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Terrorists' Web Chatter Shows Concern About Internet Privacy
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Like mainstream Internet users, terrorists have varying levels of technology knowledge, and plenty of other Web sites offer more prosaic advice for basic users.
"If an e-mail address ends with .sa, then this e-mail is registered [in] Saudi Arabia and can never be secure, and Saudi authorities can reach it at any time," said one recent posting, according to translations provided by SITE. The guide advocated, instead, use of anonymous accounts through Microsoft's Hotmail or through Yahoo. "It is preferable to use long and difficult passwords, and that it should be changed every now and then," the posting said.
Increased sophistication among users creates a kind of cat-and-mouse game between terrorists and law enforcement, experts said.
Chatter on jihadist Web sites often provides an important tactical and cultural window into how these group members think, communicate and coordinate, Kohlmann said. Shutting each site down would be almost impossible, and potentially counterproductive to U.S. homeland security interests, he said. But communications have become so vast, with so many outlets and in so many forms, it has also become increasingly difficult for government agencies to monitor it all, he said.
There is no evidence that Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have cooperated with federal spy agencies to monitor terrorist communications. But privacy groups point out that it would be fairly easy for the federal government to subpoena any of these companies' records or issue a national security letter to them, essentially requiring them to turn over the data. In those instances, the companies would be precluded from disclosing publicly what they turned over to federal officials.
Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN are quiet about how much user data they save, and for how long, but Google makes clear that it wants to store more and more user data on its servers, said Daniel Brandt, founder of a privacy-advocacy Web site called Google Watch.
"From a jihadist perspective, they are absolutely right. They should avoid Google like the plague," Brandt said.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
