2RHPZ
06-15-2004, 11:02 AM
Extremists Using Web to Spread Terror
SARAH EL DEEB
The Associated Press
Monday, June 14, 2004; 2:50 AM
MANAMA, Bahrain - Web sites featuring videos of the beheading of Americans or captives pleading for their lives have become part of an electronic war of incitement, humiliation and terrorist outreach, experts say, providing a window into the minds of militant Muslims who hate the West.
The latest dramatic Web posting came Saturday, a short video that showed no faces but included a voice yelling in English: "No, no, please!"
The video showed a shot fired, then the scene of the falling body of what appeared to be a Western man - identified as Robert Jacobs, an American killed by suspected al-Qaida militants in Saudi Arabia last week. Two gunmen then fired at least 10 more shots, before one of them kneeled and motioned as if he was beheading the fallen man.
An earlier video showed the beheading of American Nicholas Berg in Iraq. The CIA has said the black-clad militant shown on the video decapitating Berg was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a former commander for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden now believed to be leading resistance to Iraq's U.S. occupation.
"The aim is really to spread as much terror as possible and make it available to as many people as possible, especially in the West," where Internet use is more common, said Dia'a Rashwan, a Cairo expert on Islamic militants.
In what Rashwan calls a a war of "ideology, images and perception," the Web is a place for militants and their sympathizers to exchange the latest news, debate their definition of Islam, share how-to manuals, extoll their heroes and vilify their enemies.
Images of American soldiers pointing guns at children, Iraqi prisoners being tortured, and Muslims in the Philippines being decapitated pop up again and again. Contributors sign off with pictures of bin Laden or large machine guns.
Militants can put images on the Internet most TV news producers would consider too shocking to televise. The Internet, though, also can be subject to censorship.
Postings signed by the Saudi branch of al-Qaida - everything from claims of responsibility for attacks in the kingdom to training and diet menus for a fit fighter - started popping up on a sub-domain of a Qatar-based Web-hosting company run by Murad Alazzeh.
Alazzeh told The Associated Press he shut down one of his two servers after his site was repeatedly hacked. He said he has cut subscribers from 48,000 to 4,000.
The Web savvy, though, have ways around the gatekeepers.
The Malaysian company that hosted the site on which the Berg beheading video was first posted shut it down days later, but surfers combing Islamic forums could find it elsewhere.
Contributors on forums or chat rooms alert one another to the latest postings. Links are sometimes written in a kind of code, with letters or numerals missing from addresses. The initiated or the patient can figure out what's missing by perusing the rest of the posting.
Experts say Islamic groups were among the first in the Arab world to realize the importance of staying connected. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood uses dozens of Web sites to post literature banned by the government. Lebanon's Hezbollah is known for the sophistication of the propaganda on its Web site.
Until the site was taken over by an American hacker, one site appeared to be the place where al-Qaida reported on developments in fighting in Afghanistan, and, some law enforcement officials believe, posted low-priority information for its to fighters. Some top al-Qaida operatives were trained as cyber specialists.
The mushrooming of the sites and forums is an indication of the growing number of people who sympathize with militants who argue Islam is under attack in by the West, said Rashwan.
Young, educated, unemployed people can spend hours managing or contributing to such sites from their own homes, rather than traveling to Iraq or Afghanistan to do battle. Their targets are people like them in the developing world - educated and disenfranchised - and Westerners.
"They have no other part in holy war. Electronic holy war is their contribution," said Rashwan, whose book "Electronic Jihad" is to be published soon in Arabic and was to be translated into English soon.
Some say the sites may offer well-hidden clues about coming attacks. Other experts say they have little to do with terrorist operations or planning, but prepare the ground for recruiting.
"Over time, the propaganda is part of the conveyer belt to encourage people to figure out where they can join," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Virginia, research center on security issues.
While Net cops have many monitoring tools, those who want to hide their identities and intentions can do so on the Web.
"It is difficult to know when a statement is posted, it is difficult to know if this is someone who has sworn allegiance to (bin Laden). ... It is difficult to understand who is the ultimate sponsor," Pike said.
Nizark
06-15-2004, 03:27 PM
Ya know, there is a legal program that I found on download.com called VisualRoute and it tracks where webpages orginate from, once you put in their address, or email or IP. Its pretty cool, and it shows the world map that traces it to whatever country it comes from. For example, worldofislam.info bounces from your computer once it is entered, to the UK, to Amsterdam and back to the UK. I know this isn't anything new, but for those of us who check out the extremists webpages, its a nice little tool it see where they come from. For example, hizbollah.org orginates out of Dulles, VA.
