British Intel Shuts Down al-Qaeda Sites 824
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.'"
Who and How? (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Who and How? (Score:5, Informative)
Ever heard of 'conspiracy?'
Without a law like this, only the 'trigger man' would ever be held liable for a crime, and other people could shield themselves.
No, the web-site didn't kill anyone, but they used it for planning and organizing.
Here are some definitions for 'conspiracy.'
Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Insightful)
The UK does *not* have jurisdiction to enforce UK law abroad. I have a picture of my girlfriend and I holding hands on my website. This is illegal according to Saudi Arabian law; do the Saudi authorities have the right to take down my website?
Of course not.
Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully you will see this as a key to the problem: Terrorists train in Pakistan, doing perfectly legal things like firing AK-47s and learning how to communicate secretly, then do a perfectly legal thing like fly to London, then do a perfectly legal thing like associate freely with one another. Then they all get on the Underground on July 7 and blow themselves up, murdering dozens of people, the majority of whom believed the war in Iraq was wr
Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Insightful)
A group that is organizing with the intent to kill people. Ever heard of 'conspiracy?' ...
Here are some definitions for 'conspiracy.' ...
Hey, be careful with that list of definitions. I'm not saying I'm backing al-Qaeda or terrorism, but shutting down web sites under your definition of "conspiracy" leads to misuse. It just so happens that on US soil around 1776, some people met your definition. Except we called it a "Revolution" and/or "Independence":
It cuts both ways, man. The danger with giving up a little freedom (speech) to have a little security is that you quickly have neither.
Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Informative)
There is no constitutional provision, no charter of rights or anyhting of the sort in england that protects the freedom of speech in any way. In the US and many other places there are. This is not to say that speech cannot be limited in these areas either. Already you are not allowed to make speech that will cause harm or violence. As it stands now if you yell fire in a crowded theater your (hit)gone. If you make a speech calling for the heads of some other people and someoen actualy injures them because of that, you are (hit)gone.
Does this mean that terrorist have already won? I don't think so. Or at least not to the degree you imply. Yes your percieved freedom has been limited because of their actions. No this freedom didn't exist in the first place, it just wasn't gone after. I would say that if there is realy somethign bad about this, it would be it took inocent people getting killed and several other fearing for thier lives before someoen had the balls to do what should have been done in the first place. It is one thign to call for the fall of a country, company, governmetn, or some form of coruption ect.. It is another thing to do so in a many that takes the lives of incoent civilians.
If all they went after were the police and military or governmmental personel, i could agree with you more. These terrorist are nothign more then a hate group like the american KKK who are attempting to get the attention of the governments they have a problem with by killing someone that has no say in the policies thier objecting to in the first place. Countries like spain gave them the impression that these tactics work. It is a pointless exercise to kill incocent civilians who are doing nothign more then trying to make a living. They have no say in the matter.
Freedom of speach wasn't designed to protect polular opinion but it wasn't design to protect people trying to comit murder by inciting violence with thier speech either. The concept of free speech exists but in england there is nothign to guarentee it as well as there shouldn't be anyhtign anywere protecting speech designed to murder someone.
Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Informative)
Britain is a signatory to the European convention on human rights which makes the freedom of speech and freedom of expression an essential part of British law.
Re:Who and How? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the police thought I arranged for someone to be killed regardless of whether it seemed good morally they would probably arrest and question me, if however you do the same on a grand scale and are the leader of the labour party they wont even bat an eyelid.
Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who and How? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't tell you who originally said this, but I agree whole heartedly, and I believe it answers your question quite well: "The most dangerous weapon in the world is a set of trained eyes and a radio."
Communication is a military neccessity--removing your enemy's ability to talk amongst themselves makes your job easier, and theirs alot harder.
Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe this has already been done, and its intelligence gathering value is now outweighed by its usefulness to the bad guys. Or maybe the nature of the resource makes tracking the people who are talking problematic at best.
Unless, of course, you don't actually HAVE any information to back up your claims. So yeah, let's all have a big hurrah for this PR bullshit
I'm guessing you didn't RTFA. The British government isn't making some nebulous claims about terrorism--a newspaper is making the claim that:
- there were various websites affiliated with al-Qaeda,
- lots of them have gone dark, and
- all the information on the matter they've come up with points at the british government as the reason for item 2.
It never ceases to amaze me the conclusions people jump to, despite having no evidence of their conspiracy theories, and having access to information contrary to the idiocy they're spouting. For a good example, see all the "goddamn republicans!" posts in the "porn taxing" story further down the page. The tax in question is being pushed by a democrat, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone.Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, this is quite possible.
