October 20, 2008
A Healthy Dose of Paranoia
For the online Jihad.
Via WAPO: For al-Qaeda, "these sites are the equivalent of pentagon.mil, whitehouse.gov, att.com," said Evan F. Kohlmann, an expert on online al-Qaeda operations who has advised the FBI and others. With just one authorized al-Qaeda site still in business, "this has left al-Qaeda's propaganda strategy hanging by a very narrow thread."...Of course there is a downside....Johnsen said that on extremist "forums that are still up, you have people who are quite paranoid and quite confused" about what's going on. He said it is "certainly normal for jihadi chat rooms and forums . . . to have some kind of disruption. It was very clear this is something entirely different."
However, "the downside of knocking jihadist Web sites offline is that you lose the ability to monitor jihadist activities,"But then again, herding cats is an art rather than science. My guess is observing the reaction is also quite useful.
By Howie at 11:05 AM |
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