Terrorist online recruitment is in full flower…but remember…the technology that gives You the power to recruit, also gives Us the power to watch…

We often think of our networks as belonging to us, or our group/team/family. We imagine they have an identifiable beginning and end. We want to draw borders to define “yours” and “mine.” Yet, in reality we cannot. We really cannot define where my network stops and yours starts…no matter if you are a person, group, organization, or country. We are all intersected and our connections overlap with those of our network neighbors. Boundaries are fuzzy, at best.

Cyber-Jihad
What jihadis do regularly is use the Internet to send messages to each other. These messages could be instructions on bomb making techniques and whom to target. There could also be propaganda or even poems promoting martyrdom. So, cyber-jihad changed from initially disrupting online communication systems to using the Internet to communicate with one another. The al Qaeda members of 9/11 used the Internet extensively in preparing for that dark day.

Bin Laden or other top leaders of al Qaeda use the Internet to send messages, but with a slight modification. They place their messages on CD’s which are then given to messengers. These messengers travel long distances and upload these messages to specific web sites. To get the messages back to al Qaeda leaders, the operation is reversed. Messengers copy messages from web sites, place them on CD’s, and run them back to the leaders. This is done to prevent spy agencies from locating the leaders.