Terrorists' Web Chatter Shows Concern About Internet Privacy
- From: jacklinthicum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 13 Apr 2006 07:02:50 -0700
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/12/AR2006041201968_pf.html
Terrorists' Web Chatter Shows Concern About Internet Privacy
Groups Advise Members on Anonymity, Avoiding Intercepts
By Yuki Noguchi and Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 13, 2006; A14
Terrorist groups, which for years have used the Internet and its
various tools to organize and communicate, are paying more attention to
addressing security and privacy concerns similar to those of other Web
users, counterterrorism experts say.
The Internet has long been a convenient gathering place for radical
Islamists advocating violence against Western influences, known as
jihadists. Through online chat, e-mail and Web postings, communities of
people have relied on one another for advice, political debate, even
movie reviews and biographical information on suicide bombers and
religious leaders.
Recently, postings on jihadist Web sites have expressed increasing
concern about spyware, password protection, and surveillance on chat
rooms and instant-messaging systems.
One forum recently posted a guide for Internet safety and anonymity on
the Internet, advising readers of ways to circumvent hackers or
government officials.
"The Shortened Way of How to be Cautious; To the User of the Jihadi
Forums, In the Name of Allah, the most Gracious and Merciful" was
posted last month by an al-Qaeda-affiliated group calling itself the
Global Islamic Media Front and was translated by the SITE Institute, a
group that tracks international terrorist groups.
The posting advised Internet cafe users to set up a proxy -- a software
program that erases digital footsteps such as Web addresses or other
identifiable information -- before Web surfing. "I advise you to carry
this program in your e-mail and it should be with you anywhere you
are," it said.
"There's a lot of things like that," said Evan Kohlmann, a consultant
on international terrorism. Last month, Kohlmann said, he found a
jihadist Web site posting pirated McAfee anti-spyware software, which
the site encouraged users to download to avoid monitoring. "Technology
is as much a part of their lives as it is part of our lives."
Google Inc. and its growing arsenal of powerful software tools, for
example, are both a boon and a bane for terrorist technologists who are
increasingly wary that the programs might be turned against them to
gather information about their activities. One of the jihadist Web
sites cautioned its readers to "Beware of Google!!!" with specific
warnings about its relatively new product Google Toolbar. The posting
cited another technology blog that said the tool could be configured to
operate like spyware, finding data on computers remotely.
In recent months, Google Video has also become a favorite tool among
jihadist groups for uploading and accessing videos, said Rita Katz,
director and co-founder of the District-based SITE Institute.
Google said its privacy policy says the toolbar records keyword
searches, the computer's Internet address and other identifying
markers. Unless someone is using Google Toolbar's advanced features, it
does not collect information about the Web addresses visited by the
user, the policy says.
Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. declined to comment on their policies.
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the nonprofit research group Rand
Corp., said that such postings indicate that electronic communication
is still popular among terrorists but that they must constantly keep up
with ways to avoid leaving electronic tracks.
"This kind of tradecraft is essential to survival," Hoffman said. They
know the authorities are using wiretaps and monitoring satellite
phones, so they are constantly trying to come up with ways to go around
it, he said. When terrorist groups learned that the National Security
Agency could track electronic communication only when it was in transit
-- not when it was sitting in an inbox -- users started drafting
messages in free e-mail accounts, then allowing others to log in to the
accounts and read the drafts. No message ever had to be sent. "I would
be surprised if this kind of electronic communication is diminished,"
Hoffman said. "They are just going to greater efforts to obfuscate it.
They are hoping that with the volume of e-mail traffic, if they take
the appropriate precautions, they can [communicate] undetected."
Like mainstream Internet users, terrorists have varying levels of
technology knowledge, and plenty of other Web sites offer more prosaic
advice for basic users.
"If an e-mail address ends with .sa, then this e-mail is registered
[in] Saudi Arabia and can never be secure, and Saudi authorities can
reach it at any time," said one recent posting, according to
translations provided by SITE. The guide advocated, instead, use of
anonymous accounts through Microsoft's Hotmail or through Yahoo. "It is
preferable to use long and difficult passwords, and that it should be
changed every now and then," the posting said.
Increased sophistication among users creates a kind of cat-and-mouse
game between terrorists and law enforcement, experts said.
Chatter on jihadist Web sites often provides an important tactical and
cultural window into how these group members think, communicate and
coordinate, Kohlmann said. Shutting each site down would be almost
impossible, and potentially counterproductive to U.S. homeland security
interests, he said. But communications have become so vast, with so
many outlets and in so many forms, it has also become increasingly
difficult for government agencies to monitor it all, he said.
There is no evidence that Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo and
Microsoft have cooperated with federal spy agencies to monitor
terrorist communications. But privacy groups point out that it would be
fairly easy for the federal government to subpoena any of these
companies' records or issue a national security letter to them,
essentially requiring them to turn over the data. In those instances,
the companies would be precluded from disclosing publicly what they
turned over to federal officials.
Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN are quiet about how much user data they save,
and for how long, but Google makes clear that it wants to store more
and more user data on its servers, said Daniel Brandt, founder of a
privacy-advocacy Web site called Google Watch.
"From a jihadist perspective, they are absolutely right. They should
avoid Google like the plague," Brandt said.
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