Bloggers help shut down al Qaeda support sites

Washington Times:

Ordinary Americans are tracking down U.S. Web sites used by al Qaeda and jihadi sympathizers and then using the Internet to persuade the service providers to snuff out the sites.

"I do this because it has to be done," says one blogger who calls himself a "counter-cyberjihadist" for his campaigns to post on the Web the Internet service providers (ISPs) that host the pro-jihad sites.

A perfect storm of complaints forced several ISPs to shut down Web sites just days before al Qaeda released a tape of Osama bin Laden in August, says Aaron Weisburd, director of the Society for Internet Research and host of the Web site Haganah.us. He released a list of 19 pro-jihad Web sites, some of which were shut down in August.

The tactic was so effective that al Qaeda later said it was forced to disseminate the video directly to the networks, Mr. Weisburd said.

Mr. Weisburd's group and other Internet users say they are regular citizens who want to help in the war on terror by acting in cyberspace against Islamist jihadis.

The cybersleuths focus most of their attention on bloggers who use servers in the U.S. to post recruitment propaganda and show violent videos of American servicemembers being killed. Once located, they encourage people to contact the service providers to shut down the Web sites.

However, Mr. Weisburd cautions that only sites that contain a low level of intelligence should be targeted. Otherwise, federal law-enforcement officials may lose actual evidence when a server company shuts a site down.

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The Jawa Report has been very active in this regard. Many of the internet service providers for these sites are in the US and indeed several are in Texas. One of the reasons they may chose to operate here is to get the protection of terrorist rights Democrats who want the NSA to have to jump through hoops in order to monitor the enemy communications that touch this country. It was an enemy communication in Iraq on the kidnapped soldiers that was done through US sites that caused a 10 hour delay in the search for the missing soldiers. If I were an enemy operating in Pakistan or Iraq, I would make every effort to use US sites for communicating in order to make it more difficult for the NSA to trace my contacts.