Europe. Fareed Zakaria says in the interview that the best and possibly only way to stop Muslim extremism in Europe is for policy-makers, leaders, and citizens to actually sit down and figure out how to better integrate Muslims into predominantly white cultures. <cynicism>Of course, this won't happen as people 'round the whole earth are generally opposed to actually thinking and working to change things for anyone but themselves.</cynicism>

      Perhaps more importantly (and more obviously), shutting down the sites is also meant to be a bit of a psychological strike. If someone's interested in al-Qaeda and they visit 12 websites out there promoting it, they're bound to come to the conclusion that the group is active and gaining strength, making it a much more attractive "club" to join. On the other hand, if all of the sudden the same person notices that all the al-Qaeda sites have gone missing, it raises suspicion that the group's control is slipping, even if nobody's been arrested or charged with a crime in real life.

      In the end, this won't stop al-Qaeda members from communicating with each other and spreading propaganda, it just pushes them underground a tiny bit further.

    • obSMAC (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Repton ( 60818 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @08:41PM (#13210495) Homepage
      We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

      As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

      -- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"

  • Hey! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Intel is a Registered Trademark of the Intel corporation....

    Quit using it. Or Intel will get angry.
    • I see "Intel" frequently on news tickers, etc too referring to intelligence ops, etc - makes me wonder why Intel (the chip maker) hasn't launched an awareness campaign to discourage that; legal action ... such as how Xerox ran massive ad campaigns decades ago to discourage use of its name as a generic word for "copy".

      Ron

  • Wouldn't it be easier... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31, 2005 @07:41PM (#13210229)
    Just to post those websites on /. ?

  • Very cool, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nuclear Elephant ( 700938 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @07:45PM (#13210250) Homepage
    British Intel shuts Down al-Qaeda Sites

    1. Why is a PC chip manufacturer shutting down al-Quaeda Sites?

    2. Do the british chips run linux?

  • finally Intel doing something innovative (Score:5, Funny)

    by RelliK ( 4466 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @07:48PM (#13210271)
    And here I was thinking that only AMD does something new these days.
  • This is nothing about preventing another person or person's their right to express themselves. This is about preventign the enemy from communicating and sharign information to conduct terrorist operations. Al Jazeera continues to grow unimpeeded by the west.
    • :: sigh ::

      Why do so many westerners completely fail to understand the nature of Al Jazeera? Study for a bit! Al Jazeera is run by flaming liberal (at least by Arabic standards) journalists who would be the first against the wall if the jihadists took over!

      They give the jihadists coverage in the same way the liberal ACLU defends conservative white supremacists -- they see themselves as giving a voice to dissent, even if the group they're giving a voice to hates their guts.

      Believe me, nobody at Al Jazeera act
    • "Al Jazeera continues to grow unimpeeded by the west."

      That is a provably false statement. Al-Jazeera has been continuously and massively harassed by both the U.S. military and the puppet interim Iraqi government during and since the Iraq invasion. Their offices were bombed, journalists killed by U.S. forces, their office in Iraq was closed for a time in 2004, and might still be, I'm not sure. Paul Wolfowitz in particular accused them of inciting violence [countercurrents.org] and sought to shut them down.

      Sometimes Al-Jazerra's
  • doom.

    Won't work.

    Nothing new. Nice try, though.

    "However, the sobering message of many security experts is that the terrorists are unlikely ever to lose a war waged with technology.
  • "I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism.'"
    Yeah, that's what they really want. Mr. and Mrs. Jones vacation page to be shut down under the guise of anti-terrorism. Damn, people, grow the fsck up!
  • I'm a innocent brazilian, and I have a website, and we are talking about british! My site is dead! Well, at least isn't me, as Jean who was killed because was wearing cloths for cold in a warm day.

  • The root causes of terrorism (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rm3friskerFTN ( 34339 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @07:54PM (#13210304) Journal
    From the Wizbang Blog [wizbangblog.com] ...

    The root causes of terrorism

    OK, I've been giving some thought, and I think I've got a handle on The Root Causes of Terrorism. Just why do people turn to terrorism to achieve their goals?

    1) It's simple. It has an ease and ready accessibility that essentially any group, of any size, can pull off a "terrorist" attack with very limited resources.

    2) It's flashy. Terrorism is "the new coolness." It gets a lot of attention, very quickly.

    3) It's empowering. The one element that all terrorist groups have, at the start, is far more passion than power. They care a great deal about their cause, but they simply can't get anything done through more legitimate means. So they start getting violent, to increase their profile and extend their power.

    4) It's deniable. If a government wants something done, but doesn't want to risk the backlash of doing it openly themselves, they can try to get some "terrorists" to do it for them. This way, they can stand back and say "tsk, tsk" when something bad happens that benefits them.

    5) It's cheap. Modern weapons and training cost far, far more than an average individual or group can afford. But bomb belts probably cost less than a couple of hundred dollars to make. Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols put together the Oklahoma City truck bomb on their average salaries.

    6) It's tough to fight. A long time ago, a bunch of countries laid out a set of rules for warfare. These rules were designed to, among other things, minimize the number of civilians killed in war. In exchange for some serious restrictions on what combatants could do, large groups of people, institutions, and buildings were declared "off limits." The terrorists systematically look at those restrictions and use them as guidelines for how to best attack our forces.

