Evan Kohlmann Quotes

The U.S. government is gradually homing in on the more important chat forums and websites. The problem is, by now, many of these sites have gone underground, in some cases, changing their names and domains, adding logins and passwords, and locking out anyone who doesn't speak Arabic. Government bureaucracies are simply not agile or adept enough to keep up with this constantly evolving challenge.

Today, 90% of terrorist activity on the Internet takes place using social networking tools, be it independent bulletin boards. The most important terrorist communiques and videos are virtually all initially released on certain password-protected chat forums run by Al-Qaida supporters. These forums act as a virtual firewall to help safeguard the identities of those who participate, and they offer subscribers a chance to make direct contact with terrorist representatives, to ask questions, and even to contribute and help out the cyber jihad.

The recent arrest of Younis Tsouli in the United Kingdom was no doubt a significant victory in the war against online terrorism. Tsouli was one of a very select few individuals who have successfully used the Internet as a means to network and share resources with a host of Al-Qaida-linked terrorist organizations.

We are certainly seeing a greater diversification of origin... it used to be that the best trained terrorist cyber facilitators were living in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or Western Europe. These days, we are seeing increasing numbers of such individuals from North Africa and what I like to term "Greater Syria" - Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and Syria itself.

The problem, of course, is that the vacuum left by Younis Tsouli is quickly being filled by a larger, anonymous group of new cyber terrorists who are competing to follow in his legacy. He has become the inspiration for a second generation of "cyber terrorists" who are studying and learning from his mistakes.

These days, the FBIS service regularly includes translations from many terrorist or terrorist-linked websites and chat forums. They provide an unprecedented inside look at how modern terrorist groups function and operate. They also offer a possible chain of evidence that, if properly investigated, can lead back to important transnational terrorist operatives. In other words, don't shut the websites down, but rather use them as a means to shut the terrorist organization down instead.