Cyber Traps for Wannabe Jihadists

I guess that's what happens when you don't have a single clue on where the real conversation and recruitment is happening, so you decide to create your own controlled jihadi communities to monitor. A case study on false feeling of effectiveness in Australia :

"FEDERAL police are setting up bogus jihadist websites to track extremists who use cyberspace to recruit followers and plan attacks. The undercover operation, disclosed yesterday by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, is an assault on arguably the most powerful weapon of the global jihadist movement, the internet. Mr Keelty said police were working closely with foreign governments and the military's Defence Signals Directorate. "We have worked with some foreign countries through our undercover program, establishing our own websites, to capture some of the activities that are going on on the internet," he told a security conference in Sydney."

"Some of the activities" will have absolutely nothing to do with the real situation, and even if someone bothers to open up a discussion on your second hand jihadi site, it'll be a classic example of a moron. Fighting for a share of the online jihadi traffic is so unpragmatic, unnecessary, time and resource consuming that you'd better rethink the entire idea, emphasize on intelligence data sharing with other countries in case you cannot monitor the emergence of local communications, and keep an eye on them.

Meanwhile, a talk on the street is heating up :
- Hello underaged kids, I see you're having trouble getting hold of some quality Russian vodka over here in front of that store, I can probably give you hand with this?
- Yes, please, please!!!
- Aha! Agent Temptation from the Thought Police here, you're busted for desiring to drink alcohol even without drinking it! Put your tongues on your head so I can see them!

In the long term we may actually have a real-life bomber confessing of visiting online jihad community before the plot took place, that, ooops, happens to be one of the fake ones. Now we have double ooops. Many other related posts to provide you with an overview of the big picture and a countless number of budget allocation myopia failures that emphasize on technological approaches to detecting radical jihadi propaganda, whereas cyber jihadists and future terrorists are getting efficient in generating "noise sites", ones your crawlers are so good at picking up.

IMSafer Now MySpace Compatible

MySpace, the world's most popular social networking site, and an online predator's dream come true has been actively discussed since the very beginning in respect to the measures News Corp's property takes to prevent child abuse through the site. Let's face the facts, of course underaged kids will confirm they're over 18/21 in order to use the site, and of course online predators will continue finding ways to socially engineer a online contact with the ultimate idea to meet in the physical world. Why? Because children provide way too much sensitive information in order to virtually socialize and meet new buddies, thus indirectly helping pedophiles pinpoint key "contact points" in the future. If you as a parent start paranoia-ing around, you'll end up with the wrong conclusion that the risks are not worth the benefits, totally forgetting that forbidden fruits taste much better and it's children we're talking about -- they break the established rules in principle. No matter the registration procedures in place, you cannot stop an online predator registering and communicating with children at the site, what you can do however is educating your children, and emphasizing on filtering not spying activities in order to protect them.

The team behind IMSafer, a service which I covered in a previous post, have realized the potential benefits of introducting a MySpace compatibility, and so it recently became a reality :

"IMSafer's updated language-analysis engine can scan individual MySpace postings for potentially dangerous, threatening or sexually explicit content, the company said. Users can download the tool from the company's Web site, said Brandon Watson, CEO and founder of the company. Traditional parental control software generally can filter and block Web sites but can't identify possible dangerous interactions on increasingly popular social networking sites such as MySpace, he said. While most sexual solicitations of children still come through instant messaging software, online predators are increasingly using MySpace to initiate contact with potential victims, Watson added."

Don't forget the bottom line, if you're in a fragile relationship with your kids, pretty much anyone online could take advantage of their vulnerable condition. The irony goes that people you've never met will show more respect to you than the people you actually fight to get respect from. From a children's perspective that's you parents! Here are several more articles worth going through, especially this post-event response to what's an internal problem to me.