p2pnet news | politics:- Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah, “traditionally sent potential jihadists to train in military camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia,” says The Australian.

But, “due to increased surveillance and intelligence-gathering,” these days, they’re, “swapping some military training to online camps to evade detection and avoid prosecution”.

One of their favourites? Second Life.

The picture on the right is from a story in The Australian which states, “One radical group, called Second Life Liberation Army, has been responsible for some computer-coded atomic bombings of virtual world stores in the past six months.

“On screen these blasts look like an explosion of hazy white balls as buildings explode, landscapes are razed and residents are wounded or killed.”
Now, “terrorism experts are warning that SL attacks have ramifications for the real world,” the story says, continuing:

Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qa’ida, says it is a new phenomena that, until now, has not been openly discussed outside the intelligence community.

But he says security agencies are extremely concerned about what home-grown terrorists are up to in cyberspace. He believes the dismantling and disruption of military training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan after September 11 forced terrorists to turn to the virtual world.

“They are rehearsing their operations in Second Life because they don’t have the opportunity to rehearse in the real world,” Gunaratna says. “And unless governments improve their technical capabilities on a par with the terrorists’ access to globalisation tools like the internet and Second Life, they will not be able to monitor what is happening in the terrorist world.”

If a working party proposal is accepted by European justice and home affairs ministers, ‘Check the Web,’ an online monitoring project being created to combat terrorist use of the Net, will be mounted and co-ordinated by EU police agency Europol.

But second wife isn’t alone in hosting terrorists. In fact, “all Islamist/Jihadi websites are hosted directly or through subservers by Western – primarily American – Internet Service Providers (ISPs),” p2pnet said recently, quoting the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

When we posted this story, a blog, “dedicated to the legacy of the former leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi, which includes Al-Zarqawi messages and videos,” was very much on line.

It’s now been taken down, but a pro-Hizbullah group which posts speeches by Nasrallah, information on Hizbullah operations and links to other Hizbullah sites,” was still in evidence on Microsoft’s portal MSN at 10:50 am Pacific.

“Jehad Has Four Branches – Amr bil maroof ( Inviting towards Good), Nahi Anal Munkar (Forbidding Evil), Speakin Truth on every occassion and Hatred towards Transgressors,” it says.

Stay tuned.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
The Australian – Virtual terrorists, July 31, 2007
use of the Net – EU ‘Check the Web’ monitoring, June 1, 2007
p2pnet – US ISPs host terrorist sites, July 26, 2007

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 11:58 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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