ASIS 2011 -- combating cyber extremists
theologically, and technologically.
“We should shut down with extreme prejudice each and every word and syllable of their venom,” Bardin writes. “Our psychological operations must be richer and more focused than theirs. Our understanding of the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and Hadith more in-depth and accurate than the perceived sermons and rantings of Awlaki.”
In addition, Bardin recommends penalizing companies that allow extremist organizations to post their material online like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Critics of this approach, including members of the CIA, counter that online terrorist websites provide valuable intelligence and shutting them down would result in lost opportunities, while the terrorists themselves would simply migrate to another site.
Last year, U.S. military cyber warriors shut down an online forum for terrorists created by Saudi authorities and the CIA as a “honey pot” to covertly monitor extremists, gain information, and learn the identities of attackers.
Saudi intelligence operatives say the website helped round up several extremists before they could strike, but U.S. military officials became concerned after dozens of Saudi jihadists began entering Iraq to carry out attacks. In particular, a former official speaking to the Washington Post anonymously said the military was concerned that the website “was being used to pass operational information” among extremists. The former official added that the threat was deemed so serious, General Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq at the time, personally requested that the site be shut down.
“The CIA didn’t endorse the idea of crippling Web sites,” a U.S. counterterrorism official retorted. The agency “understood that intelligence would be lost, and it was; that relationships with cooperating intelligence services would be damaged, and they were; and that the terrorists would migrate to other sites, and they did.”
Ultimately, the military’s arguments prevailed, but shutting the website down revealed several unintended consequences. By taking down the CIA-Saudi site, the U.S. military inadvertently disrupted more than 300 servers in Saudi Arabia, Germany and Texas, according to a former official.
“In order to take down a Web site that is up in Country X, because the cyber-world knows no boundaries, you may end up taking out a server that is located in Country Y,” the former official explained.
Meanwhile, Saudi authorities became frustrated with the loss of intelligence and a CIA official said, “there was a lot of bowing and scraping,” to mollify Saudi Arabia and Germany.
In addition, terrorists simply moved to another server. Evan F. Kohlmann, a terrorism researcher and a consultant to the Nine/Eleven Finding Answers Foundation, explained, “you can’t really shut down this process for more than 24 or 48 hours,” because extremists have backup copies of forum information stored on servers around the world.
The 57th annual ASIS security conference will be held in Orlando, Florida from 19 September to 22 September. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former Mexican president Vicente Fox will headline the event as keynote speakers. ASIS International is the world’s leading organization for security professionals and this year more than 20,000 people from around the world are expected to attend its conference.
