Extremists Find the Web a Valuable Tool

A recent report sent to Congress indicates extremists groups are finding the keyboard to be almost as valuable as guns when fighting for their cause.

This recent report is to be presented to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday. This report will detail how terrorists groups have found that using the Internet can be less costly, faster, and more than secure than trying to buy weapons on the open market.

A panel of experts was created by George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute and the University of Virginia's Critical Incident Analysis Group to study how extremists have grown to use the Internet as a tool for more than just sending communications, propaganda and research. This panel has discovered the Internet is now becoming a valuable tool that extremists groups use for recruitment and training.

The report created by this group found that terrorists groups now use the Internet for activities such as:

"Dead drops": An e-mail message is saved as a draft rather than being sent. Anyone with access can log in and read the message, but it is less likely to be intercepted by authorities.

"Parasiting": Training manuals can be hidden deep inside seemingly innocent subdirectories on legitimate Web sites.

Research: Terrorists can research potential targets online, using both text and imagery.

Fundraising: Terrorists can launch their appeals for donations anonymously online.

Terrorists groups used to use mosques, community centers and coffee shops as meeting places, but this new report will show how these extremists have found that using Internet chat rooms as meeting places have become a more secure meeting place because these chat rooms have made recruitment efforts harder to detect and disrupt.

This report will also state how the Internet has become a good source for spreading the word about the new struggle of Western civilization against the Islamic world. This report goes on to say that it is not necessarily the goal of the Internet to become another 'killing tool', but the goal is to use the Internet as a secure broadcast and communications tool that extremists groups can use to meet and discuss mission plans before these plans are carried out in the real world.

[quote]For example, Hassan Abujihaad, an American-born Muslim formerly known as Paul R. Hall, was arrested in March and charged with disclosing secret information about the location of Navy vessels to terrorist groups. Prosecutors said he had been in contact with extremists online and had ordered videos promoting violent jihad.[/quote]

Some other findings in this report indicate how the Internet has made it much faster for people to become radical in a shorter period of time. What once took a person maybe years to become a disillusioned radical can now only take a matter of weeks by using the Internet. This report sites the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the 2006 plot to bomb US flights from England as examples of how quickly 'fringe' groups can meet, recruit, and plan terrorist missions throughout the world.

One major factor this report mentions about the use of the Internet by extremists groups is the anonymity factor. With people able to disguise their true identities, the Internet has allowed people to become bolder in expressing their violent opinions. Some of these people may not be as violent as they portray themselves on websites and chat rooms, but the repeated message of violence may sway impressionable minds, especially among youth, to take more serious actions in the real world.

This report points to sites such as "Quest for Bush" in which the player fights Americans and proceeds to different levels like "Jihad Growing Up" and "Americans Hell." Other terrorists sites include music such as rap and hip hop in an attempt to lure younger people to their groups.

It concludes that a stronger counterstrategy is needed, possibly including the use of graphic visuals such as footage of dead children and images of other innocent victims of terrorism. "Distasteful as this may be to invoke, the power of visuals is profound," the report states.

Read more about this report at Yahoo News