The AP is reporting that the Pentagon monitors thousands of jihadi websites. I'm seriously stoked to hear this. The Islamist use the internet to their advantage to recruit and disseminate propaganda. It's good to know somebody is watching what the enemy is doing.

Houston Chronicle via Robert Spencer:

A Pentagon research team monitors more than 5,000 jihadist Web sites, focusing daily on the 25 to 100 most hostile and active, defense officials say.

The team includes 25 linguists, who cover multiple dialects of the Arabic language and provide reports on events sparking anger on extremist Web sites, Dan Devlin, a Pentagon public diplomacy specialist, said Thursday. The researchers, for instance, focused in November on the backlash caused by the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

The question I have for the Pentagon is this: Why haven't you shut them down?

Sure, we can gather intelligence from these websites. But what does this intel really produce? An occasional arrest of a jihadi wannabe? It's difficult, at best, to track down terrorists from information gathered on Islamist forums, and impossible to do so if they are posting to those forums from Iraq or Afghanistan.

So, again, does the value of that intelligence outweigh the damage done by the propaganda? I don't think so.

Here is a VOA report about the same Congressional hearing. It's really rather scary, and I believe it bolsters my position that these websites need to be shut down.

What they heard surprised even those who were somewhat familiar with al-Qaida and other groups use of the Internet to spread anti-American and anti-Western propaganda.

Bruce Hoffman is a counter-terrorism expert with the RAND Corporation.

"The internet, once seen as an engine of enormous education and enlightenment, has instead for many of these radical jihadi groups become a purveyor of the coarsest and most base conspiracy theories," said Bruce Hoffman.

Hoffman says nearly 5,000 websites are maintained by terrorist groups. More than a dozen groups producing their own video, and half of these he identifies as Iraqi insurgent groups....

Terrorist groups design their material to intimidate, particularly in the case of Iraq, in addition to spreading hate themes, and attempting to recruit new members. Some web sites openly advertise for internet or information specialists.

The presentation drew this reaction from Democratic Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, and Republican Mike Rogers.

ESHOO: "We're reminded that terrorism is psychological warfare and that is really what is being waged with these."

ROGERS: "They are very sophisticated. Not only are they out recruiting individuals they have finance networks globally, they recruit people globally. They also have a media message targeted at specific groups. That is a very sophisticated global operation."

What, if anything, can be done? Bruce Hoffman says the challenge is to match military and other steps aimed at depriving terrorists of physical sanctuaries, with action in cyberspace:

"The success of U.S. strategy importantly, will depend on our ability to counter al-Qaida and the radical jihadis ideological appeal, what I call countering the five R's: the resonance of their ideological message, their ability to recruit and replenish their ranks, and their capacity for regeneration and renewal we have seen in recent years," he said.

Posted by: Rusty at 08:33 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 628 words, total size 4 kb.