Politicians Overreacted To Terrorist 'Threat' Online

from the moral-panic dept

It seems that with every new communications tool online, we get some politicians absolutely freaked out about how "terrorists" will use it to communicate, and how that must be stopped. In just the past few months, we've seen politicians freak out about terrorists supposedly using Second Life, YouTube and Twitter -- and how each of these need to be stopped. Every time this has come up, it has seemed pretty ludicrous for a variety of reasons. First, these are communication tools. They can be used for good or bad purposes -- but it seems pretty ridiculous to freak out over the fact that some might possibly use them for bad purposes. But, even more importantly, the idea that these tools would help "recruit" new terrorists seemed particularly silly. If someone is going to be convinced to become a terrorist based on a YouTube video, there's a bigger problem.

And, in fact, that's exactly what a new report is finding. The whole "freaking out about terrorists online" thing is totally overblown. The study found little evidence that terrorists were effectively recruiting people online, and even if they were, they found no conceivable way to stop such tools from being used by terrorists at all -- and pointed out how pointless it was to even try. At best, they would get some content taken down from a few websites, which would only serve to draw more attention to the content, which would quickly appear on other websites instead. But, of course, most politicians don't care. They need to create such moral panics so it looks like they're actually doing something to "protect the children" in order to get re-elected.

In the meantime, if they were really concerned about "terrorists" using technology, they might actually want to focus on getting the folks who hate us to use the technology even more. At least that's the feeling I get after reading this article about a Taliban leader and former Guantanamo prisoner, who's now obsessed with his iPhone. I have to admit, most of the article reads like an Onion-style parody ("'It's easy and modern and I love it,' Zaeef said as he pinched and pulled his fingers across the iPhone's touch screen last week. 'This is necessary in the world today. People want to progress.'"), but it does show that perhaps using enabling technology to allow people to better their lives, gets them a lot less focused on looking for ways to kill us.

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You Can't Jam The Terrorist's Phones Without Jamming Everybody Else's

from the all-or-nothing dept

Police officials in New York City are investigating how to jam terrorists' cell phones during attacks, following the Mumbai attacks a few months ago when terrorists coordinated their activities via phone. While disrupting criminals' and terrorists' communications could be a useful tool in security forces' arsenal, it's also worth mentioning that technologies like phone jammers can't really work selectively; that is, they can't pick out particular devices, they simply jam everything in a particular area. While this would crudely accomplish the goal of jamming terrorists' phone calls, it would also preclude any other calls, including those of civilians and authorities. Fortunately, this concept isn't lost on NYC police, who say that not blocking calls, and being able to monitor them instead, could be more useful. But even then, it's not clear how authorities could pinpoint terrorists' phones to monitor their conversations without trolling through all the calls being made in an area. At this point, blocking all cell calls during a terrorist attack or large-scale emergency seems like overkill that could be more harmful than helpful.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Wait, You Mean Homeland Security Isn't Already Scanning Blogs & Forums For Terrorists?

from the uh,-yikes? dept

USA Today is reporting that Homeland Security is looking to start scanning blogs, forums and message boards to try to track terrorists and terrorist activity. My first reaction to this, honestly, was shock. Shouldn't they have been doing this already? As in, for many, many years? To be fair, the article suggests that the real difference here is that in the past Homeland Security has done static searches that they check on every so often -- and now they're hoping for a more real-time solution. Even so, it strikes me as odd that Homeland Security didn't already have something that was at least close to real-time in alerting them to certain things online. For all the talk of sophisticated monitoring on internet activities, could it be that we're really that far behind in internet terrorist monitoring?

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Other Tools Terrrorists Might Use: Voice, Pencils, Fax Machines, Email, Mobile Phones, Etc.

from the everyone-be-afraid! dept

In recent months, we've seen various politicians freak out over the possibility that terrorists might possibly (gasp! oh no!) make use of YouTube and Second Life, and now a new Army intelligence report can get politicians all worked up over the possibility that terrorists might use Twitter. While there's nothing wrong with various intelligence officials looking at possible scenarios for how terrorists might make use of various communication tools, how long will it be until we get politicians complaining that "something must be done!" The fact is that anyone can use pretty much any communication tool for either good or bad purposes. For the most part, I'd imagine that Twitter would be a pretty bad tool for terrorists to use, since so much of it is public. There are Twitter competitors that allow much more private conversations, but maybe terrorists are like Silicon Valley hipsters who only go with the hottest of the hot web 2.0 startups. So, yes, it's important for intelligence officials to think through scenarios in order to be aware and ready for them, but hopefully calling out Twitter specifically won't lead to a ridiculous overreaction from politicians.

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Senator Lieberman Tries Hunting Down Terrorist Videos On YouTube

from the easier-than-finding-real-terrorists dept

Folks in Congress sure are scared of any kind of popular new internet application being used by terrorists -- quite often blaming the technology rather than looking for ways to use it to their advantage. They've targeted file sharing networks, Second Life and the whole internet as being terrorist havens. Now, Senator Joe Lieberman, who heads the Senate Committee on Homeland Security is upset with Google for letting terrorists post videos on YouTube. Last week he sent a note asking them to take all of the videos down. YouTube employees went through the videos and took down the ones that violated the site's terms of service, but left most of them up, as they neither showed violence nor promoted hate speech. Lieberman is not too happy about this and has sent a second letter, asking that the videos be taken down.

This seems particularly silly for a variety of reasons. First off, it's most likely that these types of videos are preaching to the choir. It's hard to see too many folks watching some poorly produced al-Qaeda propaganda videos and suddenly deciding to join up. But, more importantly, by leaving these videos out in the open, it allows lots of folks to respond to them, criticize them and show them up for the awful propaganda they represent. In other words, why be scared of these videos when you can actually respond? Trying to force them offline suggests that we don't think we can win the argument (and even helps to legitimize those who put up the videos). If these videos are promoting ignorant propaganda, the best response is to rebut, refute or even ridicule them -- not bury them. Finally, leaving the videos up gives the government an excellent way to track what the groups are doing, rather than having their actions hidden away on other sites. If they got taken offline by Google/YouTube it would be a matter of minutes before they showed up on other sites where it might even be more difficult for US officials to track them and see what messages terrorists are spreading. Weren't we fighting against terrorists to stand up for principles like free speech and the belief that speech can be a weapon against propaganda?

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RIAA To Prosecutors: Use Piracy Charges To Round Up Drug Dealers And Terrorists

from the it's-a-starter-crime dept

Back in the 1920s, the FBI was never able to get Al Capone on racketeering charges, but eventually got a conviction for tax evasion. It appears that the RIAA's message to federal prosecutors is now: think of music piracy as the new tax evasion! In a leaked "training video," put together by the RIAA for the National District Attorneys Association, RIAA representatives talk about how prosecutors can use music piracy charges to go after drug dealers and terrorists, noting that "it might allow you to have probable cause for a drug house." That's said by the RIAA's Deborah Robinson, who can barely stifle a laugh as she starts to say it. She then goes on to talk about how often they're supposedly seeing drug dealers and gun dealers selling counterfeit CDs with the drugs and guns. Oh really? Weren't we just hearing about how the counterfeit CD business was rapidly shrinking due to file sharing? There's also a great leading question from the NDAA person, asking if convicted murderers who were out on parole are "gravitating to this type of piracy." The response from the RIAA's Frank Walters: "More often than not..." It's no secret that the RIAA is eager to get federal prosecutors to take on piracy cases, but this seems a bit extreme.

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