conversation via Skype, a “trusted brother” who was actually an undercover FBI employee, “told Basit that he could help get him inside Al-Nusra. …
Contents contributed and discussions participated by nicolet1189
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No LOL Matter: FBI Trolls Social Media for Would-Be Jihadis - NBC News.com - 1 views
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updating techniques it has used since the early days of the Internet to engage the enemy on services such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
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arrested and charged the next day with supporting a foreign terrorist organization.
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Sheikh’s case and several other recent terrorism prosecutions shed light on the growing importance of social media in the battles unfolding in Syria and Iraq -- both as a recruiting tool for Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front, and as a means for the FBI to pre-emptively nab the would-be jihadis.
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raises questions about the FBI’s conduct in attempting to head off terrorist recruits and whether they incited them to actions they wouldn’t have otherwise taken.
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using fake social media identities to engage them
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catfishing” by luring him into a personal relationship with a phony online persona.
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During the investigation, the FBI published a webpage that purported to recruit individuals to travel to Syria and join Jabhat al-Nusra (
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posed as a Syrian nurse and "used a Facebook page which promoted the ideology of Islamic extremism" to contact the suspect,
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been able to expand their reach far beyond the traditional jihadi recruitment pool to a much wider audience -- including English-speaking Western nationals."
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FBI at times goes too far to reel in American Muslims, most of them young, who are sympathetic to the Islamic extremist cause.
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her client is “a lonely, mentally ill young man with a tremendous desire to be liked,” which made him susceptible to a paid FBI informant’s online encouragement.
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Suspects began posting on Facebook or other social media expressing support for or seeking contact with one of the Islamic groups fighting in Iraq and Syria and were then engaged by informants or undercover FBI agents.
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social media counterterrorism operations,
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'Don't go there in any way, don't go there in thought or expression, don't even toy with the idea of becoming foreign fighters.'"
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eventually agreed to join Al-Nusra, purchased a plane ticket to Beirut and prepared for his journey to jihad
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informant, however, suggested that Sheikh instead join the Al-Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate t
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provided Sheikh with contact information for a supposed Al-Nusra agent.
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could help get him inside
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face up to 15 years in prison and fines of $250,000 if they are convicted
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sending a message to potential terrorist recruits is indeed important.
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defense attorneys in all four cases may argue that the FBI actions amounted to entrapment -- the act of tricking someone into committing a crime so that they can be arrested
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making examples of individuals
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sought to make contact with al Qaeda officials on Facebook and other social media, but instead drew the attention of an undercover FBI agent who presented himself as a recruiter for the terrorist group.
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"ISIS recruits are more likely to reach out in the online universe seeking advice on how to reach the land of jihad than to consult the guidance of a traditional cleric or local community leader
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that universe and creating honeypots to draw in and capture potential ISIS recruits, they can help sow doubts in the minds of would-be jihadists in the overall reliability of the Internet as a medium for recruit
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Justice Department plans to review federal law enforcement practices on creating fake Facebook pages in light of an incident,
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This article discusses the strategies of the FBI in trying to arrest potential jihad recruits. The article discusses several cases of individuals arrested for attempting to join ISIS and the implications involving each case.
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Ignorant jihadis 'have bought into fantasy fuelled by social media' | World news | The ... - 0 views
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boys aged between 10 and 20 who had been radicalised by the Taliban.
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They all told the same story, sa
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“They all had impoverished backgrounds, they were illiterate, their families had been approached by the Taliban and were coerced into abandoning their children, they were lambs to the slaughter,” she said.
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Those from the west are naive and lack imagination, they are chasing a fictional dream, and they often have barely any knowledge of what Islam is.”
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The book aspiring Isis militants most commonly ordered online before taking off to Syria was Islam for Dummies, she said.
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“What Isis has done, and they have exceed al-Qaida in this, is take really spectacular control of the narrative of their organisation while sharing that story through masterful use of all mechanisms of the media,” she said
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propaganda and recruitment videos spreading the jihadi message w
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Ten years ago, it was difficult to access and acquire videos like the beheadings we have seen unless you were part of an inner circle, but now this material is mainstream, you can access it just by opening Twitter,”
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“If you are a young person with limited imagination, a limited sense of self, and you are uninclined to engage with your neighbours, friends and a pluralistic society, you are very easily seduced. You’re like a blank canvas.”
