How terror can breed through social media

How terror can breed through social media

By Dan Rivers, CNN

April 27, 2013 -- Updated 1500 GMT (2300 HKT)

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/27/world/rivers-social-media-terror/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

 

 

Terrorists use Twitter as a tool

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

 

    Social media forums can provide sources for would-be terrorists

    British security services monitor social media sites to track groups and

individuals

    Some experts think terrorists have "self radicalized" through social

media

    Others believe that ultimately there is almost always a terrorist

"mentor"

 

London (CNN) -- The days of would-be terrorists needing to travel to far-off

camps to make contacts and learn how to build bombs is rapidly receding.

Social media forums like Twitter and Facebook provide a ready made Rolodex

of sources -- dig further online, mine those contacts further, gain

admission to private chat forums and eventually you will find instructions

for bomb making.

 

Last month al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM) launched a Twitter account

that has already gained more than 5,500 followers, and AQIM's account is

following seven people including the Somali terrorist group Al Shabaab's

official twitter handle and the al Nusra front in Syria, which in turn is

following another rebel group in Aleppo.

 

You can see how rapidly the connections start to multiply and how easy it is

for a budding terrorist to build up global contacts. Of course, it is

impossible to prove any of these accounts are authentic, but many of their

followers think they are, which is worrying in itself.

 

The British security service MI5 and its sister spy organizations GCHQ and

MI6 all monitor social media, noting who is following whom on sites like

Twitter, and providing vital information about alliances being forged

between different groups and individuals.

 

But Professor Peter Neumann from King's College London points out that it's

not without its challenges.

Suspect's possible Instagram posts found

 

"This is the big problem because Web 2.0, the social media generates so much

'stuff' and there are so many people involved in chatting with radicals on

the internet and to monitor that would require really huge resources and no

intelligence service has completely figured out how to separate the

'chatter' from the 'real,' significant stuff," he said.

 

"You don't know, for example, if someone who chats online a lot is very

dangerous or whether it's the opposite -- someone who doesn't chat at all

and is just listening is actually more dangerous because that person maybe

more likely to be operational. There's a lot of the online environment that

we don't know yet."

 

Jean Paul Rouiller from the Geneva Centre for the Training and Analysis of

Terrorism says social media is vital to modern terrorist organizations.

 

"They would not have been able survive, they would not be able to recruit

people. The human touch always needed, but social media is their shop-

window," he said.

 

Behind the shop-window of Twitter and Facebook accounts are more limited

private chat-rooms where terrorist leaders from around the world exchange

information and tactics.

 

Rouiller claims that documents recovered during the killing of Osama bin

Laden in Abbottabad suggest that bin Laden himself may have posted messages

on this forum. The dead al Qaeda chief was very careful to stay away from

electronic devices himself, but it is thought he wrote down messages on

pieces of paper which a trusted lieutenant would then type and save on to a

USB stick, finally passing this to someone else to post on the forum.

 

READ MORE: Who really killed bin Laden?

 

Some experts think there are examples of terrorists who have immersed

themselves in this online world of extremism and have "self radicalized"

without ever having met another terrorist in real life.

 

Major Nidal Hasan, who allegedly shot dead 13 people and injured 30 others

at Fort Hood in 2009, is an example cited by analysts like Neumann, as a

"self-radicalizing" terrorist . Authorities say he was in email contact with

the Yemen-based preacher Anwar al-Awlaki in the months prior to the

shootings, but because of the lack of a wider "plot" or conspirators, the

Department of Defense has categorized the killings not as terrorism, but as

workplace violence.

 

READ MORE: Dead cleric inspiring new terrorists

 

Others though, like Rouiller, say that while online material can put an

individual onto the wrong track, ultimately there is almost always a

terrorist "mentor" who plays a key role in pushing someone towards violence

and that mentoring almost always takes place face-to-face, in somewhere like

a mosque, high school or university.

 

The big question in light of the Boston bombings is whether the Tsarnaev

brothers, suspected of setting the bombs, were also "home-grown",

radicalizing solely online, or whether there was in fact a terrorist

"mentor" that capitalized on their discontent and steered them towards

violence. And crucially, if they are guilty, did they learn their bomb

making skills from the Internet, rather than in a terrorist classroom in

Dagestan?

 

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