I am live blogging the Online Extremism panel at SXSW 2008. I’m missing Henry Jenkins’ keynote, but I’m sure he’ll forgive me Given current events, I believe this is a timely and important panel.

Shahed Amanullah:

Purpose of the panel: How are extremists using the Internet to power their movements? How are mainstream Muslims using the Internet to confront extremists?

Balance between protecting civil rights & free experssion.

Strategies that militants & moderates are both using the internet to put forward their ideas.

How can law abiding Muslims engage extremists on the web without being associated with them by law enforcement? That discussion started last year @ SXSW, hit the papers, and ended up with a discussion with Secretary Chertoff. What happens at SXSW changes the world.

Mohamad Hluchan:
Senior Middle East Analyst
iDefense, Verisign
www.idefense.com

Speaks 8 middle eastern languages

Jihadists & cybercrime: Emerging Synergies
Jihadist Websites
Cybercrime
Emerging Synergies
Implications

iDefense
Global Human Network in place and constanly enhanced since 1998

3,000,000,000 Security events every day
12 languages
Russia, China, Middle East, South America

40 full-time researcherfs and more than 400 contributor thorugh the world.

Intelligence teams, iDefense Labs

• vulneralbility aggreation team
• rapid-response team
• malicaious code ops team
• global threat team
• CP network

46 countries, 12 languages
1,000+ vulnerability reports each month
1,200+ malicious code reports each month

Jihadist oriented websites
Al-Buraq Islamic Network
Cihaderi.net – turkish, pan-islamic website
Jeish Al-Mujahidin – Iraqi

Emerging cyber Jihad trends
Asraar Al-Mujahidin (Mujahadin secrets). Encryption & secure communications. By, for, and about jihadists
-uses power encryptions
- secure communication
- website design
- use of audio & video editing software
- preparation & dissemenation of traingin and introduction materials

Not like this in 2002.

Cybcriminals are hyper materialistic.

Noteworthy carding activity examples.

- A forum for CMASTER 4.0, an old DOS-based program designed to generate fake credit card numbers.
- Online training for CMASTER 4.0

Terrorist groups and organized crime syndicates have copperated often in the past.
Criminals are often unaware–often purposely so–that their client may be terrorist group.
- Terrorist perspective about working /w/ criminals. Mixed. They’re very moral, may not be machevellian.
- PR Risk Factor: if a terrorist group is found to be working with criminals, may alienate key supporting constitutencies.
- However, they do work with
- afgahn opium production & trafficking
- etc

While verisign has yet to find terrorists have gained access to the most serious and effective carding communities. However, as Carl Sagan said, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

They are making a concerted effort do so and they are learning and getting better over time.

Mohammed Suleiman Khan

Hadithuna.com, the largest Muslim blogging community online. Founded it because of the gap between real life and media portrayal of Muslims.

• Provide a Windows into life
• Provide a platform for discussion
• Fight the Muslim monolith myth

Solution: Build a blog farm

Type A Bloggers: The Muslims Next Door

• writing about day to day lives
• religion/pop culture/activities/daily dish

Goal: provide a window into Muslim’s real lives.

Type B Bloggers: The Muslim Activists

• Politics/Commentary/Current Events
• Researched Posts

Goal: Provide a platform for discussion.

Fall 2007: Was meeting goals, but then had net radicals responding. Their problems were:

• Caught napping. Didn’t think they’d engage with Type A & B bloggers. Wasn’t intended as a website for people connected to violence.
• They monitored the blogs closely
• Noticed a few trends: 1) advanced into radical politics, not quite advocating killing, but close, 2) once one started, others quickly followed suit,

It was a tricky balancing act. Tough choice. Free speech concern. Actually having them online met the website’s goals by adding diversity to the website. However, they reached a tipping point where the website felt they had to shut them down. First, they looked at qualifying speech. Not all speech is protected speech, but Mohammed felt that they went up to the line, but didn’t go over that line.

They shut down the extremists. FBI asked them to get involved and they did. Why? To establish a reputation; connect and cooperate with the FBI; reinforced free speech considerations. Consider themselves in the fight against extremism and radicalization.

