The War on Terror Online (Continued)

Two months ago I linked to a collection of articles that looked at U.S. intelligence efforts to hack into and sabotage al-Qa'ida's online magazine, the debates over whether or not to shut down various terror groups' Twitter feeds, and an interview with former al-Shabaab propagandist (and Twitter aficionado) Omar Hammani.

Two interesting articles followed up on some of these topics last week. In ForeignPolicy.com, J.M. Berger has a fascinating (albeit slightly disturbing) look at how Twitter's algorithm's for recommending accounts to follow inadvertently facilitates jihadist recruitment by exposing potential extremists to more feeds they may not have previously been aware of (i.e. "If you like Ayman al-Zawahiri, you might also want to follow . . . "). Although it is possible that in time this function could be used to direct potential recruits towards dissenting Islamists, in the near term Twitter is "making extremist ideologies more accessible than ever before."

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported on how al-Qa'ida operatives have been using secretive chat rooms and encrypted Internet message boards for planning and operational communications. The article goes into some detail as to the likely means used to evade U.S. surveillance technology. While interesting, I always have mixed feelings about this sort of reporting. On the one hand, it provides a potential source of intelligence for al-Qa'ida as to our means and methods of interception. For example, a recent profile of AQAP leader (and new al-Qa'ida general manager) Nasser al Wuhayshi stated "At the request of its sources, The Daily Beast is withholding details about the technology al Qaeda used to conduct the conference call." That's great, except obviously al-Qa'ida knows what technology it used, and therefore knows it is compromised! Unless U.S. intelligence agencies actually planted an informant on the jihadist forum in question, such reporting harms our ability to monitor their networks and disrupt future operations.

On the other hand, the disruption of this particular plot likely will force the terrorists to find new means of communication. Depending on how long this takes, it buys time to either attrit their leadership through kinetic operations or disrupt their network through other means. Of course, this only works if one assumes we will be able to crack that technology as well, which once illustrates the importance of developing human intelligence that can access these communications regardless of the technology used.