[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
JIHADIST USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA--HOW TO PREVENT TERRORISM AND PRESERVE
INNOVATION
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON COUNTERTERRORISM
AND INTELLIGENCE
of the
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 6, 2011
__________
Serial No. 112-62
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Peter T. King, New York, Chairman
Lamar Smith, Texas Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Daniel E. Lungren, California Loretta Sanchez, California
Mike Rogers, Alabama Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
Michael T. McCaul, Texas Henry Cuellar, Texas
Gus M. Bilirakis, Florida Yvette D. Clarke, New York
Paul C. Broun, Georgia Laura Richardson, California
Candice S. Miller, Michigan Danny K. Davis, Illinois
Tim Walberg, Michigan Brian Higgins, New York
Chip Cravaack, Minnesota Jackie Speier, California
Joe Walsh, Illinois Cedric L. Richmond, Louisiana
Patrick Meehan, Pennsylvania Hansen Clarke, Michigan
Ben Quayle, Arizona William R. Keating, Massachusetts
Scott Rigell, Virginia Kathleen C. Hochul, New York
Billy Long, Missouri Janice Hahn, California
Jeff Duncan, South Carolina
Tom Marino, Pennsylvania
Blake Farenthold, Texas
Robert L. Turner, New York
Michael J. Russell, Staff Director/Chief Counsel
Kerry Ann Watkins, Senior Policy Director
Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk
I. Lanier Avant, Minority Staff Director
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON COUNTERTERRORISM AND INTELLIGENCE
Patrick Meehan, Pennsylvania, Chairman
Paul C. Broun, Georgia, Vice Chair Jackie Speier, California
Chip Cravaack, Minnesota Loretta Sanchez, California
Joe Walsh, Illinois Brian Higgins, New York
Ben Quayle, Arizona Kathleen C. Hochul, New York
Scott Rigell, Virginia Janice Hahn, California
Billy Long, Missouri Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Peter T. King, New York (Ex (Ex Officio)
Officio)
Kevin Gundersen, Staff Director
Alan Carroll, Subcommittee Clerk
Stephen Vina, Minority Subcommittee Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Statements
The Honorable Patrick Meehan, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Pennsylvania, and Chairman, Subcommittee on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence.............................. 1
The Honorable Jackie Speier, a Representative in Congress From
the State of California, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence.............................. 3
Witnesses
Mr. William F. McCants, Analyst, Center for Naval Analysis:
Oral Statement................................................. 6
Prepared Statement............................................. 7
Mr. Andrew Aaron Weisburd, Director, Society for Internet
Research:
Oral Statement................................................. 8
Prepared Statement............................................. 10
Mr. Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President, Rand
Corporation:
Oral Statement................................................. 13
Prepared Statement............................................. 14
Appendix
Mr. Evan F. Kohlmann with Josh Lefkowitz and Laith Alkhouri:
Prepared Statement............................................. 27
JIHADIST USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA--HOW TO PREVENT TERRORISM AND PRESERVE
INNOVATION
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Tuesday, December 6, 2011
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in
Room 311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Patrick Meehan
[Chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Meehan, Cravaack, Long, Speier,
and Higgins.
Mr. Meehan. The Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence will come to
order. The subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony
regarding the emerging threat of the use of social media by
terrorists.
I note that we expect there to be votes some time after
3:00, 3:30, and we will do our best. We are very grateful for
the presence of this distinguished panel and grateful for your
important testimony, but we will do our best to work through
the testimony and try to get to as many questions as we can.
At this moment, I recognize myself for an opening
statement. I want to welcome today's Subcommittee on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence hearing on the ``Jihadist Use
of Social Media.'' I would like to thank you all for joining us
today, and I especially want to thank our panel of witnesses
for testifying on this issue.
Over the past year, the subcommittee has been examining
threats to the United States homeland from around the world. We
began to look at al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and an al-
Qaeda affiliate in Yemen with a sophisticated media wing led by
Anwar al-Awlaki, which included Inspire magazine.
We then turned our attention to the tumultuous events in
the broader Middle East, and considered how al-Qaeda and other
terrorist networks would use the upheaval to their advantage.
Later we held hearings on the threat from the terror networks
in Pakistan, from Hezbollah's operations in the Western
Hemisphere and then last week on the emerging threat from
Nigeria's Boko Haram.
One common theme throughout all of these hearings was that
terrorist networks are spreading their message, recruiting
sympathizers, and are connecting operationally on-line.
For years, terrorists have communicated on-line, sharing
al-Qaeda propaganda or writing in on-line forums dedicated
entirely to the prospect of Islamist terrorism. But they have
recently evolved with technological changes, utilizing social
media sites such as Facebook and YouTube to enhance their
capabilities. The same place the average person posts photos
and communicates with family and friends are being used by
enemies to distribute videos praising Osama bin Laden.
Terrorists also disseminate diatribes glorifying the murder
of innocents and even make connections with each other
intentionally or internationally to plot attacks. In the case
al-Awlaki, jihadists live on virtually even after they have
been physically removed from the battlefield.
Prior to entering Congress, I served as the United States
attorney in eastern Pennsylvania. Shortly after my tenure
ended, a local woman by the name of Colleen LaRose was arrested
on her return to the United States as part of a terror plot
that targeted a Swedish cartoonist.
LaRose would later become known to the world as Jihad Jane.
However, what is less well-known to the world was she received
that moniker because it was the name that she employed on-line,
where she became a committed jihadist.
She enthusiastically posted and commented on YouTube videos
of supporting al-Qaeda and their allies, but her enthusiasm for
jihad went beyond watching videos and offered moral support as
well. She made contacts on-line with other jihadis, solicited
funding, and orchestrated an actual terror plot.
Her case is a shocking example of how easy it can be to
find jihadi content on-line and make operational connections
with others who speak aspirationally about violent acts of
terror against the homeland.
The Jihad Jane case is not the only one. Only a few weeks
ago, Jose Pimentel was arrested for preparing bombs to use in
attacking targets in New York City. Before his arrest, Mr.
Pimentel had been active on-line. He ran a blog, held two
YouTube accounts, and operated a Facebook profile, all
dedicated to jihadi propaganda.
In a case that illustrates terrorist recruitment in the
homeland via social networking, in December 2009 a group of
five men in Washington, DC were arrested in Pakistan for
attempting to join militants fighting along the border with
Afghanistan. Later to become known as the Virginia Five, they
were reportedly contacted by a Taliban recruiter through
YouTube after one of the members of the group praised an on-
line video showing attacks on American troops.
These examples highlight the emerging challenge posed by
terrorists engaging on-line. The internet was designed to ease
communication, and it must stay that way. However, we cannot
ignore the reality that we have been unable to effectively
prevent jihadi videos and messages from being spread on popular
social media websites like YouTube and Facebook.
I have called this hearing today to learn more about what
has been done and what must be advised as we move forward.
Another central issue I would like to learn more about is
whether or not social media websites can become useful sources
of intelligence in our fight against terrorism. On-line
movements are traceable, nowhere more often so than on social
networks which are designed to make connections among people
much easier.
I believe the intelligence and law enforcement communities
can use this open information to combat terrorism and other
crimes. However, it is essential that civil liberties and
individual privacy be appropriately protected. I am encouraged
by recent remarks made by Under Secretary for the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis, Caryn Wagner, where she indicated
that the Department of Homeland Security will be working to
enhance its ability to monitor social media for threats against
the homeland, and I look forward to learning how that may be
done as she develops these procedures.
With that, I look forward to hearing from today's
witnesses, and I would now like to recognize the Ranking
Member, the gentlelady from California, Ms. Speier.
Ms. Speier. Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this
hearing and for your continued cooperation. I would also like
to thank the witnesses for being here today and look forward to
gaining some insights from you on how terrorists use our social
media and how the power of social media can be used for both
countering the narrative used by terrorists and effective
information sharing of potential terrorist activity.
Social media is the No. 1 activity on the world wide web,
we know that, accounting for over 22 percent of all time spent
on-line in the United States. For instance, Twitter averages
about 200 million tweets per day, Facebook boasts about 800
million active users throughout the world. Social media
spreading messages to many users at one time is commonplace and
their power has proven to be remarkable.
When it comes to looking at the power of social media, we
must look to the Arab Spring. As the Arab Spring ensued, social
media spread messages to which the world subscribed, followed,
tweeted and retweeted. For instance, the week before Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak's resignation, the total rate of tweets
about political change in Egypt ballooned ten-fold. The top 23
videos featuring protests and political commentary had nearly
5\1/2\ million views. More than 75 percent of people that
clicked on embedded Twitter links about the Arab Spring were
from outside the Arab world.
Social media become a megaphone that disseminated
information and excitement about the uprisings to our outside
world. The users of social media in the Middle East caused the
world to take notice and to witness the revolution. Social
media enabled these revolutionaries, change agents in their own
right, to spread their messages beyond national borders to all
corners of the world.
Knowing the power of social media and its reach, it is
quite natural that terrorists groups themselves would try to
use social media to their advantage. For example, we know that
former al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader, Anwar al-
Awlaki, was known to some as the bin Laden of the internet. The
late al-Awlaki used various social media such as Facebook,
blogs, and YouTube videos to try and recruit and develop a
cadre of terrorists in the United States.
We know that al-Awlaki used on-line videos to praise those
who not only perpetrated violent acts against people in the
United States such as Major Nidal Hasan but also those who
waged unsuccessful attacks such as the attempted Christmas Day
Bomber. We also know that the attempted Times Square Bomber,
Faisal Shahzad, was in contact with al-Awlaki via e-mail.
What we do not know is how many people have actually been
radicalized by viewing blogs, news feeds, and tweets by al-
Awlaki and others like him that espouse violent ideology. At
what point do those influenced by terrorist ideology over the
internet become real, live terrorists?
Terrorists acts by design are intended to create fear or
draw attention to their message regardless of whether the
message is hatred for a particular group of people, a
government, or a policy. Terrorists, through their actions,
also have the agenda of causing economic disruption. Just by
their menacing and prompting the government to take action and
extend its financing can sometimes be a win for them.
