Al-Qaeda Swarms; Don’t Knock the Value of LCD Technologies
The Man Who Put Al-Qaeda on the Web
Article originally from newsfactor.com about Younis Tsouli, a Brit who is allegedly a prominent forum administrator and webmaster for al-Qaeda-related web sites.
I found it interesting how the US administration defends keeping alive terrorist-related web sites as useful information sources or honeypots instead of wondering if they can shut down foreign web sites on foreign servers.
I also find it interesting how people pu-pu online aggrivators for being “not as technical me.” I hearken back to the days when the Web was built by Geocities and other half-cocked WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) page builders. Or now with MySpace. LCD (lowest common denominator) technologies are adopted by people who need them and will use them to the limits of their functionality and beyond.
Sure, maybe Al-Qaeda should switch to Tor networks for anonymity (or rather “security through obscurity”) or FreeNet or WASTE, but that limits their main goal: information dispersal and recruitment. Anyways the anarchic structure of their online networks and web sites is also the inherent structure of their global organization.
Swarms work, especially when you have a high demand to feed and seed nodes. Trying to stop them is like swatting gnats away from your face. You sweep through, the gnats disperse, and then they instantly reform untouched by your heavy hand.
Internet, Low Technology, News | paul | 
July 31, 2006 12:48 pm
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