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Archive for the ‘terrorism’ Category

Plug Pulled on Hamas’ YouTube Ripoff | Danger Room from Wired.com

By Noah Shachtman EmailOctober 15, 2008 | 4:44:00 PM

A few weeks ago, Western intelligence officials discovered that the Palestinian jihadist group Hamas had set up a video-sharing site — to spread propaganda and to train would-be terrorists. Now, that radical Islamic answer to YouTube is offline. And jihadists are blaming the FBI for the takedown.

AqsaTube mimicked the mainstream video site in almost every way. Users could watch clips, and upload their own. Even the two logos were basically the same. “The Hamas site, however, is devoted entirely to propaganda and incitement,” explained Israel’s Intelligence & Terrorism Information Center, or ITIC. Material included demonstrations of how to detonate explosives and fire weapons, speeches from Hamas and al-Qaeda leaderships, episodes from a popular Syrian TV drama and clips of kids in military uniforms — while a musician sings, “death is fame and victory.”

As we’ve noted before, today’s jihadists don’t just use the internet occasionally. “They don’t exist without the web,” says Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla. Everything from recruiting to training to propaganda is handled online.

AqsaTube also included Google ads, and links to al-Aqsa TV, Hamas’ television channel. However, Samir Abu Mahsen, head of production of al-Aqsa TV, tells the BBC that the video site “does not belong to al-Aqsa TV.”

This is the second time in a little more than a month that an extremist video distribution network has been taken offline. The al-Ekhlaas network of sites had long been a primary distributor of videos from al-Sahab, al-Qaida’s propaganda arm. Then, on Sept. 11, al-Ekhlaas.net was suddenly re-registered. All of its content vanished.

As in the case of the al-Ekhlaas takedown, militant forums blamed Western intelligence agencies for the unplugging of AqsaTube. But it appears a little sunlight may have done the trick, instead.

AqsaTube’s internet service provider was the French firm OVH. The company “initially denied hosting AqsaTube, according to the BBC, “but later confirmed that the website had been hosted by them and had now been taken offline.”

YouTube left bomber’s page open despite police concern: “The YouTube page set up by the Plymouth restaurant bomber Nicky Reilly was
still online this week after he had pleaded guilty to attempted murder and
terror offences. The video-sharing website did not respond to police
concerns about Reilly’s Chechen 233 page but removed it last night after The
Times questioned why it was still live.”

(Via Tech and Web from Times Online.)

Plug Pulled on Hamas’ YouTube Ripoff | Danger Room from Wired.com

By Noah Shachtman EmailOctober 15, 2008 | 4:44:00 PMCategories: Info War, T is for Terror

Aqsatube_grab1 A few weeks ago, Western intelligence officials discovered that the Palestinian jihadist group Hamas had set up a video-sharing site — to spread propaganda and to train would-be terrorists. Now, that radical Islamic answer to YouTube is offline. And jihadists are blaming the FBI for the takedown.

AqsaTube mimicked the mainstream video site in almost every way. Users could watch clips, and upload their own. Even the two logos were basically the same. ‘The Hamas site, however, is devoted entirely to propaganda and incitement,’ explained Israel’s Intelligence & Terrorism Information Center, or ITIC. Material included demonstrations of how to detonate explosives and fire weapons, speeches from Hamas and al-Qaeda leaderships, episodes from a popular Syrian TV drama and clips of kids in military uniforms — while a musician sings, ‘death is fame and victory.’

As we’ve noted before, today’s jihadists don’t just use the internet occasionally. ‘They don’t exist without the web,’ says Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla. Everything from recruiting to training to propaganda is handled online.

AqsaTube also included Google ads, and links to al-Aqsa TV, Hamas’ television channel. However, Samir Abu Mahsen, head of production of al-Aqsa TV, tells the BBC that the video site ‘does not belong to al-Aqsa TV.’

This is the second time in a little more than a month that an extremist video distribution network has been taken offline. The al-Ekhlaas network of sites had long been a primary distributor of videos from al-Sahab, al-Qaida’s propaganda arm. Then, on Sept. 11, al-Ekhlaas.net was suddenly re-registered. All of its content vanished.

As in the case of the al-Ekhlaas takedown, militant forums blamed Western intelligence agencies for the unplugging of AqsaTube. But it appears a little sunlight may have done the trick, instead.

AqsaTube’s internet service provider was the French firm OVH. The company ‘initially denied hosting AqsaTube, according to the BBC, ‘but later confirmed that the website had been hosted by them and had now been taken offline.’

Internet phone calls are crippling fight against terrorism - Times Online: “From The Times, October 16, 2008

Sean O’Neill and Richard Ford

The huge growth in internet telephone traffic is jeopardising the capability of police to investigate almost every type of crime, senior sources have told The Times.