Hence, who is the real audience for terrorists on the
internet? Is the government who terrorists may feel will spend
its money and energy chasing when it finds potential leads, or
is it for those that terrorists really feel may be led to
espouse their ideology and eventually act upon it?
Since we understand the power of social media as
effectively used in the Middle East, what can we do to empower
users of social media to counter the message terrorists spread?
I am eager to learn today how people can be encouraged to use
social media to spread the message that America is not a Nation
that is fearful, but a Nation that is abundant with ideas,
expression, and innovation.
We know that a vigilant public can provide essential
information to law enforcement that thwarts terrorist activity.
For example the attempted Times Square bombing by Faisal
Shahzad was prevented by law enforcement who received tips of
suspicious activity in the area. Are there ways that social
media providers can partner with the government to mitigate
terrorist activities on their sites without the fear of strict
regulation and censorship? How do we encourage the public to
utilize these platforms to act as our eyes and ears?
Since social media are such valuable information-sharing
tools, is it possible for law enforcement to use social media
to share trends and concerns that may threaten our communities,
educate the public on how to report suspicious activities, and
develop new partnerships with the community?
Is it possible for social media to be used on levels that
would actually affect the scope of our intelligence gathering?
For example, a few months ago, the Afghan Taliban exchanged
tweets with NATO in Kabul during an attack. Can social media
present unique opportunities for counter-messaging and direct
engagement with terror groups that our Government is currently
overlooking?
I am eager to hear from the witnesses how social media can
be used to counter the messages espoused by terrorists. I am
looking forward to hearing how social media can be used to
share information, how users can be assured that by sharing
information they will not give up their Constitutional rights.
With social media being such powerful tools, what steps are
companies, users, and law enforcement taking to effectively
thwart terrorists activities? What more should we be doing?
I have many more questions, Mr. Chairman, but with that I
will yield back.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Ranking Member Speier. Other Members
of the committee are reminded that opening statements may be
submitted for the record.
So we are pleased to have a distinguished panel of
witnesses before us today on this very, very important topic. I
would like to first introduce William McCants. He is an analyst
at the Center for Naval Analysis where he focuses on al-Qaeda,
terrorism, and Middle Eastern policies. He is also an adjunct
faculty at Johns Hopkins Krieger School. From 2009 to 2011, Mr.
McCants served as the senior adviser for countering violent
extremism in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism
at the U.S. State Department. I will bet you didn't get that
title on one card.
Prior to that he was the program manager of the Minerva
Initiative in OSD policy, an analyst at the Institute for
Defense Analysis and a fellow with West Point's Combating
Terrorism Center. McCants is the founder of Jihadica.com, a
group blog that explains the global jihadi movement. The blog
has been featured on the cover of the New York Times and rated
by Technorati as one of the top 100 blogs on global politics.
Wired Magazine recently described it as the gold standard in
militant studies. McCants is an editor of the Militant Ideology
Atlas and author of a forthcoming foreign affairs article on
al-Qaeda. This fall Princeton University Press is publishing
McCants' book, Founding Gods, Inventing Nations.
I next turn to Mr. Andrew Weisburd, and he has been engaged
in counterterrorism and the collection, analysis, and
dissemination of intelligence since 2002, primarily focused on
the use of the internet by al-Qaeda and other Islamist
extremist organizations and movements. He has been a provider
of expert services to a variety of organizations since 2003 and
has engaged in research for organizations such as NATO and the
United States Department of Justice.
He is a long-time contract instructor in the practitioner
education program at the Combating Terrorism Center at West
Point and regularly provides training and briefings to the FBI
and CIA. He has a BS in information systems from Southern
Illinois and an MA in criminology, and he has written various
books and included a chapter for the FBI Counterterrorism
Division textbook on comparing jihadi and street gang videos on
YouTube.
Last, Mr. Brian Michael Jenkins is a senior adviser to the
President of the RAND Corporation and is the author of Will
Terrorists Go Nuclear? and several Rand monographs on
terrorism-related topics. He formerly served as chair of the
Political Science Department at RAND. In anticipation of the
10-year anniversary of 9/11, Jenkins spearheaded the RAND
effort to take stock of America's policy reactions and give
thoughtful consideration of the future strategy. That effort is
presented in The Long Shadow of
9/11: America's Response to Terrorism. I thank you for
forwarding a copy of that and I found it very--I recommend it
as reading to anybody who is considering the analysis of what
has happened over the last course of the decade from a variety
of different topics. Very, very provoking. Commissioned in the
infantry, Jenkins became a paratrooper and a captain in the
Green Berets. He is a decorated combat veteran, having served
in the 7th Special Forces Group in the Dominican Republic and
with the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam. He returned to
Vietnam as a member of the Long Range Planning Task Group and
received the Department of the Army's highest award for
service.
In 1996, President Clinton appointed Jenkins to the White
House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. He is a
research associate at Mineta Transportation Institute, where he
directs continuing research on protecting surface
transportation from terrorist attacks.
So I thank all of our panelists. I know this is a complex
topic, and there is a lot to be said, so I will ask if you will
do your best to summarize your written submitted testimony and
focus on those issues which you think are the most important
things for us to hear in your written testimony and appreciate
as well that we will have time for questions. So thank you, Mr.
McCants, and I now recognize you for your testimony for 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM F. MC CANTS, ANALYST, CENTER FOR NAVAL
ANALYSIS
Mr. McCants. Thank you, Chairman Meehan, Ranking Member
Speier, Members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity
to testify today on the ways al-Qaeda supporters use social
media. Most of the research on the subject is confined to
discussion forums, an older form of social media that allows
users to comment on topics that interest the group.
Al-Qaeda forum users are usually anonymous. The links
between them are unknown, and the administrators heavily
moderate the discussions. There are only a handful of these
fora and the most prominent of them only numbers 50,000
members, many of whom have multiple accounts or, like Aaron and
I, are researchers, passively watching. Participating on the
forums may harden the views of al-Qaeda supporters and it may
push them to take action, but no one is being radicalized on
them. They are already members of the radical choir singing to
one another.
If the internet does play a role in radicalization, it is
happening elsewhere. Sometimes recruiters fish for susceptible
youth on mainstream websites, sometimes youth find the content
themselves on sites like YouTube, led to it out of curiosity or
following the trail of their own conviction. They then share
what they find with their acquaintances on social networking
sites like Facebook. Thankfully, the vast majority of youth who
watch and read al-Qaeda propaganda are either unaffected or
choose not to act.
As tested recently by one anonymous on-line recruiter he
posited that if you post al-Qaeda propaganda to all of the
mainstream websites, only .00001 percent of the people who
viewed it would go out to fight for al-Qaeda and even fewer
would carry out suicide operations. By his reasoning that is
10,000 people out of a population of 1 billion Muslims. Those
numbers might be a bit off, but I don't think by much. We are
talking about a relatively small number of people.
Since most people are already fireproofed against al-
Qaeda's call to action, the U.S. Government should focus on
putting out the fire of criminal activity rather than removing
the incendiary material. Follow the smoke trail of al-Qaeda
propaganda, looking for those who celebrate its content and
distribute it intensively for the purpose of recruitment.
Chances are that some of them will do something criminal.
As you might surmise from my testimony, I do not put much
stock in closing on-line user accounts held by people that do
not violate our laws. I also do not put much stock in
intervening with well-meaning outreach programs or removing
propaganda. There are too many downsides to these approaches.
They are also unnecessary. The FBI and local law enforcement in
the United States have done a fair job in finding al-Qaeda
supporters on-line and arresting them before they hurt anyone.
They have gotten very good at following the smoke trails and
putting out the fire of criminal activity.
However, as social networking on-line becomes more private
and confined to one's acquaintances, this will be increasingly
difficult to do. For legal and technological reasons, it is
harder to get access to information on corporate-owned sites
like Facebook compared to al-Qaeda-owned forums. Working
through these issues is outside of my area of expertise, but I
would close by again emphasizing that the first priority should
be monitoring and not taking down content. Focus more on
following the smoke and looking for the fires of criminal
activity and focus less on removing incendiary materials since
most people are already fireproof.
Thank you for your time.
[The statement of Mr. McCants follows:]
Prepared Statement of William F. McCants
Thank you, Chairman Meehan, Ranking Member Speier, and Members of
the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today on the
ways al-Qaeda supporters use social media.
Our understanding of how the internet creates al-Qaeda supporters
is limited by where we look. With few exceptions, most of the research
on the subject is confined to discussion forums, an older form of
social media that allows users to comment on topics that interest the
group. Al-Qaeda forum users are usually anonymous, the links between
them are unknown, and the administrators heavily moderate the
discussions. Everyone on these forums is either a stalwart supporter of
al-Qaeda or analysts who passively watch. There are just a handful of
these forums, and the most prominent of them only numbers 50,000
members, many of whom have multiple accounts or are researchers like
me. Participating on the forums may harden the views of al-Qaeda
supporters and push them into taking action but no one is being
radicalized. They are members of the choir singing to one another. For
those of us watching, we see only the finished radicalized product and
not the process that produced it.
So where and how are al-Qaeda supporters initially radicalized on-
line? The where question is easier to answer than the how: Sometimes
recruiters fish for susceptible youth on mainstream websites. Sometimes
youth find the content by themselves on sites like YouTube, led to it
out of curiosity or by following the trail of their convictions. They
then share what they find with their acquaintances on social networking
sites like Facebook. In the so-called ``Five Guys'' case, there is a
mix of both trends. Young men in the D.C. area watched al-Qaeda videos
on YouTube and shared them with one another. A Taliban recruiter
contacted them through YouTube and facilitated their travel to
Pakistan.
As the Five Guys case suggests, al-Qaeda supporters use a mix of
social media to watch and spread the organization's propaganda on-line.
Some of these sites, like Facebook, are a goldmine for analysts because
they show the users' connections. But they can also be more difficult
to penetrate compared to the anonymous discussion forums. A friend
request from a stranger is unlikely to be answered in the affirmative.