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Differentiating between Islam and Islamism
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Islamism promotes explicit totalitarianism and the belief that Islam historically had incredible global and geopolitical glory that should be restored through violence, jihadism and barbarity
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Beheading Video Stirs Debate On Social Media Censorship : NPR - 0 views
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As an American journalist,
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determining what is good or bad for their users
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Twitter and others being proactive about censoring this information start to engage in a slippery slope
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I don't want any government or industry to censor what I can and cannot say to my community in my attempt to ethically inform them
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GREENE: Let me just make sure I understand this because it seems like a very important point - you're saying the New York Post, they are journalists; they made the decision on their own. You might say that it was a bad decision, but it was a news organization, a publisher, so to speak, making a decision about what to publish. Twitter, in the eyes of many of us, you know, is a platform for us to share. And that's a different thing for them to censor you or I or other people in terms of what we want to share or not.
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Yeah, I would look at it as if the printing press operators decided that they wanted to censor the New York Post, right? That's if we view Twitter as a platform. Printing press operators wouldn't shape a newspaper
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these organizations are really sophisticated with their propaganda, and this is just one video of many different types of strategies that they employ.
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that by allowing this video to be available, it is helping ISIS - these militants - spread their propaganda
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we were to have a technology company censoring images from the Vietnam War, think of the iconic images that would be censored and blanked.
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Viewing a video, I feel like you need to make that decision. You need to make that decision. The government shouldn't make that decision for you. A tech company shouldn't make it for you.
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these are the images that changed the tone, the country, the direction of that war
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This one here is not the government censoring. This is a tech company that is censoring. Now, again, it's their platform. It's their rules. But it is something to be aware o
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The beheading of James Foley by the Islamic State triggered debate. David Greene talks to Robert Hernandez, assistant professor at USC Annenberg, about censorship with new tech platforms like Twitter.
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The beheading of James Foley by the Islamic State triggered debate. David Greene talks to Robert Hernandez, assistant professor at USC Annenberg, about censorship with new tech platforms like Twitter.
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The beheading of James Foley by the Islamic State triggered debate. David Greene talks to Robert Hernandez, assistant professor at USC Annenberg, about censorship with new tech platforms like Twitter.
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shared by nicolet1189 on 10 Nov 14
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Twitter, terror and free speech: Should Twitter block Islamic snuff videos? | The Econo... - 0 views
www.economist.com/...twitter-terror-and-free-speech
ISIS free speech Social Media twitter censorship
shared by nicolet1189 on 10 Nov 14
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YouTube removed one version of the video, citing a violation of their policy on violent content. On Tuesday, Twitter announced a new policy that it would remove images and video of the deceased at the request of family member
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g #ISISMediaBlackout
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The logical incoherence of this statement aside, is disseminating offensive material the same thing as promoting it? It is conceivable that the video could incite potential terrorists and others harboring anti-American sentiments to copycat acts of violence. But it is equally true that content of this kind wakes people up t
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Should platforms like YouTube and Twitter really have the power to censor what content we can or cannot see? At least in America, the suppression of disturbing or offensive content, if it does not incite violence, is a direct violation of our principles of free speech. Especially in this instance, it seems deeply inappropriate to respond to authoritarianism with authoritarian action.
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Others have argued that the video shouldn’t be shared because that’s what ISIS wants.
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Does it matter what ISIS wants?
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Part of ISIS’s aim is presumably to terrorise us remotely, but most people are just getting angry.
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intentionality does not factor into censorship decisions anyway.
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Twitter is not television. No one is being forced to view the footage.
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It’s completely understandable that family members don’t want footage of a loved one’s death to spread, but it’s not clear that that’s their decision to make.
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It’s really not Twitter’s decision either—unless we want to grant tech giants the power to control public knowledge and discourse, a dangerous precedent indeed.
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Its democratic power derives from the fact that it’s unedited; for better or for worse,
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The author of this article strongly opposes Social Media companies, specifically Twitter censoring ISIS related materials on their website. The author argues it violates free speech and the democratic principles associated with the website, arguing censoring a beheading video would be a slippery slope for future content.
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shared by nicolet1189 on 07 Nov 14
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Social Media Prove Double-Edged Sword for ISIS - 1 views
dailysignal.com/...-prove-double-edged-sword-isis
metadata ISIS media privacy intelligence surveillance
shared by nicolet1189 on 07 Nov 14
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the dangers presented by metadata and other information contained in digital postings.
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A new ISIS hashtag
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Himlat Takteem Ialami—the media
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instruction manual in online behavior
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restraint campaign.
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individual identities and landscape and urban geography in photos to encoded data from email accounts, servers and location of signals.
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Also, by destroying the telecommunications infrastructure, the U.S.-led air campaign has forced ISIS in Syria to rely on non-secure routers that boost signals, making communications easy to intercept for intelligence agencies.