Frank Cilluffo

The way we need to think about Al-Queda is very different today than last year and 9-11. Think of it as a brand, becaus that’s what it is.

• Al-Qaeda classic
• Franchising of Al-Qaeda
• Leaderless Al-Qaeda. Sympathetic, but not connected, to Al-Qaeda. Don’t relate to parent’s generation, live in Europe, so don’t relate to culture. Who do they turn to? Al-Qaeda.

Internet is open to them as mainstream media is closed.

We can’t kill and capture our way to victory. We have to attack their ideas. This is really about ideas. We’re dealing with a media campaign; a multimedia approach. It’s not so much about the websites, it’s about the chat rooms. Our emphasis must be on where we can engage others. It’s about people.

Many people are recruited before they’re radicalized. The story is spreading. How to combat the Al-Qaeda story.

• The solution must come from within. We need Islamic scholars who can argue that it’s incorrect.
• We must decouple religion from ideology. When religion is stripped away, it’s thuggery.
• We need more, not fewer, voices. It’s not about clamping down, it’s about opening up.
• We need to expose the narrative. Dissect it. Unpack it. Help accelerate it’s falling upon its own weight of inconsistency & violence. We’ve united our adversaries. We need to enhance the differences between our enemies. We need to put together a video reminding people of the consequences of terrorism. Eg: Beselan in Russia. Weddings in Iraq, etc.

How many people know who was the spiritual advisor of Al-Zwahiri? He wrote two books. “Foundations for the preparation of Jihad.” And “Pursuit of Glorious Knowledge.” He’s now written a book renouncing terrorism. We need to promote that.

I’ve met /w/ Bin Laden’s spiritual advisors who are now arguing against terrorism. We need to bundle all the Fatwah’s renouncing terrorism and promote them. We need to make this less cool.

Shaarik Zafar

There’s very little the Gov’t can do. There’s a lot American Muslims can and should do. We help the Dept. of Homeland Security reach out to constintuencies in a way that’s respectful of Civil Rights.

The first amendment protects radical thought. It does not protect violence. A true threat is not protected, for example.

If people are upset of Gov’t policy, if they’re writing, protesting, etc. That’s all good things. That’s part of participating in American Life and releasing pressure. I’m concerned about a kid on website, stewing. We want to introduce sunlight, it’s the best disinfectant. Gov’t will take action when things cross the line. We don’t act before that.

But, there’s a role for people to counteract violent ideology. Even if the Gov’t could do, they’re not going to be good at it. There’s a role for American Muslims and other people with credible voices to engage.

Frank’s office has paper called “Network Radicalisation” on the GW website. Read it.

“This is not us.” Popstar Video. Pakistani pop singing about how the Jihadists are not us.



Q&A

Q: (To Cilluffo) You guys have presented a thoughtful, rational solution. Where the hell have you been for the past six years?

A: (Cilluffo) We need to change what we’re measuring. I’m not sure the gov’t is the best place, positioned, credible enough to do this. It’s rare to have a policy position where you need the help of everyone else. Talking, thinking, feeling, touching. That’s a lot of the younger generation. I went to Europe and saw 14 year old kids being reintegrated into society after being sent overseas for “fodder”. This is really about branding.

Q: Kathy Brooks from seismic.com. As a company that’s trying to create a platform for platforms, what should we look out for? How can you moderate without censoring?

A: (Khan) With great difficulty. We have a tough time monitoring text and pictures. I don’t know how you do it in video. However, once we got rid of one or two guys, the message got out that we weren’t going to host those types of poeople on our side. Those guys are more about rallying people who believe what they do, they don’t engage with people who don’t agree with them.

Q: When those guys appeared, was there pushback from others in the community?

A: (Khan) People are able to isolate themselves, so these people were isolated. Like I said, they weren’t interested in engaging.

Q: “This is not us” is an excellent example of something I wanted out of this, which is breaking the monolithic myth. What are other examples?

A: Your website, Frank. There was a film contest to make more films like that on linktv.org, from North American Muslims. LibForAll Foundation in Indonesia, pop star Doni is doing a great job.

Over and out…