Because these more closed social networking sites are effective at
transmitting propaganda, we may yet see the day when an al-Qaeda video
is solely distributed peer-to-peer without announcement on the
anonymous discussion forums, thus eluding the media and researchers but
nurturing the radicalized.
Thankfully, the vast majority of youth who watch and read al-Qaeda
propaganda are either unaffected or choose not to act, as attested
recently by one anonymous on-line recruiter. He posited that if you
post al-Qaeda propaganda to all of the mainstream websites, only 10% of
the people will likely look at it. Of those, only 10% will like what
they see. Of those, only 10% will embrace the idea of jihad. Of those,
only 10% will propagandize for it. Of those, only 10% will go out to
fight in a jihad. And of those, only 10% will seek martyrdom. By his
reasoning, 10,000 people out of a population of one billion Muslims, or
0.00001%, would go out to fight for al-Qaeda and even fewer would carry
out a suicide operation. Those numbers might be a bit off but not by
much. We are talking about a relatively small number of people.
Because the number of people is so small, it is difficult to say
why some become active supporters of al-Qaeda and others do not. What
we can say is that the vast majority of people who watch and read al-
Qaeda propaganda will never act violently because of it. Put
metaphorically, the material may be incendiary but nearly everyone is
fireproof. Since that is the case, it is better to spend our resources
putting out the fires and issuing warnings about the dangers of fire
rather than trying to fireproof everyone or remove incendiary material.
Extending the fire metaphor a bit, how do we know where the flames
are? We look for smoke. In this case, the smoke is the distribution and
celebration of al-Qaeda propaganda. People who celebrate al-Qaeda
propaganda on-line and who distribute large amounts of it on mainstream
websites for the purposes of recruitment should be watched. Chances are
that a few of them will decide to do something stupid, like Zachary
Chesser, a recent Muslim convert from the D.C. area who was active in
on-line recruitment and was arrested while trying to go fight for al-
Shabaab in Somalia.
As you might surmise from my testimony, I do not put much stock in
closing on-line user accounts that do not violate our laws. I also do
not put much stock in intervening with well-meaning outreach programs
or removing propaganda. There are too many downsides to these
approaches. They are also unnecessary. The FBI and local law
enforcement in the United States have done an excellent job in finding
al-Qaeda supporters on-line and arresting them before they hurt anyone.
They have gotten very good at following the smoke trails and putting
out fires.
I would be willing to revise my approach to on-line radicalization
if the data warranted it. But there is little research to go on, which
is striking given how data-rich the internet is. In hard numbers, how
widely distributed was Zawahiri's last message? Did it resonate more in
one U.S. city than another? Who were its main distributors on Facebook
and YouTube? How are they connected with one another? This sort of
baseline quantitative research barely exists at the moment. Analysts
are either focused on studying the content of the propaganda or
absorbed in stopping the next attack by known militants.
Until this research is done and demonstrates conclusively that al-
Qaeda's on-line propaganda is persuading large numbers of people to act
on its behalf, I believe the conservative approach I outlined is best,
particularly since we have not seen a great increase in foiled plots
and arrests. The U.S. Government should focus on watching those people
who are actively distributing and celebrating al-Qaeda propaganda on-
line, looking for criminal behavior or attempts to connect with active
militants. Conversely, the U.S. Government should put much less
emphasis on stopping people's exposure to al-Qaeda propaganda since it
is not creating many supporters and it is difficult to stop its
distribution. In other words, focus less on fireproofing and removing
incendiary material and focus more on following the smoke and putting
out fires.
Thank you for your time.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. McCants.
I now turn to Mr. Weisburd for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF ANDREW AARON WEISBURD, DIRECTOR, SOCIETY FOR
INTERNET RESEARCH
Mr. Weisburd. Good afternoon, Chairman Meehan, Ranking
Member Speier, Members of the committee. Thank you also for
this opportunity to appear here today to discuss the threat
posed by jihadist use of social media.
The next home-grown violent extremist who either attempts a
terrorist attack or who is arrested before they can do so will
be someone I already know something about. Assuming they have a
YouTube account, they will likely be within 2 degrees of
separation of someone who has similarly either attempted a
terrorist attack or has been arrested on terrorism charges. The
following examples help to illustrate this point.
Taimour al-Abdaly launched an attack in Stockholm, Sweden.
Mr. al-Abdaly had connections to Arid Uka. Arid Uka opened fire
on a bus full of U.S. service personnel at the airport in
Frankfort, Germany killing two. Arid Uka was connected on-line
through YouTube to Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif. Mr. Abdul-Latif is
awaiting trial. He is accused of plotting with friends to
attack a U.S. military facility in Seattle, Washington. Mr.
Abdul-Latif had friends in common with Jubair Ahmad. Mr. Ahmad
of Woodbridge, Virginia pled guilty to one count of material
support for terrorism at the end of last week. He had made a
video under the direction of Lashkar-e-Taiba, and he uploaded
that video for Lashkar-e-Taiba to YouTube.
Mr. Ahmad had connections to one Mr. Elkhadir Atrash. Mr.
Atrash was arrested in northern Israel. He was arrested on
charges of organizing a home-grown al-Qaeda cell based there.
Not only were all these people connected to each other, but
they were also connected to networks, known networks of
extremists and/or terrorist organizations.
Turning to terrorist media itself and specifically the
videos, the single most common element to these videos is
violence. Half of all terrorist videos contain explicit deadly
violence. The effects of exposure to this violence are
profoundly negative. The deciding factor, however, in
determining or--the deciding factor in whether that exposure
contributes to future violent behavior is context. The context
in which these extremists experience this violence is not
merely supportive or permissive of violence, it presents that
violence as absolutely essential. It is precisely that kind of
context that Inspire magazine sought to provide. For the home-
grown violent extremists, however, who were targeted or reached
out to by Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn of Inspire magazine,
each release of Inspire magazine was more than just the
content. Each new edition of Inspire magazine was celebrated as
though the release of the magazine itself was an event, a
terrorist attack. While we will be dealing with the content of
Inspire magazine for some time to come, this string of
victories is over. Neither Anwar al-Awlaki nor Samir Khan are
easily replaced.
Regarding the videos again and regarding the issue of
countermeasures of what we might do about them, I don't believe
that Google, operator of YouTube, has an interest in promoting
violent extremism, and they have already made some effort to
address this issue. I will note, however, that authenticity is
of great importance to extremists. Each terrorist media product
bears a trademark of the associated organization. These
trademarks of terrorism are signs of authenticity and are
easily recognized, not only by extremists but also by service
providers. I would suggest the objective of not driving all
terrorist media off-line, but to marginalize it and to deprive
it of these clear indications of authenticity.
Chairman Meehan, Ranking Member Speier, I would like to
conclude by thanking you for your service, for your leadership
on addressing this issue, and I would be happy to answer any
questions you may have.
[The statement of Mr. Weisburd follows:]
Prepared Statement of Andrew Aaron Weisburd
06 December 2011
Good afternoon, Chairman Meehan, Ranking Member Speier, and Members
of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the
committee today to discuss the nature and threat posed by Jihadist use
of social media.
introduction
I have been investigating terrorist use of the internet for roughly
10 years.\1\ For the past 2 years, I have analyzed the YouTube accounts
of al-Qaeda supporters who have attempted a terrorist attack, or have
been arrested on terrorism charges. What I find most alarming is that
each time I look at someone new, I find I already have data on them as
a result of their being part of the same global community of
extremists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ A significant portion of that work finds expression on the
internet Haganah blog (internet-haganah.com), the site of SoFIR
(sofir.org), and now the internet Haganah Forum (forum.internet-
haganah.com) and on Twitter (@webradius).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
two degrees of separation
Taimour al-Abdaly launched a complex attack on Stockholm, Sweden.
He was killed when one of his bombs detonated prematurely.\2\ He used
Facebook primarily to keep in touch with family, with one exception.
That exception was a known associate of American al-Qaeda operative
Samir Khan.\3\ Al-Abdaly was also an avid consumer of al-Qaeda and
related extremist videos, as well as of nasheeds--a cappella songs that
celebrate violent jihad and death by martyrdom. However, he made little
use of YouTube for social networking, a fact that may reflect some
amount of training in operational security.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007103.html.
\3\ http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007132.html.
\4\ http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007107.html.
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Taimour al-Abdaly was connected to Arid Uka,\5\ a young man who
opened fire on a busload of U.S. military personnel at the airport in
Frankfurt, Germany, killing two. Particularly in the case of homegrown
violent extremists, terrorism seems to be as much an expression of an
identity as of ideology, and the internet provides an ample supply of
imagery, music, and text from which the aspiring terrorist can assemble
their identity. In the case of al-Abdaly and Uka, the common element
was the nasheed.\6\ They shared the same supplier--an as yet
unidentified individual, most likely also in Europe, who was well-known
to other extremists on account of his work as a curator of extremist
songs. The choice of the word supplier is deliberate, and there is a
similarity to be seen with drug dealing. Such suppliers link many of
the extremists I have studied. They are people who have acquired a
reputation on-line of having an ample supply of ``the good stuff,''
generally videos, audio files (e.g. nasheeds), and literature, all of
an extremist nature.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007251.html.
\6\ http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007194.html.
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Arid Uka was connected to Abu Khalid Abdul Latif, who is alleged to
have plotted with friends to attack a military facility in Seattle,
Washington.\7\ They were linked through multiple individuals on YouTube
who all associated with a highly radicalized Salafist organization
operating in Cologne and Frankfurt, Germany.\8\ The organization, Die
Wahre Religion, is led by Ibrahim Abou Nagie, who is currently under
indictment for inciting violence and calling for the destruction of
other religions.\9\ Abdul Latif represents a not uncommon type of
extremist activism on YouTube. His channel served as a virtual pulpit
from which he preached regularly in video sermons that almost no one
came to hear. As he began to move forward with his plot, his comments
on other YouTube channels became increasingly shrill,\10\ yet he
stopped short of saying anything that might have warranted opening an
investigation. While his words may not have clearly indicated terrorist
intent, Abdul Latif was linked via YouTube to a well-known network of
homegrown violent extremists here in the United States.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ USA v Abdul Latif & Mujahidh, complaint available at http://
s88179113.onlinehome.us/2011-06-25/USA_v_Abdul-Latif_et-
al%20Complaint.pdf.
