[usatoday.com] The Homeland Security Department
may soon start scouring the Internet to find blogs and message boards
that terrorists use to plan attacks in the USA.
The effort comes as researchers are seeing
terrorists increasingly use the Internet to plan bombings, recruit
members and spread propaganda. "Blogging and message boards have played
a substantial role in allowing communication among those who would do
the United States harm," the department said in a recent notice.
Homeland Security officials are looking for
companies to search the Internet for postings "in near to real-time
which precede" an attack, particularly a bombing. Bombings are "of
great concern" because terrorists can easily get materials and make an
improvised-explosive device (IED), the department said. "There is a lot of IED information generated by
terrorists everywhere — websites, forums, people telling you where to
buy fertilizer and how to plant IEDs," said Hsinchun Chen, director of
the University of Arizona’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. Chen’s "Dark
Web" research project has found 500,000,000 terrorist pages and
postings, including tens of thousands that discuss IEDs.
Chen and others aren’t sure how helpful blogs and message boards will be in uncovering planned attacks.
"I just can’t envision a scenario where somebody
posts to a message board, ‚I’m getting ready to launch an IED at this
location,‘ and the government will find that," said terrorism analyst
Matt Devost. A lot of postings about attacks are "fantasy, almost
role-playing," Devost said.
Internet searches are used routinely by
government agencies, such as the Defense Department, in gathering
intelligence, said Chip Ellis of the Memorial Institute for the
Prevention of Terrorism.
The searches use methods similar to a Google query and can be helpful in uncovering the latest IED technology, Ellis said.
Steven Aftergood, an intelligence expert at the
Federation of American Scientists, praised Homeland Security for
"trying to develop innovative approaches" and said its effort would not
jeopardize privacy because the department would be scanning public
websites.
The department, which declined comment, has made
no decision about using Internet searches and is reviewing statements
that companies submitted last month describing their ability to do the
searches.
By Thomas Frank, USA TODAY
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-12-23-terrorblogs_N.htm