2RHPZ
06-17-2004, 09:44 AM
It's 4 a.m. in Montana, and a cyberspy is at work
By Mike Carter
Seattle Times staff reporter
LARRY BECKNER
Shannen Rossmiller, a resident of Conrad, Mont., has been using her computer to search for hints of terrorists' next move.
CONRAD, Mont. ? Shannen Rossmiller finds early mornings are best for hunting terrorists. When it's 4 a.m. in this one-stoplight prairie town, it's 3 p.m. in, say, Karachi, Pakistan, the sweltering hours just before the evening call to prayer. That's when Rossmiller, while her husband and three children sleep, finds the Internet chat rooms and bulletin boards frequented by radical Muslims and jihad warriors are busiest.
It is when Rossmiller pursues her deadly serious hobby: citizen cyberspy.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Internet has become sprinkled with self-proclaimed intelligence agents and freelance threat analysts like Rossmiller ? ordinary civilians who comb Web sites and chat rooms for hints of the enemy's next move. The phenomenon, propelled by the Internet's anonymity and worldwide reach, is unique to the war on terrorism.
A few, like Rossmiller, take their pastime further.
Unencumbered by bureaucracy or by laws requiring warrants or prohibiting entrapment, she and a few others freely infiltrate the enemy's lairs and assess what they find there. In some cases, they even disrupt communications or get people arrested.
But spying can be dangerous business, even more so when the government doesn't officially condone or even know about it. Experts say citizen cyberspies can stumble into risky situations or get in the way of law enforcement. But they also acknowledge people like Rossmiller have good intentions ? and, occasionally, good luck.
Spc. Ryan Anderson, National Guardsman: Fort Lewis soldier charged with attempting to aid the enemy. Private citizen Shannen Rossmiller posed as a terrorist on the Internet and lured the 26-year-old soldier into an FBI sting operation. The Army arrested Anderson in February and plans to court-martial him, saying he tried to provide information to the enemy as his unit prepared to deploy to Iraq. Anderson, a Muslim convert, could face the death penalty if convicted.
James Ujaama, former Seattle resident: Thirty-eight-year-old prosecuted for planning to set up a terrorism training camp in Bly, Ore., in 1999. Videotapes provided to the FBI by a self-proclaimed "freelance intelligence agent" in London, Glen Jenvey, played a significant role in the 2002 prosecution. Jenvey infiltrated the Finsbury Park mosque in North London to obtain the tapes, which showed Ujaama sitting alongside radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri and talking about jihad. Ujaama pleaded guilty last year and has agreed to testify against Abu Hamza, who was arrested last month in London and is accused of aiding al-Qaida.
So it was that, on one of Rossmiller's trawls through Web sites with names like bravemuslim.com last fall, she came across a posting by a man calling himself Amir Abdul Rashid. It was clear from the message that Rashid was edging toward the violent fringes of Islam.
Over time, it also became apparent to her that he was an American soldier.
Posing as an Algerian with ties to that country's outlawed Armed Islamic Group, she sent Rashid an e-mail with the subject line "A Call to Jihad." Rashid responded by asking if it was possible that a "brother fighting on the wrong side could defect."
Over a period of four months, Rossmiller drew out Rashid through a series of 27 e-mails. She learned, with growing alarm, that he was a National Guardsman about to be deployed to Iraq. And he appeared willing to share information on American troop vulnerabilities with the enemy. Rossmiller provided the information to the Department of Homeland Security, which passed it to the FBI and the Army.
The arrest in that case of Ryan Anderson, 26, a troubled Muslim convert and a specialist in the Washington state National Guard's 81st Armor Brigade, was splashed across the country's newspapers in February. It was a direct result of Rossmiller's work, and she is expected to be the reluctant star witness at his pending court martial. She testified in a preliminary hearing last month.
An avocation develops
The Sept. 11 attacks create a cyberspy in a small Montana city.
Until that hearing, almost nobody in Conrad (population 2,753) knew of Rossmiller's avocation. Townsfolk learned about it only after a wire story appeared in the Great Falls Tribune.
Rossmiller says she never wanted the publicity ? all she wanted was to help stop terrorists. Now, people stop her at the grocery and wave her down at the local coffee shop to thank or congratulate her.
When asked, however, nobody's quite sure how she got involved or exactly what she did.
"I don't think people really know what to think of this," Rossmiller said.
Even before being outed as a cyberspy, Rossmiller was a high-profile member of this farming community: She's the town judge, a paralegal who was appointed to the post four years ago.
Conrad, surrounded by farmlands that roll, virtually uninterrupted, to Glacier National Park some 60 miles northwest, is home to a large community of Hutterites, a pacifist Christian sect similar to the Amish. The surrounding county also hosts 17 intercontinental strategic missile sites operated out of nearby Malmstrom Air Force Base.