\8\ http://forum.internet-haganah.com/showthread.php?146.
\9\ http://www.taz.de/Anklage-gegen-Hassprediger/!77963/.
\10\ http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007379.html.
\11\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abdul-Latif had friends in common with Jubair Ahmad of Woodbridge,
Virginia, who has been charged with being a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba,
and making videos for that designated terrorist organization.\12\ The
common link was once again individuals associated with Die Wahre
Religion.\13\ Ahmad's alleged membership and direct communications with
a bona fide terrorist organization is not something one often sees in
open sources of intelligence. His work as a curator of Lashkar-e-Taiba
videos appears to be what led to many extremists to link to him (and
likely also brought him to the attention of the FBI).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ http://www.fbi.gov/washingtondc/press-releases/2011/
woodbridge-man-charged-with-providing-material-support-to-terrorist-
organization.
\13\ http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007423.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jubair Ahmad had connections to Elkhadir Atrash, who was arrested
on charges of organizing a homegrown al-Qaeda cell based in northern
Israel.\14\ Like Ahmad, Atrash was a supplier, curating YouTube videos
of two extremist clerics, Abu Nur al-Maqdisi of Gaza, and Abu Muhammad
al-Maqdisi of Jordan.\15\ In addition to Jubair Ahmad, Atrash was
connected to a broad range of homegrown violent extremists in the
United States, throughout Europe, and in Australia.\16\ There is no
evidence that extremists must progress through on-line activism to
involvement in real-world terrorist activity. Generally it seems there
is interplay between the two realms. Nevertheless, Atrash is
representative of extremists who engage in on-line activism while
toiling away at the more laborious task of assembling a cell that can
engage in terrorism, or making the connections necessary to travel to
some field of jihad.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ http://forum.internet-haganah.com/showthread.php?150.
\15\ Ibid.
\16\ http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007426.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
These al-Qaeda supporters--part of a global network whose number I
estimate at a few thousand--were all connected within two or three
degrees of each other on YouTube. The connections between them should
be assumed to be weak, rather than strong, but that is not to say such
weak ties are unimportant.\17\ While a terrorist cell will be composed
of strongly-tied individuals, it will be from within a weakly-tied
community that they emerge. Weak ties are the paths along which
information flows, including militant ideology, and intelligence
regarding both potential targets for terrorism as well as
counterterrorism activities. Conversely, the weakness of strong ties is
that information no longer flows effectively. In the life-cycle of
terrorist movements and organizations, one sees again and a again a
particular process: Successful counterterrorism activity, generally in
the form of arrests and prosecutions, causes communities of extremists
to fracture. Weak ties break, leaving the strongly tied units with
fewer sources of support and intelligence. This makes them more
vulnerable to counter-terrorism, and the process repeats itself.\18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ For a discussion of weak and strong ties, see ``The Strength
of Weak Ties'' by Mark S. Granovetter, The American Journal of
Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 6 (May, 1973).
\18\ The history of the decline and fall of the German R.A.F. is a
classic example of these processes at work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
media, computer-mediated communications, and violence \19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ For a thorough review of these issues, see Jihad, Crime, and
the Internet by Erez, Weimann, and Weisburd, NIJ2006-IJ-CX-0038 (in
press), pp. 21-30.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terrorism--violence for political aims--requires a steady output of
media for the movement to remain relevant, to maintain morale, and to
recruit new members. For the terrorist organization or movement, the
low cost and ease of access of the internet make it an ideal channel
for the distribution of terrorist media. Terrorism is also a social
phenomenon. Individuals may act alone, but in almost all cases, the
terrorist is a product of a community of extremists. The genuine lone
wolf is extremely rare. Because of their political and social needs,
social media sites are very attractive to violent extremists. But this
fails to explain how the combination of people, media, and technology
contributes to the problem of homegrown violent extremism.
Computers affect how we experience media and how we interact with
others. Extremists are as susceptible to these effects as we are. The
on-line environment is immersive. We feel we are in a place, often
called cyberspace. When we are on a social media site, we feel that we
are virtually together with our friends, family, and comrades in arms.
We feel we are present in the videos we watch. On-line interaction
brings people closer, faster. On-line relationships get off to a strong
start, and then move off-line if possible. In the case of two people
seeking a soulmate, the result may be a happy union. In the case of
aspiring terrorists, the result may be less positive. On-line social
networks tend to mirror off-line social networks. People--extremists
included--use social media to keep in touch with people they already
know. An individual's ability to get involved in terrorism is directly
related to who they know, and this is precisely what social media sites
reveal to us. The benefits of this to law enforcement are enormous.
In terrorist media, the single most common element is violence.\20\
Half of all terrorist videos contain explicit, deadly violence. The
effects of exposure to such violence are profoundly negative. The
deciding factor in whether that exposure contributes to future violent
behavior is context. The context in which extremists experience
terrorist media is not merely supportive of violence--it presents
violence as absolutely essential.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ Ibid., and Comparison of Visual Motifs in Jihadi and Cholo
Videos on YouTube by A. Aaron Weisburd (2009), in Studies in Conflict
and Terrorism, 32:12 1066-1074.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
samir khan, anwar al-awlaki, and inspire magazine
Each new edition of Inspire was celebrated as a victory, as an
attack in itself. In that sense, the deaths of al-Awlaki and Khan can
only help in the battle against homegrown violent extremists. There
will be no more such events to celebrate. Neither of them is easily
replaced, and in the event the magazine is re-launched, it is worth
noting that the work involved in producing the magazine likely
contributed to the successful targeting of al-Awlaki. Finally,
information does not preserve itself in perpetuity on the internet. If
Inspire magazine remains available for download, it will only be
because activists continue to upload it, and every upload of Inspire
magazine is an event that will leave a trail, and is an act that--in
light of the content of the magazine--can likely be investigated and
prosecuted.
countermeasures
The U.S. intelligence community is already making very effective
use of the internet to identify and investigate extremists. Some
additional actions can contribute to undermining the processes that
enable extremists to engage in violence.
Producing and distributing media for Foreign Terrorist
Organizations constitutes material support for terrorism. I would argue
that a service provider who knowingly assists in the distribution of
terrorist media is also culpable. While it is in no one's interests to
prosecute internet service providers, they must be made to realize that
they can neither turn a blind eye to the use of their services by
terrorist organizations, nor can they continue to put the onus of
identifying and removing terrorist media on private citizens. I don't
believe that Google, operator of YouTube, has an interest in promoting
violent extremism, and they have already made some effort to address
this issue, but they can and should do more.
Branding in terrorist media is a sign of authenticity, and
terrorist media is readily identifiable as such due to the presence of
trademarks known to be associated with particular organizations. The
objective should be not to drive all terrorist media off-line, but to
drive it to the margins and deprive it of the power of branding, as
well as to leave homegrown extremists unable to verify the authenticity
of any given product.
conclusion
Chairman Meehan and Ranking Member Speier, I would like to conclude
by thanking you for your service and for your leadership in addressing
this issue.
I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Weisburd. I now turn to Mr.
Jenkins for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF BRIAN MICHAEL JENKINS, SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE
PRESIDENT, RAND CORPORATION
Mr. Jenkins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Speier, Members of the committee, for inviting me to talk to
you about this important subject.
Although all terrorist groups use the internet, al-Qaeda is
the first to fully exploit the internet and the social media.
This reflects some unique characteristics of al-Qaeda itself.
It regards itself as a global movement that therefore requires
a global network of communications to support it. It sees its
mission as not simply one of creating terror but one of
awakening the Muslim community. Its leaders regard
communications as 90 percent of their struggle and therefore,
despite the security risks, these leaders communicate regularly
with video and audio messages.
These are distributed on the official websites, and then
they are redistributed in a vast number of additional websites,
but beneath this there is a tier of forums that allow for
direct participation by on-line jihadists so they can become
part of the movement themselves.
Al-Qaeda leans on these cybertactics out of necessity. U.S.
counterterrorist operations plus unprecedented international
cooperation among the intelligence services and law enforcement
organizations of the world have degraded al-Qaeda's operational
capability.
As a consequence, al-Qaeda today is more decentralized,
more dependent on its field commands, its affiliates, its
allies and above all on its ability to inspire home-grown
terrorists. In this connection, al-Qaeda has embraced
individual jihadism and has emphasized do-it-yourself
terrorism. That is a fundamental shift in strategy.
Many would-be jihadists begin their journey on the internet
seeking solutions to their personal crises, validation of their
anger, the thrill of clandestine activity. Of these, a few move
beyond the internet to seek terrorist training abroad or to
plot terrorist attacks here, but overall the response in
America to al-Qaeda's intense marketing campaign thus far has
not amounted to very much.
Indeed, between 9/11 and the end of 2010, a total of 176
persons, Americans, were identified as jihadists; that is,
accused of providing material support to one of the jihadist
groups or plotting terrorists attacks. In fact, despite years
of on-line jihadist exhortation and instruction, the level of
terrorist violence in the United States since 9/11 has been far
below the terrorist bombing campaigns of the pre-internet
1970s.
This suggests a failure of al-Qaeda's strategy. It
indicates that not only are America's Muslims rejecting al-
Qaeda's ideology, not only is this a remarkable intelligence
ascent, but there are some inherent weaknesses in this on-line
strategy.
Al-Qaeda has created a virtual army which has remained
virtual. Although its strategy depends on individual
initiative, it offers on-line participants the means of
vicariously participating in the jihadist struggle without
incurring personal risks. Indeed, the expression of
convictions, of commitment, of threats and boasts becomes not a
summons to arms but, in fact, a distraction from action in the
real world, a kind of psychologically satisfying video game.
Therefore we are not seeing the threat yet.