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Although ISIS has been able to successfully use social media platforms to cater to their agenda, they have recently changed their strategies to deter US intelligence from intercepting crucial information. They have issued a new instruction manual to members regarding online behavior in order to circumvent data collection from digital postings.
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ISIS Tactics Illustrate Social Media's New Place In Modern War | TechCrunch - 0 views
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modern warfare, where online propaganda plays a central role.
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ISIS makes use of its decentralized structur
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propaganda tools is an app called “The Dawn of Glad Tidings,”
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users consent to allowing ISIS to post to their social-media accounts. To avoid Twitter’s spam-detection algorithms, Berger noted, the app even spaces out its posts.
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27,000 Twitter accounts that mentioned the ISIS positively.
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40,000 tweets in a single day,
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700,000 accounts discussed the terrorist group.
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ISIS tries to get its content to trend globally.
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using a #worldcup2014
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“When an account gets shut down, a new one is immediately created, and they use other guys to promote the [new] account,” Truvé tells me. “It’s kind of a whack-a-mole thing.”
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“The volume of those tweets was enough to make any search for ‘Baghdad’ on Twitter generate the image among its first results,” Berger noted, “which is certainly one means of intimidating the city’s residents.”
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, propaganda has one crucial deficiency: It’s not the truth.
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Author Jillian Melchoir relates recent participation in groups like ISIS as spawning a new type of modern warfare. Melchoir continues, describing ISIS's presence on Twitter where they regularly get their content to trend globally for example hijacking popular hasthags like #worldcup2014.
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How ISIS Games Twitter - The Atlantic - 1 views
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strong, organic support online.
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strategies that inflate and control its message.
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using social media to recruit, radicalize and raise funds,
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Twitter app called The Dawn of Glad Tidings, or just Dawn.
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way to keep up on the latest news about the jihadi group.
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Once you sign up, the app will post tweets to your account
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spaced out to avoid triggering Twitter’s spam-detection algorithms
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organized hashtag campaigns
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repetitively tweet hashtags at certain times of day so that they trend on the social network.
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ISIS hashtag consistently outperforms that of the group’s main competitor in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, even though the two groups have a similar number of supporters online.
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ISIS also uses hashtags to focus-group messaging and branding concepts, much like a Western corporation might.
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ISIS does have legitimate support online—but less than it might seem.
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Author J.M. Berger discusses ISIS's strategy on Twitter, comparing their highly skilled techniques on this platform to the likes of a P.R./ marketing team working for a Western corporation. Berger goes on to discuss programs that automatically post tweets to users accounts, an app they developed that provides updates, and an intricate system able to surpass Twitter's spam and security teams.
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shared by nicolet1189 on 27 Oct 14
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Al-Qaida and ISIS Use Twitter Differently. Here's How and Why. - NationalJournal.com - 1 views
www.nationaljournal.com/...ly-here-s-how-and-why-20141009
Al-Qaida ISIS social media Twitter facebook communication
shared by nicolet1189 on 27 Oct 14
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Al-Qaida has an Internet presence nearly two decades old
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their separate techniques not only reveal key divisions between the two terrorist groups, but also illustrate the depths of extremism that ISIS will plumb—and that al-Qaida won't.
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Social media's public and instantaneous nature is ideal for reaching ISIS's target audience—young, disillusioned Westerners who are ripe for radicalization—and it gives them a sense of community.
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while ISIS focuses on fighting a nearby enemy to defend the Islamic State, al-Qaida focuses on fighting an external enemy, i.e. the United States.,
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e group still relies heavily on "older" platforms, like websites and forums, according to Weimann.
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ecause al-Qaida is more focused on fighting Western influence, it is much more concerned with currying favor with the wider Muslim community.
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al-Qaida's online magazine, Inspire,
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ISIS, all attention is good attention
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ISIS's propaganda documentary Flames of War is produced in a Hollywood-esque fashion, complete with pyrotechnics and voice
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appeal to a younger audience
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ISIS glorifies violence
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al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki, which numbered over a thousand at one point before Google took them down. Al-Awlaki preaching directly into the camera for close to an hour is in stark contrast to ISIS's sophisticated and sensational production.
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Weimann predicts al-Qaida will outlast ISIS. I
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l-Qaida's network is much wider and more deeply rooted than that of ISIS.
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This article contrasts communication techniques of Al-Qaida and ISIS. It outlines how ISIS communication strategy uses more dominant forms of social media such as facebook, youtube, and twitter while Al-Qaida still uses web pages, forums, and their own magazine they publish to speak to their audience.
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BBC News - Can Iraqi militants be kept off social media sites? - 0 views
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co-ordinated hashtag campaigns to get its content trending on Twitter.
