In the snow-draped mountains near Jalalabad in November 2001, as the Taliban collapsed and al Qaeda lost its Afghan sanctuary, Osama bin Laden biographer Hamid Mir watched “every second al Qaeda member carrying a laptop computer along with a Kalashnikov” as they prepared to scatter into hiding and exile. On the screens were photographs of Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta.
Nearly four years later, al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighborhood Internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on the Internet.
Such cases have led Western intelligence agencies and outside terrorism specialists to conclude that the “global jihad movement,” sometimes led by al Qaeda fugitives but increasingly made up of diverse “groups and ad hoc cells,” has become a “Web-directed” phenomenon, as a presentation for U.S. government terrorism analysts by longtime State Department expert Dennis Pluchinsky put it. Hampered by the nature of the Internet itself, the government has proven ineffective at blocking or even hindering significantly this vast online presence.
A “Web-directed” phenomenon
Posted by Pam
on 8/7/2005
It’s all Gore’s fault…. if he hadn’t invented that stoopid internet thingie….. Perhaps we can nuke it?
ROFLMAO – exactly. Never trust a Democrat. What ‘was’ he thinking, anyway?
Actually ARPA net was founded by some very well intentioned scientists as a way to share info from one College Campus, or Think Tank, to another in the late Sixties and on into the early Seventies.
With the creation of Windows by Bill Gates, at IBM’s request I might add, suddenly User-101 access to this Network was made simple.. and wallah, here we are today.. gawd… thanking Al Gore, of all people, for what again…?
Step back, wasn’t Al Gore worrying about his Maid Service in that Hotel he was living in – a opposed to actually being one of us and trying to make House payments? Ya, I thought that’s what he was doing; while colluding with the Tobacco Companies in order to get campaign money.. but I digress…
I’d rather thank CISCO for the speedy networks we have these days – which very shortly could all end up being wireless everywhere… woohooo!
(Married w/Children) – “Way to go, AL!”
god you really are boring….