What does this mean in terms of a response? As the two
previous witnesses have indicated, this on-line discussion and
these postings are a source of valuable intelligence. So rather
than devoting vast resources to shutting down content and being
dragged into a frustrating game of whack-a-mole--as we shut
down sites, they open up new ones. Instead, we probably should
devote our resources to facilitating intelligence collection
and criminal investigations so that we can continue to achieve
the successes that we have had thus far in identifying these
individuals, uncovering these plots and apprehending these
individuals.
[The statement of Mr. Jenkins follows:]
Prepared Statement of Brian Michael Jenkins \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The opinions and conclusions expressed in this testimony are
the author's alone and should not be interpreted as representing those
of RAND or any of the sponsors of its research. This product is part of
the RAND Corporation testimony series. RAND testimonies record
testimony presented by RAND associates to Federal, State, or local
legislative committees; Government-appointed commissions and panels;
and private review and oversight bodies. The RAND Corporation is a non-
profit research organization providing objective analysis and effective
solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private
sectors around the world. RAND's publications do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 6, 2011
is al-qaeda's internet strategy working? \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ This testimony is available for free download at http://
www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CT371.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terrorists use the internet to disseminate their ideology, appeal
for support, spread fear and alarm among their foes, radicalize and
recruit new members, provide instruction in tactics and weapons, gather
intelligence about potential targets, clandestinely communicate, and
support terrorist operations. The internet enables terrorist
organizations to expand their reach, create virtual communities of
like-minded extremists, and capture a larger universe of more-diverse
talents and skills.
While almost all terrorist organizations have websites, al-Qaeda is
the first to fully exploit the internet. This reflects al-Qaeda's
unique characteristics. It regards itself as a global movement and
therefore depends on a global communications network to reach its
perceived constituents. It sees its mission as not simply creating
terror among its foes but awakening the Muslim community. Its leaders
view communications as 90 percent of the struggle.
Despite the risks imposed by intense manhunts, its leaders
communicate regularly with video and audio messages, which are posted
on its websites and disseminated on the internet. The number of
websites devoted to the al-Qaeda-inspired movement has grown from a
handful to reportedly thousands, although many of these are ephemeral.
The number of English-language sites has also increased.
Al-Qaeda's communications are a distributed effort. Its websites
fall into three categories: At the top are the official sites that
carry messages of the leaders. Recognized jihadist figures discuss
issues of strategy on a second tier. The third tier comprises the many
chat-rooms and independent websites where followers verbally and
visually embellish the official communications, fantasize about
ambitious operations, boast, threaten, and exhort each other to action.
The quantity and easy accessibility of these sites have attracted a
host of on-line jihadists, some of whom are technically savvy and
contribute their skills to the overall communications effort.
The jihadist enterprise has created on-line magazines such as
Inspire and has recruited hometown communicators--native-born
Americans, including al-Qaeda's Adam Gadahn and Anwar al-Awlaki, and al
Shabaab's Omar Hammami--who understand American culture and can
communicate in a way that will appeal to young American Muslims. Those
seeking more direct dialogue can work through the internet to exchange
messages with jihadist interlocutors.
Al-Qaeda leans on cyber tactics as much out of necessity as for
efficiency's sake. U.S. counterterrorist operations have pounded on al-
Qaeda's central command degrading its operational capabilities, while
unprecedented cooperation among intelligence services and law
enforcement organizations world-wide has made the jihadists' operating
environment increasingly hostile. As a result, al-Qaeda today is more
decentralized, more dependent on its field commands and affiliates and
on its ability to inspire local volunteers to carry out attacks.
Al-Qaeda has embraced individual jihad as opposed to
organizationally-led jihad. Increasingly, it has emphasized do-it-
yourself terrorism. Those inspired by al-Qaeda's message are exhorted
to do whatever they can wherever they are. This represents a
fundamental shift in strategy. As part of this new strategy, al-Qaeda
has recognized on-line jihadism as a contribution to the jihadist
campaign. Despite some grumbling from jihadist ideologues about on-line
jihadists not pushing back from their computer screens to carry out
attacks, the threshold for jihad has been lowered. Action remains the
ultimate goal but on-line warriors are not viewed as less-dedicated
slackers.
Many would-be jihadists begin their journey on the internet,
seeking solutions to personal crises, validation, and reinforcement of
their anger, the thrill of clandestine participation in an epic
struggle. We have no way of counting the number of on-line jihadists.
There may be thousands. Nor can we calibrate their commitment, which
can range from merely curious visitor to the most determined fanatic.
Of these, a few have moved beyond the internet to seek terrorist
training abroad. Five young American students were arrested in Pakistan
for attempting to join a terrorist group--they started their journey on
YouTube. Some American jihadists like Zachary Chesser were inspired to
set up their own jihadist website. Others like Samir Khan and Emerson
Begolly exhorted others on-line to carry out terrorist attacks. Still
others have found sufficient inspiration on the internet to plot or
carry out terrorist attacks in the United States like Michael Finton,
who plotted to blow up a Federal building in Illinois, or Major Nidal
Hasan who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded 31 others at
Fort Hood, Texas in 2009. Jose Pimentel apparently radicalized himself
on the internet, urged others to carry out attacks, then migrated from
encourager to would-be bomber, following instructions from al-Qaeda's
Inspire magazine to build his explosive devices.
Overall, however, the response in America to al-Qaeda's intense
marketing campaign thus far, has not amounted to much. According to my
own study of radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism in
the United States, between 9/11 and the end of 2010, a total of 176
individuals were arrested or had self-identified as jihadists.\3\ This
includes those arrested for providing material assistance to jihadist
groups (Hamas and Hezbollah do not fall into this category), attempting
to join jihadist fronts abroad, or plotting terrorist attacks.
(Analysts may ague about the inclusion or exclusion of a few cases, but
the totals remain small.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Brian Michael Jenkins, Stray Dogs and Virtual Armies:
Radicalization and Recruitment in the United States Since 9/11, Santa
Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 2011.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The number of jihadists identified to date represents a tiny
turnout among the approximately 3 million American Muslims--six out of
100,000. There is no evidence of evidence of any vast jihadist
underground. Most of the cases involve one person.
There was an uptick in cases in 2009 and 2010, owing mainly to
recruiting in the Somali community, but the number of homegrown
terrorists declined between 2009 and 2010. The current year may show a
further decline in the number.
The determination of America's jihadists, with a few exceptions,
appears to be low. Of the 32 terrorist plots discovered between 9/11
and 2010, only 10 had what could be generously described as operational
plans. And of these, six were FBI stings. Intentions are there--
provided with what they presume to be bombs, America's jihadists are
ready to kill, but without external assistance, only four individuals
attempted to carry out terrorist attacks on their own. Fortunately,
most also lacked competence. Only three managed to attempt attacks, and
only two, both lone gunmen, were able to inflict casualties. Suicide
attacks are rarely contemplated.
Despite years of on-line jihadist exhortation and instruction, the
level of terrorist violence in the United States during the past decade
is far below the terrorist bombing campaigns carried out by a variety
of groups in the 1970s. The absence of jihadist terrorist activity
since 9/11 reflects the success of domestic intelligence operations. It
also indicates that America's Muslim community has rejected al-Qaeda's
ideology. And it suggests a failure of al-Qaeda's internet strategy.
It appears that while internet strategies aimed at creating at
least weak ties among a large number of on-line participants offer
opportunities to terrorist enterprises like al-Qaeda, such strategies
also appear to have inherent weaknesses. They may create virtual
armies, but these armies remain virtual. They rely on individual
initiative to carry out terrorist actions, but they offer on-line
participants the means to vicariously participate in the campaign and
please God without incurring any personal risk. On-line jihadist forums
may be providing an outlet that distracts jihadists from involvement in
real-world operations.
This may be a particular weakness of the jihadist movement, which
recognizes fervent commitment evidenced by making disruptive threats,
urging others to carry out attacks, creating terror, rather than
limiting participation to physical terrorist attacks. If 90 percent of
the struggle is communications, according to al-Qaeda, then on-line
jihadism cannot be disparaged. For the virtual warrior, the opportunity
to display one's convictions, demonstrate one's intentions and prowess
through boasts, threats, and fantasy attacks on the internet counts as
achievement. Al-Qaeda's own pronouncements tend to equate the
declaration of intentions with their achievement. They include among
their accomplishments what they intend to do. For many young men who
grew up with the internet, there is no sharp line dividing the real
world from the virtual world--the virtual world is the real world. On-
line jihadism, then, may be a distraction from the real thing--not a
call to arms, but a psychologically rewarding videogame.
Individual participation in an on-line group as opposed to joining
a real group may further undermine action. While some individuals
display the resolve to carry out attacks without the reinforcement of
peers, the history of terrorist plots suggests that peer pressure plays
an important role in driving a conspiracy toward action. On the
internet, one can turn off the conspiracy at any time. On-line jihadism
is readily accessible but it also offers easy off-ramps.
On-line instruction in terrorist tactics and weapons is important
for the jihadists, but extremists learned how to make bombs and carried
on bombing campaigns long before the internet. The most serious
jihadist plots in the United States have been those in which the
conspirators had access to hands-on training abroad, which also appears
to have cemented their radicalization.
None of this is to be sanguine about the power of the internet for
terrorists. As it attracts more technically savvy participants, on-line
jihadism could evolve toward cyberterrorism aimed not merely at
defacing government websites, but at physical sabotage of critical
infrastructure.
What steps might be taken? Advocates of absolute internet freedom
sometimes declare the internet to be beyond any jurisdiction. But it is
not self-evident that any attempt to limit on-line hate speech,
threats, or incitements to violence will violate the Constitution or
destroy innovation on the internet. European democracies impose limits
on hate speech. Child pornography is outlawed--it makes no difference
how many viewers there are. On-line gambling is controlled. The right
to privacy, in my view, does not guarantee anonymity, but caution is in
order.