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The Iraqi government responded by blocking social media sites and, in some provinces, barring access to the internet entirely.
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But some of the most active Islamist social media accounts are still live,
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n Twitter using military pseudonyms,
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The BBC spoke to a number of social networks, all of which said they did not actively monitor their sites for content promoting terrorism, but rather responded to requests from governments and individuals to remove offending material.
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r Twitter said the company would remove a reported post that violated its rules.
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Facebook and YouTube, have been more successful in removing extreme content.
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Many of the militants on Twitter redirect users to their Kik accounts.
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Ask.fm, a
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One Ask.fm account offered advice on how to join Isis fighters in Iraq, as well as what weapons one could expect to be equipped with on arrival.
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Twitter's terms ban threats of violence and the "furtherance of illegal activities" on the site.
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rminated any account registered by a member of a foreign terrorist organisation - as designated by the US secretary of state - and used in an official capacity to further its interests.
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Interesting article about challenges social media companies face in preventing and deactivating accounts with content or users linked to terrorist organizations such as ISIS.
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Lawrence Wright | Overheard with Evan Smith - 1 views
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I heard this interview on KUT one evening and I thought it was really pertinent to our class discussions on Egypt. You can listen to the podcast or watch the interview via this link or download the podcast on iTunes for free, it is an author who just wrote a book on the Camp David Accords of 1978 and he discusses the book and the events during the interview.
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shared by nicolet1189 on 13 Oct 14
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Isis's Austrian poster girl jihadi brides 'have changed their minds and want to come ho... - 1 views
www.independent.co.uk/...want-to-come-home-9789547.html
Isis foreigner fighters social media Syria Austria
shared by nicolet1189 on 13 Oct 14
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arrived in the Middle East via Turkey, 15-year-old Sabina Selimovic and 17-year-old Samra Kesinovic
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whoever is operating their pages it probably is not the girls, and that they are being used for propaganda.”
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even if they could flee, Austria’s laws bar them from returning once they have joined a foreign war.
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130 Austrian nationals are believed to have become foreign fighters for Isis.
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Two girls ages 15 and 17, who fled to Syria to join the ISIS movement are not wishing to return to their home countries. The problem, under Austria's laws they are forbidden to return for participating in a foreign war. An interesting aspect of the story is it said to have been ISIS members who were operating their social media accounts for propaganda purposes.
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Twitter CEO: ISIS Threatened to Assassinate Me for Deleting Jihadist Accounts - 0 views
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After we started suspending their accounts, s
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Twitter and their management should be assassinated,"
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social media giant's platform has played a central role in ISIS's attempts to spread their terrorist propaganda across the globe.
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treading a fine line between upholding the Constitution's freedom of speech premise, while employing Twitter's own terms of service and security tactics in what has become a global effort (both through munitions as well as over the Internet) to thwart the onslaught of terror being wrought by ISIS.
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Twitter prohibits the use of their platform to promote evil and agendas that threaten to harm the safety and security of citizens both domestically as well as internationally.
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Threats from ISIS extend to twitter as it threatened to assassinate the CEO Dick Costolo for deactivating ISIS held accounts. ISIS has also called upon citizens within the countries of twitter's operating facilities to attack Twitter employees on, currently Twitter has offices in the US, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Canada.
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ICSR Insight - Offering Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq a Way Out / ICSR - 0 views
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Boris Johnson proposed that all the British fighters in Syria should be presumed guilty unless proven innocent
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dangerous and counterproductive proposal
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increase — rather than diminish — the terrorist threat to [Britain] .
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a database of more than 450 fighters currently in Syria and Iraq.
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motivations for travelling to Syria are diverse
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tougher laws and blanket punishment shouldn’t be the only approach.
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one in nine former fighters subsequently became involved in terrorist activity
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In many cases they are disillusioned, psychologically disturbed, or just tired.
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ideological, vicious and bloodthirsty fighters who attract the headlines,
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many have found the reality to be far different from what they were led to believe.
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When he first travelled out there, he said “it was all focused on Assad,” he said. “But now it’s just Muslims fighting Muslims. We didn’t come here for this.”
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The blanket approach taken by the government — to threaten all returnees with draconian prison sentences — Abu Mohammed says, makes him feel trapped. “We’re forced to stay and fight, what choice do we have? It’s sad,” he told us.
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Following the defeat of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Arab-Afghan fighters could not return to their home countries. They were stripped of their citizenship
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regrouped in Sudan and formed a Jihadist Internationale, from which al-Qaeda emerged.
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men were offered no opportunity to disengage from the path they had chosen.
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Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries
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deradicalisation programmes to convince jihadists to disengage
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deradicalisation along with monitoring and surveillance.
