Experts Say It’s Counterproductive
TAMPA — The latest skirmish in the global battle between jihadists and the private Web warriors dedicated to fighting them played out last month in a jumble of computer equipment stored in Orlando.
The equipment belongs to HostDime.com, a company providing a variety of Webhosting and domain-registration services. Its more than 1,000 servers are home to more than 30,000 Web domains and more than 50,000 hosting accounts, company manager, Mike Kahn said.
Until mid-October, two of those sites belonged to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group the U.S. government designated a terrorist organization in 1995. A few weeks earlier, HostDime hosted a site linking to the Caliphate Voice Channel, purportedly al-Qaida’s Webcast news service. All three sites have been closed.
Terrorism experts say that jihadist groups increasingly are using the Internet for recruiting, fundraising, propaganda and command and control. Groups such as al-Qaida, the Islamic Jihad and others throw up Web sites and disseminate information before they are uncovered and removed. The content posted often espouses violence and hatred, which violates many host companies’ terms of service. Jihad groups walk the razor’s edge between free speech and breaking the law, experts say.
“A lot of people …[differentiate] between Internet terrorism and regular terrorism,” said Evan Kohlman, a terrorism investigator who has testified in federal terror trials. “There is no difference. Anything they do, they do on the Internet, including recruitment, training, financing and propaganda.”
The Islamic Jihad sites contain incitements to violence and suicide bomber videos, Kohlman said.
There are thousands of such sites, said Kohlman, adding that about 20 are considered key sources of information for jihadists.
Accidental Terrorist
Kahn, contacted in mid-October as he was preparing for Yom Kippur, seemed dismayed to learn Islamic Jihad and other jihadist groups were using his company’s services.
“Anyone can register and create a Web site with us,” he said after being told by a reporter that his company was hosting shikaki.net, which is dedicated to the late Palestinian leader Fathi Shikaki and founder of the Islamic Jihad, and rabdullah.net, dedicated to current Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdullah. Islamic Jihad is at the heart of the terror support trial in Tampa of former University of South Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian and three others.
The company, like many Web hosting services, requires customers to adhere to rules forbidding illegal activities.
“Terrorists are illegal,” he said before he checked the sites and determined to suspend them.
With thousands of Web sites spitting out information, companies such as HostDime have a hard time keeping up.
“We screen accounts as best we can,” Kahn said. “If we sell hosting space to someone who is hosting something illegal, we don’t know about it until somebody brings it to our attention.” To establish a site, the company requires a name, contact information and a valid credit card.
Enter a small army of citizens who dedicate their lives to fighting jihadists, spending hours in front of computers, searching for sites, contacting companies such as HostDime. Among them are an unemployed van driver who lives near Stonehenge, a Texas homemaker, a Montana judge and an organization called Internet Haganah, “an open-source intelligence network dedicated to confronting Internet use by Islamist terrorist organizations,” according to its Web site.
For three years, Internet Haganah — Hebrew for “defense” — has been waging war online against the jihadist sites. It helped silence Caliphate Voice Channel and dozens of other outlets. In mid-October, Internet Haganah posted information about the two Islamic Jihad sites in a successful effort to close them.
The Caliphate Voice Channel marked a new twist in jihadist use of the Web, providing an alternative take on current events.
Before the site was shut down, a Webcast showed a man in a mask sitting behind a desk, an automatic rifle resting on a tripod to his right, the Koran to his left. He looked down at the paper in front of him and delivered the latest news about Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East from the jihadist perspective. About halfway into the 19-minute Webcast, an apparently recent image of a man being assassinated by gunfire in Iraq filled the screen. It was taped at an unknown location.
Since HostDime shut down the Webcast, a new, more sophisticated version has appeared, this time hosted in Fremont, Calif. Gone is the rifle, gone is the Koran, gone is the mask. The “anchor” — who sounds like the same man in the earlier Webcast now wears a red-checkered keffiyeh, an Arab head scarf. Production values have improved. Behind the anchor is a map of the world. The newer version adds a virtual video screen that shows highlights from various battlefields, including a man who head is being cut off with a knife. A superimposed graphic flashes on the screen showing the alleged date of the beheading as Sept. 12. (Press accounts state the victim was one of two Iraqis suspected of cooperating with U.S. forces).
The anchor never looks up from the script.