In addition to defining what content should be barred, any effort
to limit internet use must realistically assess the ability to monitor
and impose the restriction and must obtain international agreement in
order to be effective. As Jonathan Kennedy and Gabriel Weimann point
out in their study of terror on the internet, ``All efforts to prevent
or minimize Al Qaeda's use of the internet have proved
unsuccessful.''\4\ Even China, which has devoted immense resources to
controlling social media networks with far fewer concerns about freedom
of speech, has been unable to block the microblogs that flourish on the
web. Faced with the shutdown of one site, jihadist communicators merely
change names and move to another, dragging authorities into a
frustrating game of Whack-A-Mole and depriving them of intelligence
while they look for the new site. Is this, then, the best way to
address the problem?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Jonathan Kennedy and Gabriel Weimann, ``The Strength of Weak
Terrorist Ties,'' Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 23, p. 203,
citing Gabrial Weimann, Terror on the Internet: The New Arena, The New
Challenges, Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Government might begin with an assessment of the current actual
threat. Al-Qaeda's overall recruiting efforts have not produced a
significant result. On-line jihadism is low-yield ore. Cases of real
internet recruitment are rare. Appropriate authorities are able to
successfully engage in attribution operations as new on-line jihadists
emerge, and the FBI has had achieved remarkable success in using the
internet to detect conspiracies of one.
A discussion of how American military commands and intelligence
agencies wage war in cyberspace lie beyond the scope of this hearing.
Theoretically, the strategies may include monitoring on-line chatter,
disrupting or infiltrating websites, intervening overtly or covertly to
challenge jihadist arguments, even setting up false-front networks to
attract would-be terrorists. Meanwhile, the terrorist communications
offer a valuable source of intelligence. Instead of legislating
restrictions, a more pragmatic approach would aim at facilitating
intelligence collection and criminal investigations.
The internet and social media are part of today's battlefield. But
as of now, the immediate risks posed by al-Qaeda's on-line campaign do
not justify attempting to impose controls that could be costly to
enforce and produce unintended consequences. But as the contest
continues, the situation warrants continued monitoring for signals of
new dangers.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Jenkins, and thanks to each of
the witnesses for your insightful testimony. I know you are the
ones who have been tracking this activity for some period of
time. So I now recognize myself for 5 minutes of questions.
Let me just ask the panel, we have been living with the
internet now for some time, and it has expanded and grown. Are
these social networks game-changers in any way with respect to
the world of terrorism? Or is this just another manifestation,
as Mr. Jenkins talked about, with individuals who in some ways
are living in a cyberworld of, I think you used the language,
virtual reality. I mean how much of the real threat that we are
seeing on this communications that is taking place within the
world of Facebook and YouTube with a community of those who are
wanting to share the message of jihad? Mr. McCants, let me ask
you.
Mr. McCants. Thank you. I don't think it is a game-changer
in the sense that it is leading more people to become
terrorists. Certainly like-minded individuals are finding it
much easier to connect with one another, but I don't think we
are seeing a rapid increase in their numbers. I agree with the
other two speakers. It is a pretty small number.
I will say that it is hard to answer your question with
good data and I think this is one of the main problems
confronting those who are researching this topic. There is very
little quantitative studies that have been done of
radicalization on-line, and it is striking given that how
quantifiable the internet is.
Mr. Meehan. How do you know somebody has been radicalized?
That is the difficulty because I think the testimony was that
there is a community of individuals that effectively have found
themselves and they communicate among themselves, but how do we
know where somebody has moved out of the virtual world and into
a point which they may carry out an act of jihad, or is it,
just as you said, follow the smoke and you might find the ones
that go from aspiration to taking actual steps?
Mr. McCants. I think so and I think that is a question that
intelligence organizations are better-positioned to answer but
for analysts I think you can get pretty far just following the
trail of propaganda, looking at its distribution. Much of the
focus is on these older discussion forums. I think for a number
of the people who study this stuff it is sort of late to come
to the realization that a lot of the discussion is shifting
toward these more closed social networking sites like Facebook,
where it is a lot more difficult to gain access. You can't just
make a friend request and expect it to be answered.
So I think it poses a real research problem for analysts on
the outside and an intelligence-gathering problem for the U.S.
Government.
Mr. Meehan. As you answer the questions, Mr. Weisburd, I
will turn to you, are we getting to a point where in time those
who really do want to, the official folks that want to
communicate, do they find sort of this is polluted by all the
wannabes that are out there at this point in time?
Mr. Weisburd. If they found it to be polluted, if the
message was diluted sufficiently that might be beneficial to us
and detrimental to them. I think though getting back to the
point of who is it who is merely aspirational, who is it who is
moving to the next step, the internet is only very rarely going
to provide you with sufficient indications that that is going
on. The internet is not an isolated place. Everything that
happens on-line involves people sitting behind a computer
screen sitting at the keyboard. So understanding those people
and taking investigations, if they start on-line off-line can
be an important aid in doing threat assessment, which is really
what this all comes down to. We can find extremists on-line. We
can find where they are located. But when you have to
prioritize with limited resources who you investigate and who
you do not or who you apply more resources to and who you do
not, indications of how you should do that on-line will be few
and far between. It really requires a more holistic view of the
person that you are looking at.
Mr. Meehan. Mr. Jenkins, you talked a little bit about the
do-it-yourself terrorists that are sort of being invited by
these forums, driving down to that. Is this the real, I mean
the limited threat that we are seeing by virtue of this
expansion into the world of social media?
Mr. Jenkins. Thus far it has been. Look, terrorists and
ordinary criminals are always going to be ahead of us in
exploiting any new technology. Government is always going to be
behind on this because we don't invent laws for crimes that
haven't yet occurred. So while they move into exploiting new
technologies, we have to figure out ways that we can continue
to keep up with them.
In fact, your original question, this isn't really a game-
changer on this, but we do have to figure out ways that we can
keep up with it in terms of our criminal investigations.
Thus far, in terms of trying to separate who is going to go
down the path of jihad versus those who are simply going to be,
invent an avatar and beat their chests in these various sites
about what they would, what they intend to do, thus far the
authorities have been pretty good at identifying people and
indeed moving them into situations where, in fact, their
intentions----
Mr. Meehan. One last question because my time is expiring,
but are we moving them sometimes? Do we find them and then
create the opportunity and then someone almost lures them into
taking those next substantive steps that actually turn into
purported steps toward acts of terrorism?
Mr. Jenkins. I would hesitate to use the word ``lure''
because I don't think we want to get into the issue here of
entrapment. But certainly by identifying individuals and
creating opportunities for them to engage in dialogue with
people who they think are al-Qaeda, a number of these terrorist
operations that have been uncovered, these terrorist plots,
were when individuals thought they had connected with a group.
It turned out for them to be the wrong group. Instead of being
al-Qaeda it was the FBI. But we can legitimately, I think,
probe those intentions and see just how far these people are
willing to go.
In most cases, although we don't have, we don't have
numbers of dropouts, we have no way of counting those who take
the off-ramp, but those who have followed through turn out
again, to echo what my fellow participants here have said,
turns out to be a very, very small number. If we are looking
for something like whether it is .00001 percent or add a zero
or subtract a zero, that is still a very tiny number. That also
means, however, that it is an investigative challenge.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Jenkins. I now turn to the
Ranking Member, Ms. Speier for her questions.
Ms. Speier. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and thank you to our
witnesses. I was pleasantly surprised by the consistency of
your testimony today, because I was expecting, frankly, that
there would be a fair amount of discussion seeking to have
these various sites taken down. But almost to a person you have
said basically that these are tools for law enforcement to use,
that it would be far more problematic to take them down than to
leave them up and that for the most part these aspirants to the
extent that they are don't come to it via the internet, they
are already there and then just get confirmation of what they
believe. Is that a fair statement, would you say?
Mr. Jenkins. You know, look, it is not as if the internet
is not a vector of an al-Qaeda infection. Instead the
individuals come to it as seekers. They are looking for
something and therefore they search through these sites and
find sites that resonate with their belief. The internet will
put them in touch with other people. It will make them a part
of a broader community, an on-line community. It will reinforce
their radicalization. But by itself, the internet doesn't get
them all the way there. In fact, one thing I think is important
here, a lot of the plots that are being discovered are
conspiracies of one individual. It is when people had the
requirement that they actually--before the internet, actually
had to meet other people, we know in looking at the history of
these plots that peer pressure, face-to-face peer pressure
plays an important role. It doesn't have the same power on the
internet, as I say, because you can turn it off whenever you
want to. So you can in a sense play at jihadism and you are not
propelled by that face-to-face peer pressure.
So the ability to participate as an individual, even the
on-line instruction, while it is important, in the Pimentel
case it is important, at the same time, again if you look at
the most serious plots, the most serious plots had at least one
individual that had hands-on training. So in terms of action,
it is still face-to-face contact and hands-on training that
gets people all the way there.
Ms. Speier. Okay, so having said that, let me ask each of
you this question. Is there anything that should keep us up at
night relative to the internet as a source of jihadist
fomentation?
Mr. McCants. No. We are just not seeing the numbers that
would warrant that kind of worry. Again, if there were better
research based on good data showing that there were a large
number of people that were being swayed by this propaganda,
that would cause me worry, and you would want to monitor their
activities, but I don't think we even see reason, have reason
to believe that a large number of people are even being swayed
much less going the extra step of taking action.
Ms. Speier. Mr. Weisburd.
Mr. Weisburd. I find the idea that on my laptop I have
information that I will find out after the fact is tied to, I
will have some link between somebody who is involved in
terrorism who I already know is connected to somebody I didn't
know. I find that I have got a few thousand people out there
who some among them are almost certain to become involved in
terrorism. Who among them is it? I don't know. I really can't
tell from looking on-line who is going to be the next shooter
of a bus full of servicemen, for example.
On the other hand, I think what all of this revolves around
is that involvement in terrorism is complicated. We tend to, I
think, underestimate how difficult it is. There are many
different factors that need to come into play in order for
somebody to successfully get involved in terrorism and there
seem to be very many inhibitions, things that get in the way of
people becoming involved in terrorism. This is good news for
us. I think if we were going to study the issue, the area to
study is not so much what is it that enables somebody to become
involved in terrorism, but what is it that keeps so many other
people from not getting involved in terrorism, not even
proceeding into terrorism when they are already what we call
radicalized. That I think for us is a more productive way to
proceed.
Ms. Speier. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Ranking Member Speier. Now I turn to
the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Long.