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would be willing to submit to such a scheme, were it available, in order to return to the UK.
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the Channel Project.
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More than 1000 people
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successfully engaged through this programme.
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Treating all foreign fighters as terrorists, however, risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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This is not about being soft: it’s about being smart.
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In prison, by contrast, they are likely to be further radicalised while potentially exposing others to a hardened ideology and worldview.
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another friend who recently quit the fight after he couldn’t accept what he saw out there.
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experience — they need to be heard, not locked away.
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This was an article (originally published by the Independent, however, I found it on their website via my first article from the BBC) by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence of London. The article suggests, allowing fighters to return home safely and enroll in a De-radicalization program would be more beneficial than current policies of severe punishment (prison, stripping of citizenship, etc.). The authors contend current repercussions for fighters returning to their home countries leave them trapped and isolated and prison sentences often lead to further radicalization. Overall this article really captured my attention in its non-conventional proposal for governments to handle these situations.
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BBC News - Battle for Iraq and Syria in maps - 0 views
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The US with Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched 14 strikes against IS in Syria, hitting a number of targets, including Raqqa, a stronghold in eastern Syria captured by the group in 2013.
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al-Qaeda veterans named
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These refineries are believed to be producing "between 300-500 barrels of refined petrolium per day", generating as much as $2 million (£1.2m) per day for the militants, a key source of revenue for IS.
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Khorasan
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a caliphate, or Islamic state, stretching from Aleppo in Syria to the province of Diyala in Iraq.
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more than 200 attacks on IS targets in Iraq since 8 August. F
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concentrated on targets around the Mosul Dam -
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killed 14 of the group's fighters and five civilians
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Mosul
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Ramadi
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12,000 fighters from almost 80 countries
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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
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beneath him are four advisory councils:
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31,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria -
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Falluja
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foreign recruits - the number of whom has surged since IS declared itself a caliphate in the summer, international investigators say.
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majority are from nearby Arab countries, such as Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
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16 "wilayats", or provinces, that IS claims to control,
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match areas where its predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq
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three million people have fled abroad to escape the fighting in Syria.
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This article provides a detailed outline of the battle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria through the use of maps, charts, and photographs to allow readers to visualize areas where fighting is taking place. Several maps provide locations of ISIS controlled territory, locations of airstrikes, and locations of ISIS controlled oil refineries. It was really helpful to see different maps outlining this information because I often hear about this conflict on the radio or television programs and it can be hard to understand the scope of the conflict without any visual aids. I really appreciated the effort to show in detail the specific locations.
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This article outlined the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq providing detailed maps, charts, and photos to present a more clear picture of where violence and air strikes are occurring.
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Inside The Chilling Online World Of The Women Of ISIS - 0 views
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women of ISIS appear to have established networks across social media platforms, which they use to connect with one another and recruit other women.
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Interested parties are directed to online guides with step-by-step instructions on how to get to ISIS-controlled territory — including advice on how to deceive Turkish customs agents.
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of the most active women of ISIS on social media claim to be UK citizens.
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Marriage to a fighter is essentially a requirement for all women who join ISIS.
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forbidden from engaging in armed comba
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many of these new brides are soon widowed (and remarrie
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women of ISIS use social media to glorify the group’s horrific “victories”.
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use Twitter to mock journalists
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I am more then confident that no one in dawlah fears US invasion in fact we are all pretty excited more shuhadah and more slaying kuffar
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"Here in Iraq we welcome America with our weapons
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The author of this article was on NPR Friday discussing the women of Isis and their use of social media. The author stated that whole social media accounts of these women are constantly shut down, they operate several accounts at all times to ensure they spread their message.
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Woman Charged In Denver With Seeking To Aid Islamic Extremists : The Two-Way : NPR - 1 views
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A 19-year-old Denver-area woman has been charged with conspiring to help a foreign terrorist organization after she was arrested in April boarding a flight that would ultimately land her in Syria, where she hoped to wage jihad, according to newly unsealed court documents.
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she wanted to use her American military training from the U.S. Army Explorers to start a holy war overseas,
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she planned to live with a suitor she met online, apparently a Tunisian man who claimed to be fighting for [ISIS]," the AP says.
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Ashikim Khan, 23, of Texas pleaded guilty on Wednesday to providing "material support to terrorists
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An American woman who was also a former member of the US military was arrested in April and officially charged in July with conspiring to aid members of ISIS. She was arrested when trying to board a plane to Syria where she was planning to meet a Tunisian man and aid the groups in attacks. This story also cites another woman who was arrested on similar charges, it is one of many examples of Americans going abroad to join Isis.
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