You're ranting about conspiriacy theorists, and here you are, making shit up. I highly doubt you have a single shred of evidence to back any of that up.
You might not understand this, but in general when someone says "maybe this thing, or maybe this other thing" they are engaged in a process known as "speculation."
My whole point is this doesn't look like a real victory at all. It's probably bad because we're loosing sources of
Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Interesting)
Quite honestly, no, I don't. While I am opposed, in general, to the general sillieness that has resulted from "The War on Terra" (i.e. PATRIOT act, billions spent on absurd airport security measures, the Iraq war, etc) I do accept that the fight against al-Qaeda is a war, albiet one with rather nebulously defined fronts, and very limited objectives
Re:Who and How? (Score:5, Interesting)
The post you responded to noted that I'm against the vast majority of what has been done in the wake of 9/11. Anyone in the US swept up as part of an anti-terror operation should most certainly have their right to a fair and speedy trial respected (or to a cout martial, depending on their status and alledged crimes.)
Christ, look at how many mistakes, lies, and abuses have been sent our way in the WoT, and you still happily take their word for it when they say, "It was a bad website run by bad men. Move along, nothing to see here."
Hold on there, sparky--I take anything said by the US (or in this case, british) government with a large grain of salt. However, "they" sure as hell aren't the ones I'm believing here. I'm taking the press report at face value, yes, until information to the contrary appears. Let's look at this rationally:
Look, I consider myself to be a rabid supporter of civil liberties, but there's a point when you need to accept that something isn't a civil liberties issue, even though it technically meets the definition of "free speech." To use an analogy, it would be like suggesting that a communications tower set up during ww2 for the purpose of vectoring bombers counted as part of a "free press" or that armed foreign soldiers on US soil had a 2nd amendment right to bear those arms. The idea of either of the above being protected rights is absurd on its face--and as I noted elsewhere in this thread, if a mistake has in fact been made, the site owner can step forward and press his/her free speech/press case to the appropriate court--and I, for one, would strongly support their right to do just that.
Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Informative)
One global jihad site terminated recently was an inflammatory Pakistani site, www.mojihedun.com, in which a section entitled How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down. However, Islamic sites believed to be "moderate", remain.
Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's that whole "non-combatant" thing that screws up the curve and makes simplistic answers like the one you gave untrue. Patriots tend to know who non-combatants are. Terrorists don't know the meaning of the term.
Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Insightful)
What difference does it make if you kill them anyway. I mean is it really that important that you feel sorry after you killed innocent civillians?
We bombed the shit our of fallujia twice knowing full well that there were going to be non combatants killed. The second time (according to the bbc) we destroyed 75% of the city. But I guess we are so morally superior to the terrorists because we know we killed non combat
Re:Who and How? (Score:2)
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)
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:
Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Insightful)
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, Informative)
Pipes is a Zionist asshole who wants Israel to rule the entire Middle East and probably either exterminate or enslave the remaining Arabs.
Try reading Juan Cole's blog [juancole.com] if you want useful commentary on the Middle East and Pipes.
Re:Who and How? (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
Re:Who and How? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who and How? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who and How? (Score:2)
However, this being the Government the actual work is done by some sub-sub administrators. The task of destroying the computers is delegated to the authority in charge, lets call them the Office of Computer Disengagement.
They have some strict rules down there with regard to saving costs and taking good care of taxpayers money, so they delete the hd and sell the machines on auctions, ie. ebay.
Since they have some strict regulations re: decreasing their work force, too, they actual outsource the hd-dele
Re:"judge's order...allowing the takedown"?!?!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
No. In the US, due process applies to anyone who is in the US. The Vth Amendment applies to all persons, not just citizens:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Same for the XIVth Amendment which was added in the aftermath of the Civil War:
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Strange (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Strange (Score:2)
Re:Strange (Score:2, Interesting)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Is it now illegal to look at such websites?
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2005/July/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.
Shutting them down will have an effect (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
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)
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)
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
Re:Brilliant (Score:2)
Your armchair rant is cute but pointless.
Think it through... (Score:2)
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)
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)
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:Your argument is Bull Shit. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Brilliant (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re:Brilliant (Score:5, Interesting)
Very true. As this ABC Nightline [go.com] story interviewing the mastermind behind last year's Beslan school massacre, even the most shameful butchers of 300 innocent children can spout their hatred and bile in our western media.
What amazes me is that ABC can track this SOB down for an interview, but Russian intelligence can't.