Mr. Long. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. McCants, you were
talking about most people are fireproof now to zero zero zero
zero, and you recommend to put out the fire first. How do you
go about putting that fire out as far as--I mean, is this the
type of thing the FBI is involved in, that it is doing now?
Mr. McCants. Yes, sir. That is exactly what I mean. I think
it is their job to identify where this material on-line is
being most intensively discussed and distributed to figure out
who is behind those discussions and that distribution and then
to watch them, watch them carefully to see if they are going to
connect with people that are engaged in actual criminal
activity or if they may decide like a Zachary Chesser from this
area to go off and fight for a terrorist organization. But they
are the ones, at least domestically, who are best placed to
keep tabs on what is happening on-line.
Mr. Long. Following that up, by you are saying that we need
better research, and you can research anything on the internet,
you can find out how many 6-foot-2, blond-headed, left-handed
people, with one blue eye and one green eye go to certain
websites. So what is the problem with the research?
Mr. McCants. I think at the moment a lot of the research is
either focused on the content of the propaganda or it is
focused on people that are already about to engage in criminal
activity and the sort of thing I am interested in is finding
that smoke trail. For example, Ayman Zawahiri comes out with a
statement, I think he did so recently, just track it on-line,
figure out which forums has it gone to, who has been sharing it
with one another----
Mr. Long. Why is that difficult? Like I say, why is the
research so difficult?
Mr. McCants. I don't think the research is difficult. It s
a matter of having the manpower and the interest in doing it.
So far, that has been lacking.
Mr. Long. Okay. Then Mr. Weisburd, Inspire magazine, is it
deceased along with al-Awlaki, or is it still a publication?
Mr. Weisburd. The name Inspire magazine can certainly be
revived. It would probably require somebody in al-Qaeda in
Arabian Peninsula giving permission at least for that to happen
since it was their product. But Inspire magazine was really the
culmination of some years of work both on the part of Mr. Al-
Awlaki and the part of Mr. Khan. As I said, neither of these
gentlemen is easy to replace. The skills required to produce,
to gather together the content to turn out a magazine on a
regular basis are nontrivial. Certainly the hardware, the
computers that they using to produce it for all I know were in
the vehicle they were in when it was hit by the missile. So you
have none of the little bits and pieces that turn out to be a
magazine at the end of the day.
It could be revived. I don't believe it would be the same
because of the quality of the personnel who were involved in
the original incarnation should there be further incarnations
of it. But as a thing in itself and as an expression of al-
Awlaki and Khan and what they were doing, as I said, that
Inspire magazine is deceased.
Mr. Long. Al-Awlaki will be so difficult to replace, and I
have heard that before from other people in testimony, but what
is your assessment? Why will he be as difficult as it seems? He
is pretty high-profile, and what was unique to him that would
prevent something like that from happening in the future?
Mr. Weisburd. He was particularly good at taking the core
message of what they describe as a global jihad and
synthesizing it and sort of speaking directly to his followers
in plain terms and language they could understand. You hear
that response from the people who followed him, that they
listened to Anwar al-Awlaki, and he made everything clear. The
rest of it was maybe a little more complicated, but you could
follow Anwar al-Awlaki's arguments.
The other thing to remember about al-Awlaki is that because
he worked in English first and foremost, his material was
accessible to everybody who doesn't read and write and speak
Arabic, which is a much larger potential audience for his
message because when it comes to people who are say in
Indonesia or people who are in Turkey or people who are in
Europe or the United States, English becomes the common
language, it is the language they use in on-line discourse, it
is on English language sites that they gather, it is on English
language sites that they collect. Among English-speaking
leading jihadists, there really is nobody who comes to mind
readily who has quite what al-Awlaki had.
Mr. Long. Thank you and I yield back.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Long. I now turn to the
gentleman from New York, Mr. Higgins.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of
things, one of the most influential forces in the entire world,
the Arab Spring of last year, amazingly was an 83-year-old
retired professor, former Harvard professor by the name of
Eugene Sharp. Eugene Sharp wrote a book called From
Dictatorship to Democracy. Because of social media, Twitter,
Facebook, YouTube, his ideas that were written and developed
over a 20-year period were available to young 20-year-olds,
revolutionaries in the streets of Tahrir Square in Egypt. I
think the point here is that when you look at social media,
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, these are all commodities. These
are tools of collaboration. The only thing that you can't
commoditize is the imagination that you bring to these tools of
collaboration.
In Tom Friedman's book, The World is Flat, one chapter is
dedicated to the whole notion, and he says that, the chapter is
called 11/9 or 9/11, on 11/9/1989 the Berlin Wall fell. We all
know what happened on 9/11. He says in a chapter of this book
that in 1999, two airlines were started because of the tools of
collaboration, social media, the ability to outsource services
that we never knew existed before. One was started by an
entrepreneur from Salt Lake City by the name of David Neeleman.
He started JetBlue airlines. He outsourced the establishment of
a new fleet of jets to an American company called Boeing. He
outsourced the financing of his new airline to American
financiers in the Southwest. He financed the reservation system
to housewives and retirees sitting in their homes in Salt Lake
City. You call JetBlue airlines and you are talking to a
retiree who is in his living room taking your reservation and
built one of the most successful airlines in the history of the
world.
But we also know from the 9/11 report another airline was
started in Kandahar, Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden. He
outsourced the planning of his plot to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
He outsourced the pilot training to small flight schools in
Miami. He outsourced the financing to financiers in United Arab
Emirates.
The point is that both airlines were designed to fly into
New York City, JetBlue to JFK to bring loved ones together, to
promote commerce, to be a force for good in the world, and al-
Qaeda into Lower Manhattan to exact a death and destruction
beyond human compensation.
The point is that these tools of collaboration are
available to everybody, for organization, for aspirational
purposes. What matters most and what is most elusive and most
difficult to deal with is the imagination that you bring to
these tools of collaboration and how do we as a free society
best influence whether or not the imagination brought to these
tools of collaboration that are available to everybody are for
good or evil?
I would just ask you to comment on that.
Mr. Jenkins. It is an interesting comparison although in
terms of 9/11, they were able to succeed because the al-Qaeda
of that day was a much more centralized enterprise, despite the
fact that it outsourced these various components. I mean Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed was in al-Qaeda's central core. They had
readily accessible training camps that brought from around the
world would-be jihadists a continuing talent show from which
they could select people for missions. The finances came into a
central point. In other words, there was a lot more centrality
and coordinating of possibilities in the al-Qaeda of 9/11 than
the al-Qaeda of today.
One of the things we have succeeded in doing in 10 years is
dispersing those training camps and pounding on that al-Qaeda
central core and dispersing this. So it is a very different
kind of organization today.
Can the these tools be used to attract all sorts of varying
talent? Yes. Samir Khan represents a new generation that came
along. Anwar al-Awlaki did. If you cast the net broadly, they
are--and this is one of the dangers that the internet does
propose--you can cast your net very, very broadly. It may be
low-yield ore, but you are going to look to bring together some
talent here and there.
What they are having difficulty with, however, is still
creating or recreating that kind of connectivity that enables
them to carry out a strategic operation on the scale of 9/11.
So instead we get smaller-scale plots, smaller-scale attacks
and, as indicated by one of the other witnesses, even the
recognition that failure is a contribution to the cause. Now
that is lowering the threshold considerably.
We are going to be dealing with that for a long time. But I
think there has been progress in destroying their capacity to
carry out these kind of centrally directed operations.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Higgins. I turn to the gentleman
from Minnesota, Mr. Cravaack.
Mr. Cravaack. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the
panel, for being here today. I very much appreciate your
insight. It seems, and correct me if I am wrong, but it seems
at least right now that a social media is more an echo chamber
where people that are, like you said, Mr. Weisburd, is kind of
just feeding off of each other. Would that be a fair
assumption?
Mr. Weisburd. The jihadist forums in particular as opposed
to the later social media sites, say like Facebook or YouTube,
the forums are echo chamber, absolutely. Dissenting opinion is
simply not allowed. I think the reason why for example YouTube
is perceived as something of a risk is that people who are--it
is where jihadist content can be put in front of a mainstream
audience, and so there is always some concern that this content
is going to be appealing to some people who might otherwise not
be exposed to it, who have no idea where the jihadist forums
are, don't know where to go or cannot get into them. How great
a risk that is I think is easily overstated. As Mr. McCants
said, people tend to be, as he put it, fireproofed. There are
all these inhibitions in terms of getting involved in terrorist
activity. So I am not particularly alarmed about it. But I
would not think it fair to describe say YouTube as an echo
chamber. In terms of countermeasures it is useful to note that
as well because unlike on a jihadist forum where I can't
confront somebody with their extremism, on YouTube, YouTube is
not going to remove people on their website, users of their
website because they are too extreme, okay, YouTube is not
going to intervene in that. So you have the opportunity to
interact with people on a site like YouTube that you don't have
on the jihadist forums precisely because YouTube is not
controlled by al-Qaeda as opposed to the forums. So there is an
opportunity there.
Mr. Cravaack. Would both other panelists agree with that?
Mr. McCants. Yes, I would agree. It is striking to me that
after 10 years with two wars in the Middle East and all of the
turmoil that they have caused such a fertile field for
grievance to grow, and the growth of all of this social media
for people with these grievances to connect, and yet you still
have a very small number of people who are responding
positively to al-Qaeda's message, and of them an even smaller
slice that are willing and able to undertake violence. To me
that is what is striking about al-Qaeda supporters using social
media, is that, yes, they are connecting with one another, but
it is such a small number and they are able to undertake such
few attacks in this country.
Mr. Cravaack. Thank you. Mr. Jenkins, do you feel the same
way?
Mr. Jenkins. I would agree with that. Despite the
developments we have seen, the dramatic developments in the
internet in the last 10, 15 years, and despite this intense
retail campaign by al-Qaeda, and even recruiting of native-born
communicators who understand an American audience and can
communicate in an effective way, they are not selling a lot of
cars. I mean, as a marketing operation this is not really
working for them, and as I say, it may in fact be a
distraction.
