Al-Qaeda Web Sites Go Offline

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."

That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly.

[David Gerard]

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.

The trouble begins...

[Deadstick]

...when the drums stop.

rj

Re:Yeah... so what?

[clang_jangle]

More to the point: who says they were ever the real thing in the first place? The government? Puh-leeeeze.

Stupid to shut them down. Censorship = wrong

[zymano]

Everything goes underground then.

From the article...

[ffejie]

"For al-Qaeda, "these sites are the equivalent of pentagon.mil, whitehouse.gov, att.com," said Evan F. Kohlmann, an expert on online al-Qaeda operations..."

Apparently he's not an expert on American communications - who get any information from the three sites he called out?

Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly.

[Sebilrazen]

Shit, now the doublethink has got me.

I read that terrorists, and by terrorists I'm going to go with Radical Islamic Fundamentalists since the /. article is about Al-Qaeda, are using child porn to hide their coded messages. I can't shake that this is both utterly stupid and utterly brilliant at the same time. Bear with me.

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.

Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly.

[David Gerard]

<i>"Then again it could be a cash grab by the agencies that investigate child porn, nothing wrong with more money to fight that evil."</i>

The police are all over that. What this is is a push by the Home Office to take more civil rights away.

Re:Hrm...

[colonslashslash]

Man, the mods collective sense of humor is even lower than usual today...

Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly.

[Kent Recal]

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?

whoever shut these guys down

[circletimessquare]

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

Re:So what are the URLs?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's also worth remembering that the bin Laden family disowned osama years before both 9/11 or bush took office. thanks for the spin on the facts bitch.

mean, hateful, deceitful. it's the mark of party politics. it's the disease of the era of misinformation.

Restored by election time?

[Charles Dodgeson]

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

[thatskinnyguy]

Perhaps Anonymous did something good and remains anonymous instead of taking credit for things like they normally would.

Re:So what are the URLs?

[rossz]

It's also worth noting that the bin Laden family disowned Osama many years ago. I'm not an apologist for the middle east. In fact, I don't see much of a downside in turning it into a big glass parking lot. But let's put all the facts out there when discussing things.

Re:So what are the URLs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a little skeptical of your argument. First, if the Bin Laden video would indeed increase Republican votes then you'd think the McCain campaign (or RNC, or other Republican group) would make some efforts to increase awareness of it 'media' or not (everyone thinks the media is biased towards x or y, even when they are).

Second, you said that Sarah Palin's stupidity is 'apparent.' Even if you don't believe it, if you're dumb enough to parrot 'we can see russia from here' you deserve what you get.

Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly.

[Goaway]

Blithering stupidity is best dealt with by wide exposure.

Turns out that that is not the case [washingtonpost.com].

Re:So what are the URLs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see much of a downside in turning it into a big glass parking lot.

Millions dead?

Re:So what are the URLs?

[nog_lorp]

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.

which is more useful ?

[DJLuc1d]

Marginally disrupting enemy communications ? Or eavesdropping on said communications. If this was the US military, it only means that they have devised another way to eavesdrop. Perhaps they have figured out that they will now use SMS and have devised a way to geographically locate such SMS transmissions. Pure conjecture of course.

Re:So what are the URLs?

[gregbot9000]

You are ignoring the very real fact that news is a money making enterprise. There is absolutely no way for the "media" to run as tight a control as you just described. You see, news is like any product, if the news companies don't follow the popular trends they lose money, heaps of it.

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.

Re:That's cos they use child porn now. Ya rly.

[morgan_greywolf]

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.

Re:I know

[sumdumass]

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.

No Links?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm getting sick and tired of the sites in question not being linked to. It is absolutely ridiculous to take someone's word and assume the sites have been taken off line. I'm not saying that they haven't, however, we have NO way to even attempt to review the status of the sites. I don't even understand the counter argument, site promotion? I'm sorry, but the fact that you're reporting on and classifying sites as "terrorist" sites should not be taken lightly.

How many more of these sites will be censored from us in the future in order to 'protect' the public while we just sit back and take the word of a reporter or the government that we're now safer? I'm not buying it.

Re:Yeah... so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Yes, but no

[bipbop]

Your point is solid, because what's relevant is whether that's been true recently--let's say, the last hundred years. It is, however, factually false. The religious views of all the founding fathers and early presidents are not all known, and they are certainly not all the same, but the common theme is Deism. (There are good articles on the subject but I'm reluctant to link one without checking it; you can easily search for "founding fathers" "deism" and evaluate the claims for yourself, if you wish.)

Washington did not claim to be a Christian

[bipbop]

George Washington did not claim to be of Christian faith. Note that he did not claim otherwise, either, but it was slightly controversial at the time, and certainly not implied by his silence. I'd like to offer the following quotes from this site [infidels.org]. (I have not checked their quotes against the primary sources.)

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 believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing more" (Remsberg, pp. 121-122, emphasis added).

In February 1800, after Washington's death, Thomas Jefferson wrote this statement in his personal journal

Dr. Rush told me (he had it from Asa Green) that when the clergy addressed General Washington, on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to disclose publicly whether he was a Christian or not. However, he observed, the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly, except that, which he passed over without notice....

I know that Gouverneur Morris [principal drafter of the constitution], who claimed to be in his secrets, and believed him self to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more in that system [Christianity] than he did" (quoted in Remsberg, p. 123 from Jefferson's Works, Vol. 4, p. 572, emphasis added).