Gawker: valleywag, homeland insecurity

Twitter is now with the terrorists

Paul Boutin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:00:00 EDT

A draft Army intelligence report obtained by Wired defense blogger Noah Shachtman says what you've probably guessed already: Islamic extremists are as smart as we are. So of course they've thought up ways to use Web 2.0 to destroy America, before Eric Schmidt gets to be our national CTO. Here's Noah's writedown:

The report is roughly divided into two halves. The first is based mostly on chatter from Al-Qaeda-affiliated online forums. One Islamic extremist site discusses, for example, the benefits of "using a mobile phone camera to monitor the enemy and its mechanisms." Another focuses on the benefits of the Nokia 6210 Navigator, and how its GPS utilities could be used for "marksmanship, border crossings, and in concealment of supplies." Such software could allow jihadists to pick their way across multiple routes, identifying terrain features as they go. A third extremist forum recommends the installation of voice-modification software to conceal one's identity when making calls. Excerpts from a fourth site show cell phone wallpapers that wannabe jihadists can use to express their affinity for radicalism

Yahoo India engineer arrested for "terror emails"

Paul Boutin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:20:00 EDT

Mumbai police claim that Yahoo software engineer Mohammed Mansoor Asgar Peerbhoy, known to friends as "Mannu," used his English skills to finalize and send emails immediately before and after bomb blasts in three Indian cities that killed six people last week. The 31-year old Peerbhoy, who lives in the western Indian city of Pune, was one of eleven suspects arrested Monday. Peerbhoy was no call center flunkie — news reports in India make a point of quoting his salary and noting that he had traveled to the U.S. several times. One more twist: Police credit Muslim tipsters for the information that led to the arrests.

YouTube leaves terrorist-training video market to LiveLeak

Paul Boutin — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:40:00 EDT

To spell it out: Senator Joe Lieberman and Google timed a press release to the anniversary of the September 11 attacks: "Google Tightens Standards for YouTube Videos in Response to Lieberman's Pressure."

The move seems more politics than pragmatics. Most Al Qaeda videos are posted outside YouTube. LiveLeak has plenty. Lieberman's been after YouTube since May, but the Google-owned site didn't update its community guidelines until the day before 9/11's seventh anniversary, at a time when Al Qaeda's momentum is fading.

Look, I'm as jingoistic as the next guy. But if Lieberman wants to fight Islamic militants on YouTube, what he needs isn't a ban, but a countercampaign: More clips that show insurgents missing the target and running from U.S. troops. I'll bet there's a lot more such footage out there.