Rossmiller, 34, was born and raised in Conrad, her father a farmer and her mother a special-education teacher. A former high-school cheerleader and honors student, she now draws on her legal-research skills in her quest.
Rossmiller says there is no mystery to how and why she developed her avocation. It traces to Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, 2001.
She was bedridden with a fractured pelvis and felt helpless as the terrorist attacks unfolded.
"I had to do something," Rossmiller said over lattes and lunch at the Lobby, a kitschy restaurant two doors down from the city offices on Main Street.
She started pulling random items out of her purse: her checkbook, a wallet, a key fob, all adorned with the American flag. "This is who I am," she said. "When President Bush asked for a dollar for the Afghan children's fund, I sent $100. I can't help it.
"Besides, my husband wouldn't let me join the National Guard."
Her interest in the attacks led her to the Internet, where, in discussion groups and on bulletin boards, she met others driven to know more about those responsible.
It wasn't long before she and a few others formed a loose-knit group. Alliances evolved over time. The goal, however, was clear from the start: disrupt terrorists. The group called itself 7Seas Global Intelligence Security Team, and its research began extending beyond the day's headlines.
"By the time things hit the mainstream media, a deed was pretty much done," explained Brent Astley, an unemployed physicist and software designer near Toronto, and a member of the 7Seas team. "We decided to take it to the next level."
Effort evolves
7Seas has grown into a sophisticated intelligence group, members say.
Initially, the group gathered information and tried to predict when another terrorist attack might occur. Members posted their findings on a Web site called itshappening.com, a bulletin board of like-minded armchair intelligence neophytes. The first attempts were amateurish, and Astley concedes a critic's point that 7Seas was ****e to crying wolf.
"They are ****e to read an awful lot into very little," said Neil Doyle, a freelance journalist who has written extensively on international terrorism.
"We've evolved," Astley said. "Some of us are quite adept."
A "Global Security and Intelligence Team" whose members are hobbyists and make no money from their avocation.
Formed: shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Members: seven amateur computer sleuths from Montana, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, Singapore, Australia and Canada.
Mission: to gather intelligence and disrupt terrorism.
On the Web: www.7-seas.net
The 7Seas operation has become more sophisticated, Rossmiller and Astley say. Its members now post their work and share thoughts in a private, secure area of the Internet. In the meantime, members have put together a huge database of research and news stories about terrorist groups and individuals.
Occasionally, the group takes its findings public. On May 12, 2002, 7Seas posted a news release stating it had correctly warned of bombings that day in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed an Australian man. The group referenced a rough and garbled translation of an Arabic Web site that 7Seas had posted four days earlier on itshappening.com.
Rossmiller says she and others have developed contacts in intelligence agencies in several countries, and have passed on significant information.
It's hard to measure her claim. The Department of Justice did not respond to requests to discuss 7Seas or the private-intelligence phenomenon. Likewise, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service declined to comment.
But FBI spokesman Bob Wright, a special agent in Salt Lake City ? the field office responsible for FBI activities in Montana ? said the agency would not discourage individuals like Rossmiller.
"We've always relied on our good relationship with citizens as our eyes and ears in the community," Wright said. "This is just a new twist on an old theme. It's sort of like a cyber Neighborhood Watch."
'There is no textbook'
Cyberspies' tactics are painstaking and sometimes bold.
The 7Seas Web site ? www.7-seas.net ? claims the group can provide "round-the-clock" threat analysis and "real time terrorist information, intelligence and strategic analysis to law enforcement and military agencies both within the United States and internationally."
Rossmiller took a few hours one morning to demonstrate. Over the past two years, she explained, she has invented and developed several characters whose identities she assumes when visiting Jihadi chat rooms and bulletin boards. Nobody in 7Seas speaks Arabic, and Rossmiller might spend weeks translating a posting using software and a dictionary.
The details of the personalities she assumes are just as painstakingly assembled. Their street addresses are real. She knows the address of the nearest mosque and the name of its imam. A message pops up on her computer to remind her when it would be prayer time, so she remembers to stop what she's doing.
She has software that "proxies" her computer address to that area, making it appear to all but the most savvy Internet user that she's physically there. It helps that her husband, Randy, is a computer technician.
Rossmiller spends hours researching the philosophical underpinnings of terrorist groups. If she were a Kashmir radical, she points out, her motivations would differ from those of a Saudi Arabian or Afghan.
Her postings can be brazen. Rossmiller says the goal is to flush out terrorists, and being timid or obtuse doesn't get it done.
"I've found that the only way to get information is to be a little bolder than they are," she said. "This is not conventional. There is no textbook for this."
