Hatred online
I’m sure this isn’t quite what the US military researchers would have intended when they created the internet all those years ago:
Hate groups around the world, including Islamic militants, often use Internet servers based in the United States to send propaganda and instructions to followers, according to a report released Thursday by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
In its eighth annual report on Internet hate speech, the Wiesenthal Center said it had logged some 6,000 Web sites in the past year used by racists and bigots to incite violence.
In one gruesome Internet post, labeled “Hidden Camera Jihad,” anonymous producers combined home movies of American soldiers being killed with a laugh track and the kind of comical sound effects you hear on “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”
That clip proved difficult to trace, the report said, but thousands of others first appeared on U.S. computer servers, often maintained by companies that offer cheap disk space and don’t usually monitor what clients do with their Web sites.
Much of the hateful material originated overseas, but when extremist anti-Americans go looking for a place to post their bile, they often find it easier and cheaper to use a site hosted in America.
The mentality of the Islamic extremists might be medieval in outlook, but that doesn’t mean they can’t adapt to exploiting modern communications.The United States, after all, has free speech and little Internet censorship, explained Wiesenthal Center senior researcher Rick Eaton, who was involved in preparing the report.
“If you want to circumvent your own country’s laws, you post it on an American server,” Easton said.
On the other hand, there is a view that keeping these websites operational has a number of advantages. These websites offer a window into the terrorist’s world which provides intelligence agencies with opportunity to see what they thinking and to gauge their level morale etc. Intelligence agencies are also supposed to be using websites and forums to spread damaging rumours to create paranoia and strike fear into the enemy by exaggerating the capabilities of American troops.