The Islamic Jihad sites are more traditional Web sites, with pictures of Shikaki and Abdullah and pages of Arabic.
Prosecutor’s Perspective
Prosecutors and investigators — who are extremely reluctant to talk on the record — say jihadists walk a fine line between free speech and criminality when they set up Web sites. “There are many factors you have to consider,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert O’Neill said.
Speaking in general terms, O’Neill said that investigative agencies must consider whether the person who controls the Web site has any “legitimate connections to what is considered a jihadist group. You have to look at the Web master’s background, what that person is espousing. Clearly the First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to cry fire in a crowded theater.”
O’Neill points to the ongoing prosecution of Babar Ahmad, a 31-year-old British computer expert, as a prime example of a Web master being investigated for breaking the law.
In a four-count indictment handed up last year by a federal grand jury in Connecticut, Ahmad, who publicly has denied any wrongdoing, was charged with, among other crimes, running Web sites that provided material support to the Taliban and the Chechen mujahideen. The government alleges that through the creation and use of Web sites and other means, Ahmad provided jihadist groups “expert advice and assistance, communications equipment, military items, lodging, training, false documentation, transportation, funding, personnel and other support.” Babar, a British citizen, has appealed an extradition ruling and awaits a decision by a British judge.
Also last year, a University of Idaho student named Sami Omar Al-Hussayen was acquitted of supporting terrorists via his Web postings.
Though prosecutors and investigators are refusing to talk about the Caliphate Voice Channel and Islamic Jihad sites, there are those who urge caution in bringing Web masters to trial.
“The Internet itself can be used as a powerful tool to promote tolerance and to combat hate,” said Christopher Wolf, chairman of the Anti-Defamation League’s Internet Task Force, in a speech last year titled “Regulating Hate Speech Is Not the Solution to Hate on the Internet.”
“As a powerful technological tool that permits instantaneous communication between disparate populations across the globe, the Internet can promote cultural tolerance in a larger sense. It can help educate people, promote positive messages, spread truthful information and facilitate the exchange of ideas. … The ADL believes that in the online world, as in the print world, the best antidote to hate speech is more speech.”
Fighting Back
Aaron Weisburd, founder of Internet Haganah, said he became a Web warrior in 2002 after reading about a Hamas Web site with pictures of kindergarten students acting out scenes of violence.
“I read the article one morning, got mad, wrote an email to the guy who ran the datacenter where their Web site was hosted and asked him if he was okay with that sort of thing,” said Weisburd, via e-mail. “He was not OK with that sort of thing, and he shut down the Hamas site.”
After that, Weisburd started searching for more sites. “Once you start looking into the Web sites of Hamas, you run right into al-Qaida, and you quickly realize that the people running these sites are involved in other activities in support of terrorism.”
One his Web site haganah.org.il, Weisburd marks sites he helps take down with the icon of a tiny blue AK-47 with its barrel pointed downward.
On Oct. 13, Weisburd posted information about shikaki.net and rabdullah.net, Islamic Jihad Web sites he traced to Beirut, Lebanon, and were hosted at HostDime in Orlando. The same day, one day after being contacted for this article, HostDime suspended those sites.
“In our current investigation the sites show hatred towards Jews and other religious groups but no direct ploys on attacks or terrorism,” wrote HostDime’s Kahn in an Oct. 13 e-mail. “We understand that shakaki.net is a site about an ex Jihad leader. Both sites you have provided have been suspended by our abuse and security team as of sometime last night. We are not tolerant to this type of content being hosted on our network. Our abuse and security team is more than happy to work with independent groups and sources to target/investigate and remove these sites from our network.”
Weisburd said he has no reason to believe HostDime knew about the Caliphate Voice Channel or Islamic Jihad sites before being told about their content.
Terror investigator Kohlman, however, said hosting companies sometimes would rather not know because that means they have to deal with government investigations.
Weisburd vows to continue his battle to get companies such as HostDime to shut down jihadist sites.
“We’ll meet again,” he said.
Kohlman said that although he respects Weisburd’s work, that the goal is noble, it ultimately is unhelpful.
“From a law enforcement perspective, it is better to keep those sites online,” Kohlman said. “If you really want to shut them down, don’t go after some pimply faced Web master, who is a low-level member. Do what you do in a mafia case. Pull in the small guy to reel in bigger fish.”
