Mapping Online Jihad

Animesh Roul at Counterterrorism Blog has an interesting post on terror and the Internet.

Of late, there is a spurt of literatures regarding the threat of ‘online Jihad’ (threat about the use of internet web space in fueling, fostering Jihadi terrorism). Terrorist organizations and their sympathizers do maintain Web sites taking advantage of the unregulated, anonymous, and easily accessible nature of the Internet. Thanks to Web logs, discussion groups and social networking groups and free upload servers where one doesn’t need to hire a webmaster or to book a server space to run the agenda. It is in common knowledge now that they target a variety of audiences to exploit for raising funds, recruitment, and to spread propaganda, even plan and launch attacks and to publicize their mind-blowing results. Even they have web journals like “Technical Mujahid” (first ever released late November 2006 al-Fajr Information Center) with a detailed know-how of computer and Internet knowledge and security designed for terrorists only.

Read the whole thing.