Re:Brilliant (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Brilliant (Score:3, Insightful)
The us versus them shit is going to end up killing us all. I've had enough of it.
Hey! (Score:2, Funny)
Quit using it. Or Intel will get angry.
Re:Hey! (Score:2)
Ron
Wouldn't it be easier... (Score:5, Funny)
Very cool, but... (Score:5, Funny)
1. Why is a PC chip manufacturer shutting down al-Quaeda Sites?
2. Do the british chips run linux?
Re:Very cool, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Very cool, but... (Score:3, Funny)
finally Intel doing something innovative (Score:5, Funny)
Enemy Communications (Score:2)
Re:Enemy Communications (Score:2)
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
Re:Enemy Communications (Score:2)
You didn't make your point very well. Could you please make it again? And type slowly, for dummies among us
Re:Enemy Communications (Score:2)
Valid discourse == Al Jazeera
By being members of Al Quaida they have already decided to kill and maim innocents to sew terror.
Both sites may be distastful to many westerners but we see the latter as valid and allow it to be broadcast via satellite. If Al Jazeera's reporters were busy showing terrorists how to conduct terrorist operations and incite them to do so, they would be shut down.
As a side note, I lived in the mideast for three years, the first two in a Shiite village
Re:Enemy Communications (Score:2)
Imagine for a moment a mirror universe where the middle easterners had far more control over the internet and had the power to shut down western websites tha
Re:Enemy Communications (Score:3, Informative)
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
Try solve a social problem with technical means... (Score:2)
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.
Oh brother... (Score:2)
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!
Re:Oh brother... (Score:2)
Re:Oh brother... (Score:4, Informative)
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right? Because our government never labels anyone a terrorist unless they actually are terrorists. (Of course, Richard Jewell [wikipedia.org], Steven Hatfill [wikipedia.org], and Hossam Shaltout [news24.com] might disagree with you)
Conspiracy theorists are idiots - our government commits its evil acts in plain view.
You're right about conspiracy theorists being idiots, but if you are suggesting that the US government never engages in illegal or immoral covert actions, you are wrong. Yes, the government does commit some evil acts in plain view, but that doesn't mean it doesn't also do evil things in secret. You may recall the Iran/Contra scandal, the Bay of Pigs scandal, the toppling of democratic governments in Iran and Chile -- and those are just the ones that got screwed up and became public. Presumably there are others that were successfully kept secret (or at least "plausibly deniable").
Oh no, they will shutdown me! (Score:2)
Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me! (Score:3, Insightful)
These were not regular police officers in uniform, and they were understandably worried and probably as a result weren't as clear about who they were.
I wouldn't be surprised if in his panic he thought *THEY* were terrorists.
The irony is, apparently he wore the clothing to cover his equipment because he was afraid people would be suspici
Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me! (Score:3, Insightful)
If they thought he had a bomb, why did they let him board the bus when they were following him?
The root causes of terrorism (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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)
Why I'm against Palestine statehood (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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 your reply (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you could make a case the King David Hotel was a military target but Deir Yassin most decidedly wasn't. I note you didn't mention it in your little rant, because you hav
MSN (Score:2)
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.
From making chips to fighting terrorism (Score:2)
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)
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.
Slashdot linked to terroism. (Score:2)
Oh, I don't know (Score:2)
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]
Orwell (Score:2)
Seriously.
SJ Games (Score:2)
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]
The odds are the government didn't shut them down. (Score:2)
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
Re:Why is this under IT and not YRO (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason is because political issues are becoming more important every day, and payola sites like Slashdot are trying to stay on the fence and keep everyone happy for as long as possible.
Once a website gets branded as partisan, it immediately alienates a large percentage of its readership. So hot-button issues like Iraq, Terrorism, and Civil Rights are marginalized from discussion beca
Re:when in doubt, don't do anything! (Score:2)
Oh god, I've turned into one of those people that compla
Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms... (Score:2)
i don't know where you live, but chances are you live in a country which has no moral authority to tell others what is right and wrong.
america = native americans, slavery, civil rights, kkk, etc
britain = whole lot of imperialist killing
germany = holocaust
france = panama and suez canal, algeria, vietnam, other small shit
ad nauseum
basically unless you are a canadian citizen, chances are your government/country/culture/etc has done something similar to what the terrorists are doing now. I'm not def
Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong is wrong, even if a less-than-moral person is the one pointing out that it's wrong.
Clearly evil (Score:3, Funny)
You can tell they're evil - all their media requires RealPlayer.