As more and more phone calls are routed over the web – using software such as Skype – police are losing the ability to track who has called whom, from where and for how long.

The key difficulty facing police is that, unlike mobile phone companies, which retain call data for billing purposes, internet call companies have no reason to keep the material.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, outlined plans yesterday for a huge expansion of the Government’s capability to access data held by internet services, including social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo, and gaming networks. “

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Government faces fight from within for spy database - Times Online: “From The Sunday Times, October 19, 2008

A Home Office revolt is stalling a plan to store our e-mails and calls but a more sinister one may take its place

David Leppard

Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, faces a revolt from her senior officials over plans to build a central database holding information on every telephone call, e-mail and internet visit made in the UK.

A ‘significant body of Home Office officials dealing with serious and organised crime’ are privately lobbying against the plans, a leaked memo has revealed.

They believe the proposals are ‘impractical, disproportionate, politically unattractive and possibly unlawful from a human rights perspective’, the memo says.

Their stance puts them at loggerheads with the spy-masters at GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, who have been driving through the plans. “

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Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones - Times Online: “From The Sunday Times, October 19, 2008

David Leppard

Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

The move is targeted at monitoring the owners of Britain’s estimated 40m prepaid mobile phones. They can be purchased with cash by customers who do not wish to give their names, addresses or credit card details.
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Britain Considers Database for Telephone and E-Mail Traffic: “The country’s independent reviewer of terrorism laws, Lord Carlile, said the government should not be allowed to set up a vast ‘data warehouse.’

(Via NYT > Technology.)

Hoon: Not building überdatabase would be terrorist licence to kill: “

Fear? Hyperbole? He’s heard of them

Transport secretary Geoff Hoon said last night that if the government is not able to harvest details of all internet communications, society will have granted terrorists a licence to kill.…

“

(Via The Register - Public Sector.)

Another article from the Times….

Dangerous and depraved: paedophiles unite with terrorists online - Times Online

October 17, 2008

Dangerous and depraved: paedophiles unite with terrorists online
Richard Kerbaj, Dominic Kennedy, Richard Owen and Graham Keeley

For some, the internet is merely a hiding place — a web of secret corridors where all manner of shameful deeds unfold. But the police never expected that it might become a strategic platform where two groups of society’s outcasts, terrorists and child sex abusers, could meet to exchange operational secrets.

The realisation that there might be something in common between violent Muslim fanatics known for their supposed piety and sexual deviants who prey on children has only slowly dawned on officers. Cracking the mystery of how these worlds overlap is expected to improve understanding of the mindsets of both types of criminals and has been hailed as a potentially vital intelligence tool to undermine future terrorist plots. ‘A way of finding who the extremists and terrorists are’, an anti-terror source said, ‘is to go through the child-porn sites.’

The link might have remained unknown but for the case of a Muslim preacher from the East End of London who in 2006 was being investigated by police over his suspected links to a jihadi terrorist gunrunner.

To Scotland Yard’s surprise, the 26-year-old Abdul Makim Khalisadar, a former primary school assistant, was discovered to be downloading considerable quantities of child pornography. A DNA test showed he was the wanted ‘Whitechapel Rapist’ who had violently attacked a woman in the street a year earlier. He was jailed for ten years for rape and perverting justice. Khalisadar, who has never been convicted of terrorist offences, and some friends concocted a false alibi that he was preaching at the East London Mosque when the attack happened. He was accused of possessing photographs of child sex abuse but these 11 charges were allowed to lie on file. “

(Via .)

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Sounds all unbelievable to me but interesting article from The Times. Why wouldn’t they hide their messages into normal boring photos considering the fact that websites carrying child pornography would be more likely to be under investigation?

Link between child porn and Muslim terrorists discovered in police raids - Times Online

October 17, 2008
Link between child porn and Muslim terrorists discovered in police raids
Paedophile websites are being used to pass information between terrorists
Richard Kerbaj and Dominic Kennedy

A link between terrorism plots and hardcore child pornography is becoming clear after a string of police raids in Britain and across the Continent, an investigation by The Times has discovered. Images of child abuse have been found during Scotland Yard antiterrorism swoops and in big inquiries in Italy and Spain.

Secret coded messages are being embedded into child pornographic images, and paedophile websites are being exploited as a secure way of passing information between terrorists.

British security services are also aware of the trend and believe that it requires further investigation to improve understanding of terrorists’ methods and mindsets. Concerns within the Metropolitan Police led to a plan to run a pilot research project exploring the nature of the link. One source familiar with the proposal said that this could eventually lead to the training of child welfare experts to identify signs of terrorist involvement as they monitor pornographic sites.

Concerns have already been expressed at Cabinet minister level about the risk of vulnerable Muslim youths being exploited by older men. “

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