Terror-Websites raus aus dem Netz?

--- Die New York Times beleuchtet mal wieder Fragen des Umgangs mit islamistischen Propaganda-Seiten und sieht Versuche, diese aus dem Netz zu verbannen, skeptisch:

One by one, starting a few weeks ago, 40 militant Islamist Web sites got knocked off the Internet. Gone were some of the world’s most active jihadi sites, with forums full of extremist chatter. This disappearance mystified American counterterrorism officials. They hadn’t shut them down, they knew, so who had? Happily claiming credit for the jihadi blackout is a Christian-Lebanese engineer named Joseph G. Shahda, who is waging a private, and passionate, war on terrorism from his home near Boston. “These sites are very, very dangerous,” Mr. Shahda said. “And I think we should keep going after them. They are used as recruiting tools for terrorists, arousing emotions, teaching how to hate.” Except it’s not quite that simple, when you talk to some terrorism experts. Mr. Shahda’s one-man operation highlights the tension over what to do about online jihadi militancy — a tension that has grown along with the material. Perhaps it’s better to shut it down, and try to prosecute those involved. Or maybe the material should be left up, as a way to learn something valuable in the larger battle against terrorists. “There’s a lot to be gained by watching these sites,” said Brian Fishman, a senior associate at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point. One thing not in dispute is the sheer volume of the material. Al Qaeda has begun issuing videotapes as often as twice a week, while insurgents in Iraq pump them out daily, and the blood-drenched images appear on several thousand militant Web sites that now include upward of 100 in English. Public concern rose a notch last week when The New York Times reported that one of the most popular English-language sites was run by a 21-year-old Qaeda enthusiast named Samir Khan from his parents’ home in North Carolina. Mr. Khan has done so since late 2005, unchallenged by law enforcement authorities. “Isn’t there anything this fellow can be charged with, or is he completely free to aid the global jihad from North Carolina and give interviews to The New York Times?” Robert Spencer wrote on his site, Jihad Watch. But those who are reading Mr. Khan’s blog include officials at the Combating Terrorism Center who, since last year, have been training F.B.I. agents and analysts with the government’s joint terrorism task forces. Center officials say Mr. Khan’s blog yielded confirmation of an important discovery: that a host of militant sheiks and scholars, dead and alive, are today far more influential than Osama bin Laden. These men include Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, a mentor of Mr. bin Laden’s who promoted global jihad with his writings until his death in 1989, and the center’s findings helped the authorities conclude that Al Qaeda is but part of a larger, and diffuse, ideological movement. Similar efforts to monitor online jihadists are under way in cities like Berlin, where intelligence and law enforcement officials have created a new multi-agency Internet center, and New York, where the police department this summer published a report on Islamic extremism that drew from the department’s online sleuthing.

Und sonst: Neues zum Thema Infowar: "Die erste Schlacht in den Kriegen der Zukunft geht um die Kontrolle des Cyberspace". Die US-Luftwaffe sieht den Cyberspace als Erweiterung des Luft- und Weltraums an und erklärt das Cyberkommando zur wichtigsten Streitkraft.