    Many people look at the terrorist attacks [in the civilized world] and wonder why it's happening. I look at the above and wonder why there haven't been more.

    • Re:The root causes of terrorism (Score:4, Insightful)

      by william_w_bush ( 817571 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @08:16PM (#13210398)
      if i may add:

      7) The major networks do all the actual propoganda for you. It's like having your own PR firm. The media tends to magnify attacks it can dramatize, or that have victims you can sympathize with, which is why there is more coverage for an attempted suicide bombing in london, which killed nobody, compared to the hundreds of thousands killed in the russian war in chechnya, and the genocide of more than half a million people in darfur.

      Not that I'm claiming moral superiority, I mean I sure as hell perk up when the news shows a tragedy happening in a place with a macdonalds in the background compared to some dusty 3rd world fuckhole, but that's part of being an arrogant westerner.

    • Re:The root causes of terrorism (Score:4, Funny)

      by dr_dank ( 472072 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @08:44PM (#13210511) Homepage Journal
      Seems like 1,2 & 5 could just as easily describe Paris Hilton.

    • Why I'm against Palestine statehood (Score:5, Informative)

      by Simonetta ( 207550 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @09:41PM (#13210726)
      All the reasons listed above are the reasons why I am 100% against accepting statehood for Palestine. The Palestinians have been the leaders of terrorism against both Israel and the West for 35 years now. Most of the incomprehensibly brutal and sub-human things that we have come to associate with organized terror they either invented or brought into international prominence. And they have done it for one reason only, to be accepted as an independent country by the rest of the world.

      Therefore to accept the legitimacy of a Palestinian state would also mean accepting the legitimacy of the means that they used to achieve it. It means granting them a free pass for all the horrible, horrible crimes that they have committed against innocent people for 35 years.

      And it means that every group of disaffected shit-for-brains losers in the third world with a case of AK-47s, a pound of C4, and a psychopathic holy man (and there are a lot of groups like this) will believe that the way to a seat in the UN is to murder innocent Americans and Europeans. After all, they will think, it did work for the Palestinians!

      I believe that that world should accept that regardless of whatever legitimate political grievances that the Palestinians may have, the possibility of their having a independent country is an impossibility given the crimes that they have committed against ordinary people for decades. For every innocent civilian murdered by the Palestinians, the global diplomatic acceptance of their country should be postponed for one year.

      Basically in international relations, you get the type of behavior that you reward. If we legitimize the crimes of the Palestinians, then we are guaranteed to get many more crimes of this nature committed against us in the future.

      It's said that the Palestinians are simply too backward and dysfunctional to understand this concept. It's said that the Palestinians 'never miss an opportunity to ''miss an opportunity.'' Well, that is their problem, not ours.

      The whole Palestine question is quite minor compared to the amount of news media attention that they have received for the past 35 years. You could take all the Palestinians out of the Middle East and put them in Mexico City and it would be weeks before anyone noticed that they were there.

      Hell, you could take all the Palestinians and put them in the middle of the endless slums of Lagos or Nairobi or Abidjan or Kinshasa and they would just -disappear- as if they never existed. The only reason why they are considered important news is just laziness and inertia on the part of the new media companies. What they do is considered important only because, for some unknown reason, they were considered important in the distant past. The Palestinians are like some absurd American daytime television soap opera; no one knows or cares the endless twists of their plots and history but the show can't be canceled because everything is on auto-pilot.

      Can you imagine if from the late 1940's to the present day the African-American people of the USA adopted the same tactics and methods to obtain justice that the Palestinians have used? Both groups were at basically the same position as oppressed minorities in their societies at that time. If the Black people did to the White people in America the same things that the Palestinians have done to the Israelis, there would today only be about 50,000 or so African-Americans left alive. And they would all be living in a concentration camp in northern Alaska. And every one would have a microchip embedded in their head; broadcasting their location to the helicopters flying over the camp 24/7/365.

      With all respect and honor - Shalom - to the memory of those lost in the holocaust
      The Palestinians don't realize how lucky they are to have the Israelis as the occupying force in their land. Having suffered the wors
      • It's said that the Palestinians are simply too backward and dysfunctional to understand this concept. It's said that the Palestinians 'never miss an opportunity to ''miss an opportunity.'' Well, that is their problem, not ours.

        Hell, you could take all the Palestinians and put them in the middle of the endless slums of Lagos or Nairobi or Abidjan or Kinshasa and they would just -disappear- as if they never existed.

        The Palestinians don't realize how lucky they are to have the Israelis as the occupying force in their land.

        Your views sir, are to be frank, extremely odious and an anethema to decent human compassion. You need to take history lessons. Fast.

      • Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood (Score:5, Interesting)

        by demachina ( 71715 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @10:19PM (#13210890)
        That is a really one sided picture of the reality that is Israel and Palestine. You should try to learn about the other side of the story, because there are always two sides in these things and you will have a lot better understanding of reality if you understand both sides. Things are never as black and white as you try to paint them.

