Combatting the Global Jihad Online

Internet Haganah ^ | Nov. 3, 2004 | Aaron Weisburd

[JohnathanRGalt]

Combatting the Global Jihad Online

Internet Haganah,  November 03, 2004 

In the two and a half years I've spent directing this thing we call Internet Haganah, I have tried a broad range of strategies and tactics. One such tactic has been to try to funnel information gathered on the internet through Federal law enforcement rather than posting that information on this website. I have come to the conclusion that this is not effective enough to justify the time, effort, and turmoil involved. Not for me.

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A conflict arises from jihad and Islamist terrorism being treated as a law enforcement issue. Granted the actions of jihadists *are* against the law, but this is missing the point.

There is no law against attempting to rewrite our history books to hide the true nature of our enemy.

There is no law against implanting doubts about the competence or honesty of our leaders in order to divide the nation.

There is no law against attempting to demoralize us.

All these things are acts of war, perpetrated by an enemy in order to deprive us of the will to continue fighting. Law enforcement is essential to maintaining the social order under which our liberties thrive, but it is simply not the right tool for dealing with the enemy in a time of war.

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The global jihad will not be defeated by law enforcement, it will be defeated by intelligence, by covert action, and by open warfare.

In the most general terms, we will defeat the global jihad by undermining the will of the jihadists to continue to fight. I am convinced that if we are persistent, and if we allow them no safe haven either in the real world or cyber space, we can and we will defeat them.

Due to our superior infrastructure and valuing of free speech, the United States has always been and will continue to be the preferred place to situate jihadist websites. From a public policy perspective there *are* things that can be done to combat this problem. Most notably, we can target the flow of money from jihadists outside the USA to service providers within the USA.

OFAC regulations are good as far as they go, but enforcement remains an issue. Implementing some form of citizen enforcement would seem to be recommended. I'll leave it to the legislatively-inclined to figure out the details, but what is needed is some process by which individuals and organizations can plead with the courts to compel service providers and their financial institutions to comply with existing Federal sanctions. The goal would be to allow the Treasury to remain focused on the big sources of terrorist funding, while organizations such as Internet Haganah chip at the communications infrastructure of Islamist terrorism.

That said, it is in the Court of Public Opinion where you will find the most effective means for disrupting the use of the internet by the global jihad. All you need is an email account and the patience to explain to service providers that they have terrorists for clients, and you too can ruin the day of many a jihadist webmaster.

Keep in mind that the purpose of such efforts is not to silence jihadis.

The purpose is to keep them busy, to keep them talking, to make them set up their sites repeatedly, to force them to spend time searching for what happened to their favorite websites - all for the purpose of exposing them and increasing the opportunities for their public and private communications to be intercepted, analyzed and traced back to the source. The effect of such efforts on the jihadists is palpable. We are slowly eating our way inside their brains. They know it, they don't like it and they can't stop it.

I will note here with no small amount of irony, that the biggest defenders of jihad sites in the USA are people within federal law enforcement. Not that this is official government policy, by any means, but it is true all the same. While I agree that there are a few sites that are best left alone for periods of time for monitoring purposes, the value of monitoring jihadist chit chat on any given site left to operate indefinitely at a single location is highly over-rated.

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So more of the information we dredge up will now be posted here, rather than reported through some official channel. Truth be told, there is no deep well of secret information in the hands of Internet Haganah - the deep well of information is the public internet. It's not secret, and it's beyond the ability of any Federal agency to control access to that information.

G-d bless the USA and the First Amendment.

Posted by aaron at November 03, 2004 09:28 AM ___________________________

[JohnathanRGalt]

Jehadi Cyberwar ping.
Let me know if you want on or off

[Asclepius]

Even the greatest of blogs become less great when it provides no RSS feed. I just thought I would share that.

[norraad]

We are the on the ground lookin' around operatives the federals only wish they had.

Just imagine, we don't even know where we all are at any given time.

But there we are (Buckeroo Bonzia ref.).

[Valin]

RSS feed?
Pretend I'm an idiot.

[Valin]

For any others who read this thread I also recomend
SITE INSTITUTE (SITE = Search for international terrorist entities)
http://www.siteinstitute.org/

[WOSG]

Fighting the Global Jihadist enemy - thanks for being on the front lines!
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com

[Asclepius]

RSS feed? Pretend I'm an idiot.

I'll pretend you don't yet know that RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, and that many blogs and blog-sites provide it. With RSS you can use an RSS client--www.bloglines.com, for example, provides a free, web-based RSS service--to monitor all your favorite blogs and other sites, those that provide RSS feeds, and many, many do (e.g. powerline, instapundit, aldaily). You can find a tutorial here: http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/

Go to www.bloglines.com to find out more, and to discover all the many ways that RSS can help you to manage your information needs. If only the internet haganah site supported an RSS feed. I would gladly add it to all my other feeds. I also wish FR supported RSS.

[Valin]

OH OH! I may have learned something new.

Thanks I'll check it out

[Cacique]

btt

[kaehurowing]

Dirka, dirka?

[Velveeta]

Thanks for fighting the fight, bump.

[norraad]

Burka, burka!"

Breaker, breaker, come in burka, burka.......