Call From Reporter Prompts Removal
For the second time this week, a Web site described as key to al-Qaida communications has been taken down by a hosting company after a call from a reporter.
On Wednesday, the site was removed by a company in Phoenix after a call from the Arizona Republic newspaper. On Monday, a Web hosting company in Tampa removed a related site after a call from The Tampa Tribune.
The site hosted in Phoenix – www.ek-ls.org – was one of six related al-Qaida sites previously hosted in Tampa, said Paul Henry, an Internet security specialist.
The Tampa host company, Noc4Hosts, “is not in cahoots with al-Qaida,” said Steve Eschweiler, the company’s general manager.
The site, Eschweiler said, was one of several hundred thousand the company hosts. Web hosting companies keep banks of computer servers where individual Web sites are based.
“If there is anything anti-American, we will take them down,” he said Wednesday. “We work closely with authorities any time something like this comes up.”
Eschweiler said he took down the site after a call from the Tribune. He would not say whether he has been contacted by investigators about the site.
He did say authorities sometimes request that he keep up certain sites.
Bob Cichon, president of the Phoenix-based Crystal Tech Web Hosting Inc., expressed similar sentiments Friday.
“We are Americans, and we don’t care for information like that,” Cichon told the Tribune. “I have no idea what the content was. Using the help of the press and people who contacted us, we felt it was in the best interest to bring it down.”
Cichon said the site was up for only a few days.
He said he filed a report with the FBI.