        For example Haganah and Irgun were for all practical purposes Jewish terrorists organizations. One of Haganah's more active members would end up as Israel's Prime Minister, Menahem Begin. Haganah turned in to the IDF, Israel's Defense Force when they siezed control of Palestine. In one their more famous acts of terrorism they leveled a wing of the King David Hotel [etzel.org.il] with a bomb just like the Palestinians you hate so much will do years later. It helped drive Britain out of Palestine, which in turn allowed Haganah and Irgun to seize control of Palestine and create the state of Israel. So why exactly is it OK that the state of Israel was created on the back of terrorism of Jewish origin but its not OK for the Palestinians to use it to try and get a homeland back.

        Another incident you should probably learn about to level your view is the massacre at Deir Yassin [deiryassin.org]. Irgun massacred 100+ residents, many women and children in a Palestinian town that had remained largely neutral in the fighting between Arabs and Jews. The Palestinian didn't just pack up and abandon their homes to the Zionists, and opt willing for life as stateless persons in refugee camps. Incidents like Deir Yassin caused many of them to flee for fear they would be massacred if they stayed in Palestine after Haganah and Irgun started gaining control of the place. Many suspect Deir Yassin was perpetrated precisely to start a Palestinian flight which allowed Jews to seize their homes, farms and business for free and with no further bloodshed. It is a classic ethnic cleansing tactic just like you saw in Yugoslavia in more recent times, or Sudan today.

        Though to be fair and balanced (don't you hate that Fox tag line that everyone uses now) there were Palestinians massacring Jews and Jews massacring Palestinians through most of the 20th century as soon as it became obvious Zionists were in the process of trying to buy control of Palestine land followed by waves of Jewish immigration both legal and illegal from 1920 through the late 40's.

        "Therefore to accept the legitimacy of a Palestinian state would also mean accepting the legitimacy of the means that they used to achieve it."

        So again how come you and most of the rest of the world are willing to accept the legitimacy of Israel when they used the same techniques to create their state?
        • Thank you for taking the time to write a long and detailed reply to comment.
              I will research the incidents that you have referred to in your comment and realign my perspective in order to get closer to a just truth and balanced point of view.

  • Let's hope they start using MSN and Microsoft Messanger next, maybe they'll get shut down too. :-)

    I can see the headlines now, Microsoft shut down because it was found the terrorists prefer Windows.

  • British Intel shuts Down al-Qaeda Sites
    Did anyone else think it was strange that Intel was fighting terrorism? Did they use a backdoor in the server processors, or what?

    ---
    funny commercials [tubespot.com]

  • Terrible article...and here's why... (Score:5, Informative)

    by divide overflow ( 599608 ) on Sunday July 31, 2005 @08:04PM (#13210346)

    1. It only identified one website that supposedly was shut down.

    2. I'm pretty sure they got the name of that website WRONG (www.mojihedun.com isn't registered...but the Google-suggested alternative www.mojahedun.com is, and a quick whois suggests that it is the site they really meant to name).

    3. DNS requests to the authoritative DNS servers for www.mojahedun.com show they are having problems, which may have convinced the writer of the article that the website has been shut down.

    4. The article has no byline, so nobody gets the blame for any mistakes or inaccuracies.

    I saw this article earlier today and immediately noted the lack of hard facts and named sources. It's hardly worth the space it occupies. I'll pay more attention when it names names and isn't just fluff and regurgitated B.S.
  • !Reuters :: Monday, August 1 2005. Popular geek website Slashdot was shutdown by unknown government officials due to a dDOS (distributed denial of service) attack perpetuated by the linking of a story about terrorism. Previous accusations of dDOS attacks on other sites, attributed souly to Slashdot's popularity, will now face closer scrutiny to determine if these too were instances of targetd terroist activity. Slashdot administrator, CmdrTaco, is currently being sought by Interpol for investigation into

  • I think any website that actively exorts its readers to commit sectarian violence against everyone dissimilar to them and provides some sort of way of organizing groups for that purpose is a pretty good target of our security forces.

    Of course now some multicultralists are going to try and say that mainline Christianity and Judaism are just as bad as Islam because of things that happened several hundred years ago and that were sponsored by secular governments. To such people, I challenge them to read this [techcentralstation.com]

  • I hope terrorists don't turn into Eurasia.
    Seriously.

  • "I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism.'"

    You may recall that in 1990, the U.S. secret service raided Steve Jackson Games with an unsigned search warrant, and took the then-unpublished GURPS Cyberpunk, along with some computers and laser printers, claiming that the game was a "manual for computer crime". SJ Games sued the Secret Service and won; but if the event were repeated today, with broader anti-terrorism powers, that part might not happen.

    http://en.wikipedi [wikipedia.org]

  • To echo a previous post, a lot more can be gained by allowing the sites to stay up and watching them than by chasing the people to another location.

    To illustrate, when I was in the Air Force, as an ICBM Launch Officer, I had a partner who was in training to move to the OSI, the AF's "special" cops. One day we were talking about the Russian spies which were living near the base. (No surprise there, that base was the largest nuclear weapons site in the world...) I asked why we didn't scoop those people up. He

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