There are seven members of 7Seas: four in the U.S. and one each in Canada, Australia and Singapore. Rossmiller declined to identify the others, aside from Astley. But she says they are corporate and personal security experts, a former detective who speaks seven languages (although not Arabic), a "global media" specialist, a real-estate agent and an architect.
For a brief period in 2002, 7Seas was incorporated and its members hoped to land a government contract. But a falling-out with a founding member delayed those plans, and Rossmiller let the corporation die before it ever made a dime.
She says, however, that its members hope one day to make a profit as security and intelligence consultants ? even though the job has risks.
Conrad police officer Carl Suta said the FBI ordered Rossmiller placed under police protection after a suspicious telephone call to Conrad City Hall on May 18.
Officers believed the call may have come from someone in Canada with whom Rossmiller had been in contact while using the same alias she used to trap Anderson.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, private security and intelligence sites on terrorism have sprouted on the Internet. They range from the useful to the absurd: One site, trackingthethreat.com, contains a remarkable database of known terrorists and groups.
Then there's stevequayle.com, whose founder is a longtime survivalist, talk-radio host and conspiracy theorist. Quayle's "global terror alert" can be found alongside links to his research into our 36-foot-tall ancestors and a conspiracy-fueled treatise on missing Soviet scientists.
Two years ago, a freelance intelligence agent in Britain named Glen Jenvey obtained secret videotapes of an Islamic cleric in London named Abu Hamza al-Masri and a young Seattle acolyte named James Ujaama talking about jihad. Those tapes were later used to prosecute Ujaama, who had helped plan to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Ore. Ujaama pleaded guilty and has agreed to testify against Abu Hamza, who is charged with conspiring to help al-Qaida.
Last month, the operator of a homeless shelter in Albuquerque, N.M., Jeremy Reynalds, infiltrated and then exposed several jihad Web sites unwittingly hosted by American Internet providers. Reynalds, an associate of Jenvey, said he has spent more than two years posing as a terrorist to get inside some of the sites.
"This is a really intriguing phenomenon," said retired Air Force Gen. Todd Stewart, the executive director of the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security, an alliance of colleges and universities conducting research on homeland-security issues.
"What you're seeing is people taking to heart the calls for increased vigilance," he said.
The question is, when does vigilance become vigilantism? Stewart and others say that remains to be seen.
"I think we'll find that this is all part of the debate over how secure is secure enough" in the post-Sept. 11 world, Stewart said. "We have yet to determine the balance between personal security and personal freedom."
Ups and downs
Cyberspies avoid bureaucracy, but they can land in trouble.
Still, there is precedent for citizens to take up spying for the common good, even when it stretches the law, said Steven Emerson, a journalist whose 1992 book "American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us" took on new significance after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"If you uncover some wrongdoing or illegality, then I think this sort of thing is a public service, really," Emerson said.
Consider, he said, the seminal investigative work of white Texas writer John Howard Griffin, who tinted his skin and chronicled the life of a black man in the Deep South in his book "Black Like Me." Griffin's book was published in 1961.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who has written about what he calls "white-hat hackers" ? citizens who use the Internet to spy on or disrupt terrorism ? said the phenomenon is a natural extension of the war on terrorism.
"It's not unlike Newton's Law ? for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction," he said. "Terrorism is decentralized. You would expect the reaction to it to be decentralized, as well."
Individuals are able, in some instances, to leapfrog the efforts of the federal agencies whose job it is to protect the homeland.
"They are not strangled by a bureaucracy" or the requirements of a court of law, he said.
The downside, he said, is that private citizens don't have the legal immunities that police do. An officer acting in good faith, even if he makes a mistake, is difficult to sue. Not so for a private citizen, Reynolds said.
And there could be other, more serious, legal consequences.
"Computers make it possible to play spy from your home, and that can be good," he said. "But remember, you are still being a spy, and that carries risks. People might try to kill you. You might violate the law. You might screw things up."
Wright, the FBI agent, said, "It's probably true that at times we will be working at cross-purposes."
Indeed, one of the points Rossmiller and others who play these spy games concede is that they can't always tell who is who on the Internet.
Astley, the 7Seas member in Canada, said he was once warned away from a target by "U.S. law enforcement." He backed off without asking why.
Elizabeth Bancroft, the executive director of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers in Washington, D.C., said the role of citizen spies ? she calls them "assets" ? has been "a fixture of imaginative minds for decades.
"The Internet has only brought forth more gamesmanship and role-playing ... But hundreds of Walter Mittys and James Bond Juniors exist, and play their hands with vigor, cloaked by the anonymity of the Net.
"One of the many features of a free society is having a bit of fun," she said. "Should they happen to flush out a terrorist or two ? we say bravo."
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