Jihadi websites - hosted in the USA (updates) Posted by: McQ
on Friday, July 20, 2007
Here's a little factoid that MEMRI has provided:
...all Islamist/Jihadi websites are hosted by Western - primarily American - Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Interested in seeing what's in Al-Qaeda's online military magazine Mu'askar Al-Battar (The Al-Battar Training Camp)?
Should be an easy connection, since it's hosted out of Nevada by R & D Technologies, LLC.
Interested in a course on manufacturing explosives and even guides for making homemade dirty bombs? Again, an easy hookup. And it's ISP host? SiteGenie,LLC, out of Minnesota.
In fact MEMRI documents 25 sites, all hosted in Western countries and most hosted in the US, from Texas to Michigan. From New Jersey to Washington and many points in between where the jihadi message is based.
Hosted by: Network Operations Center Inc., Pennsylvania, USA
And there's this nice blog called "Supporters of Jihad in Iraq," whose page top caption says: "Kill the Americans everywhere."
Hosted by: Electric Lightwave, Washington, USA
Now MEMRI wonders what to do about this. And, apparently, so do some of our elected reps.
While they're dithering over the fact that these websites exist and what to do about them, I'd suggest the following for the rest of us. If you're doing business with any of these ISPs, you may want to advise them of your displeasure that your fees are helping support a company that is hosting websites of avowed enemies of your nation and culture. Granted, because these are in arabic, the ISPs may not even know what the sites are, but now you do. Point the ISPs to the MEMRI post. Tell them that websites which call for the killing of Americans, waging war against us and teaching radicals how to make bombs are unacceptable. This is not something which you must wait on government to do. These sites need to come down and they need to come down because of grassroots and market pressure to do so. Shut them down.
UPDATE: Michael Wade at A Second Hand Conjecture links and adds:
(1) They are not committing treason. As I laid out above, it is easy to assume that the ISP’s are doing so, but only if you look at it superficially. It’s highly unlikely that the ISP’s are even aware that these are jihadi websites, so the way you enlist their help is by raising their awareness. If you want the ISP’s to stop hosting the jihadis, then what you don’t do is accuse of them of treason. The ISP’s will be much more co-operative if you don’t.
(2) Be patient. Even after the ISP’s become aware of the problem, they will have to step very lightly. Simply cutting off any of the allegedly jihadi sites could subject the ISP’s to liability for breach of contract or even discrimination. Each company will take its time figuring out the best way to extricate itself from the situation without fostering expensive litigation. It’s not as easy as you may think, so cut them a little slack.
(3) Not every Islamic website, nor every website with which you disagree, is a jihadi website. The website for Jaysh Al-Mujahideen? Yes, it’s run by terrorists who are enemies of the United States. The website for CAIR? No, it’s not. And I say that with the full understanding that CAIR most likely is ultimately supported by terrorists, Salafists, and anti-American jihadis (but I repeat myself), but that doesn’t necessarily make CAIR’s websites jihadi, and it doesn’t mean that ISP’s should be charged with shutting them down.
Excellent points. Another thing to let the ISP know is that MEMRI will give them a hand with translations if they have a question:
MEMRI announced that it is taking upon itself a public service - offering ISPs that want to know about the content of the sites they are hosting information regarding those sites within 7-10 days, so they can make an informed decision on whether they want to continue hosting these sites.
That's an important bit of info to pass along as you alert these ISPs to what they may have on their servers.
UPDATE II: Via Jawa Report, MEMRI has released a video compilation of what is found on Jihadi websites.
Some of these web sites are being used by U.S. Intelligence services to monitor and track Jihadi activity. They may be up in U.S. locations for a purpose.
seriously, i say keep em up. im sure the gov has been in contact with these ISP’s. If not, then they are more...well if not then they are retarded. yes, retarded. The ISP should be able to track those who upload, they cant be forced to give up the info, but i would think most would be more than willing to comply, even if it means breaking some TOS they might have. If they are notm then they get put into the retarded box.
My brain tells me that removing these sites will only result in their being transferred to Denmark or somewhere like that. America will be without the revenue and no one who uses the sites will even be aware of the change.
My gut tells me that it is a non-libertarian action to act as you suggest unless the sites violate some general (anti-crime?) legislation applicable to everyone, in which case calling for regular law enforcement against them seems a better action to take.
I don’t like them saying and training people to kill Americans. In WWII it would have been considered proper to act in the manner you suggest against a publisher located in Iowa that was printing Nazi propaganda (likely the Government would have acted before you with approval all around).
If we are to have a free internet, in which concept I believe, we are going to have to tolerate things that we don’t like. Might as well go after ISPs for selling cigarettes, DDT or giving abortion counseling. It’s not the right thing to do IMHO.
My gut tells me that it is a non-libertarian action to act as you suggest unless the sites violate some general (anti-crime?) legislation applicable to everyone, in which case calling for regular law enforcement against them seems a better action to take.
I’m sorry ... I must have missed where I asked law enforcement or the government to take action. And no one is suggesting this be done without due diligence or care. But I see nothing wrong with suggesting market pressure to remove something customers find unacceptable.
Look at the bright side. At least those petro-dollars we’re sending to support terrorists are coming back to us! Who says markets don’t work? /snark
Seriously though, the fact that they’re on American soil probably makes it easier for our intelligence agencies to work with the companies to get IP logs, user accounts, and generally monitor activities on these sites without having to get international cooperation, which would slow down response times if they found anything serious.
"...the fact that they’re on American soil probably makes it easier for our intelligence agencies to work with the companies to get IP logs, user accounts, and generally monitor activities"
On the other hand, if they were in a foreign country we would not be worried about any domestic surveillance laws...There’s a reason the Brits and the USA use Echelon the way we do...
Why would a real "al-Qa’eda" group wish to do business with western ISPs? That tells me they are products of western intelligence, conducting false flag operations.
I formerly worked for a major ISP somewhere in the southern-states. The ISP I worked for,is listed on the list above, as hosting terrorist websites.
The FBI would come in and copy the hard-drives of these servers periodically, and especially after any major terror alert. But when they were done, they preferred that we leave the servers online, so they could later return and pilfer more information.
We would explain to the person paying for the server, that we were having ’hardware failures’, or that we were ’investigating’ the cause for their downtime. But they had to know better, there servers seemed to be down almost more often than they were up.
The FBI wants these sites up, so they can have a source by which to gather information.