Now, that doesn't mean, however, that we ought to be
sanguine about the future on this. This is something that
requires continued monitoring. One thing that we probably need
to be concerned about is that to what extent can they translate
those who have a desire to connect via the internet and to do
something but not to take the personal risks of carrying out a
bombing, what sort of malevolent mischief can they get up to on
the internet itself? Can they move from denial of service
attacks to, if they go in that direction, can they move in the
direction of even sabotage via the internet?
Right now I think that is a bit of a reach, but this is not
something that we ignore because we are doing well so far. I
think this is something that we have to continually watch, see
what the trends are and maintain our ability to try to
intercept it going in depending on what direction it goes in.
That doesn't mean shut down sites. What it means is that
our intelligence and our ability to operate in this new
technological environment has to be equal to theirs.
Mr. Cravaack. Thank you for your comments. Moving forward
then, what I am hearing from you is that we should monitor the
situation and use it as an intelligence-gathering operation.
Thank you, sir, and I am out of time. I yield back.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Cravaack. I just have one
follow-up question myself. Mr. Jenkins, you were talking about
an issue which did strike me as you were describing in your
earlier testimony the virtual, almost aspirational level in
which people can check in and check out of the conversation,
but in that virtual world the one connection that we have there
is to our infrastructure, to other kinds of things where they
are connected to the internet. What is the possibility or
likelihood of somebody continuing down that path and playing
the game, but for the first time they really are connecting to
infrastructure that we have here in the United States?
Mr. Jenkins. I wouldn't be able to comment on the
probability of that. That is a question that calls for
prophecy. But certainly we have to accept that as a possibility
and continue to watch this. If the internet and social media
are able to attract a large number of individuals, then there
are going to be among that people of diverse capabilities and
talents. So there is a possibility in a sense of if you have
that many coming in of a mutation in some direction that could
put us off running in a new direction. So we are dealing with
fast-moving technology and we are dealing with a large
population of individuals most of whom don't strap on bombs to
themselves, and that is the positive. But will they find other
ways of satisfying their desires to contribute beyond simply
talking about this? That is something we want to watch for. So
that becomes an intelligence concern as well.
Ms. Speier. Maybe just one last question, Mr. Chairman.
Based on what you have testified to, do we look at the five
guys from Virginia as just being unusual in that it appears
that they were radicalized on the internet and then went to
Pakistan to seek training, correct?
Mr. Weisburd. I think the key point of that is that they
were five guys who knew each other in the real world and then
they were also using the internet. But the fact that there was
a group of them who could come together and collectively get it
together to go off to Pakistan is the significant part. For one
individual to go off to Pakistan to try and go to a training
camp would be scary for that lone individual. It requires a lot
of courage basically to try and do something that risky. Five
individuals can collectively sort of get their act together to
go and try and do that. That is really I think the key. That is
what you look for in investigations. You are looking for people
who have some sort of group, you know who are part of a group
that is moving forward, because for an individual to engage in
terrorism it is much more difficult than for a group of people.
Organizations are much more effective than these disparate
groups.
Ms. Speier. All right. Thank you.
Mr. Meehan. I want to thank the witnesses for your valuable
testimony and the Members for their questions. The Members of
the committee may have some additional questions for witnesses.
We will ask if they do submit those to you, you do your best to
respond if you can. The hearing record will be open and held as
such for 10 days.
So without objection, the committee stands adjourned. Thank
you for your testimony.
[Whereupon, at 3:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Statement of Evan F. Kohlmann with Josh Lefkowitz and Laith Alkhouri
December 6, 2011
the antisocial network: countering the use of on-line social networking
technologies by foreign terrorist organizations
Though the term ``social networking'' tends to conjure up immediate
visions of Facebook and Twitter, the origins of the term are far less
humble. In the era before the existence of the internet, social
networking was the process of conventional human interaction that took
place in key locations like schools, marketplaces, religious centers,
and sports events. Consequently, for traditional terrorist
organizations like al-Qaeda's first generation, the critical social
networking hubs consisted of secretive guesthouses, a handful of
notoriously extremist mosques, and fixed training camps scattered
alongside the Afghan-Pakistani border.
In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the
United States, these conventional hubs were quickly targeted by the
United States and its allies. Under overwhelming pressure, training
camps were shut down, guesthouses raided, and notorious recruiters
jailed. Al-Qaeda Inc. was seemingly put out of business. Yet, as new
generations have come of age in the internet era, the al-Qaeda
organization has spread its on-line presence, establishing a tenacious
beachhead in cyberspace. In the face of constant pressure from U.S. law
enforcement and intelligence agencies, al-Qaeda has defiantly organized
a cabal of critical jihadi-oriented on-line social networking forums.
Likewise, its members, allies, and supporters heavily populate
conventional services like YouTube and Facebook. And for those who make
contact with groups like al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban through
these services, the reality is no less meaningful than having done so
in person. This is the primary emerging frontier of al-Qaeda
recruitment and financing.
In fact, the word ``emerging'' hardly captures the reality of what
is actually happening right now on the internet. Each week, new
internet personalities disappear from the web on a mission to live out
their outlandish jihadi fantasies. Flashpoint Global Partners has
identified at least 120 such individuals (including U.S. nationals) who
have graduated from being mere ``pajama-hideen'' to taking a real role
in terrorist activity over the past 7 years. Of these 120 hardcore
extremists, more than half are now dead--killed in a barrage of
Predator drone strikes, failed bomb-making activities, and in
gunbattles with the U.S. military and various other ``infidel''
adversaries. The numbers increase dramatically each month. On August
14, 2011, users on the radical ``Ansar al-Mujahideen'' chat forum were
notified that one of their fellow members, ``Hafid Salahudeen'', had
been killed in a U.S. drone missile attack in Pakistan's restive
Waziristan region along the Afghan border.\1\ Only 1 week later, on
August 23, 2011, another ``Ansar al-Mujahideen'' user ``Khattab 76''
was reported dead after clashes with the Egyptian military in the Sinai
Peninsula, where he had gone to ``fight the Zionists.''\2\ According to
Ansar forum administrators, inspired by what he saw on the web,
``Khattab 76'' had made several previous failed efforts to join al-
Qaeda in both Iraq and Afghanistan.\3\ On September 18, 2011,
moderators on al-Qaeda's premiere ``Shamukh'' web forum advised their
comrades that user ``Qutaiba'' had departed for Algeria to join al-
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). They quoted a final message from
him sent over the internet: ``I am here amongst the mujahideen in the
Islamic Maghreb . . . I advise my beloved ones to join the convoy
before it is too late . . . Your brothers in AQIM are waiting for
you.''\4\
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\1\ http://www.as-ansar.com/vb/showthread.php?t=46237. August 14,
2011.
\2\ http://www.as-ansar.com/vb/showthread.php?t=46873. August 23,
2011.
\3\ http://www.as-ansar.com/vb/showthread.php?t=46873. August 23,
2011.
\4\ http://www.shamikh1.info/vb/showthread.php?t=127866. September
18, 2011.
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Arguably, the most famous individual to self-recruit on the
internet using al-Qaeda's social networking websites was a young
Jordanian doctor named Humam al-Balawi (a.k.a. ``Abu Dujanah al-
Khorasani''). On December 30, 2009, al-Balawi--a former administrator
on top-tier al-Qaeda social networking forums--blew himself up at a
secret CIA base along the Afghan-Pakistani border.\5\ At the time, CIA
and Jordanian intelligence agents believed they had successfully
recruited al-Balawi as a double agent to help hunt down Dr. Ayman al-
Zawahiri and other top al-Qaeda figures. In fact, al-Balawi was
offering a starkly different perspective to his associates on the
jihadi web forums. In an interview published on al-Qaeda's ``Al-
Hesbah'' forum in September 2009, only 3 months previous, al-Balawi
appealed, ``How can I encourage people to join the jihad while I'm
staying away from it? . . . How do I become a burning wick for others
follow the light of? Can any sane person accept that? Not me.''\6\ As
for al-Qaeda's social networks, he crowed, ``I left behind on the
forums some brothers who are dearer to me than members of my own
family. When I meet any mujahid here who knows about the forums, I rush
to ask him who he knows from al-Hesbah--as he might be one of those
whom we loved in the cause of Allah, from amongst the administrators or
members, and I would hug him as one brother longing for another.''\7\
These now-prophetic warning signs were ignored by many at the time, who
dismissed al-Balawi's threats as merely inflated internet rhetoric. It
came at an enormous cost--seven CIA agents killed, including some of
the agency's top experts on al-Qaeda.
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\5\ Oppel, Richard A. Jr., Mark Mazetti, and Souad Mekhennet.
``Attacker in Afghanistan Was a Double Agent.'' New York Times. January
4, 2010.
\6\ ``Vanguards of Khorasan'' Magazine. Vol. 1; Issue 15 (September
2009).
\7\ ``Vanguards of Khorasan'' Magazine. Vol. 1; Issue 15 (September
2009).
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Al-Qaeda itself is well aware of the key role that jihadi web
forums are playing in recruiting a new generation of militants willing
to sacrifice themselves on its behalf. No longer are internet-based
social networks the exclusive domain of aspiring, would-be terrorist
neophytes. Indeed, the veteran Yemeni explosives expert accused by the
U.S. Government of helping organize al-Balawi's deadly suicide bombing
attack, Hussain al-Hussami, was likewise an active user on the Al-
Hesbah on-line forum.\8\ On October 1, 2009, he posted a request on the
forum on behalf of ``the Jalaludeen Haqqani Organization'': ``dear
brothers, I have some Shariah and military guides printed in the
Russian language, and I want to translate them into Arabic. If you can
assist me, whether with software, websites, or translators, may Allah
reward you generously.''\9\
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\8\ Baldor, Lolita and Matt Apuzzo. ``Top Al Qaeda Operative
Reportedly Killed In U.S. Drone Attack.'' Associated Press. March 17,
2010.
\9\ http://www.alfaloja.net/vb/showthread.php?t=86082. October 1,
2009.
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Recognition of the brave new world of terrorist communications and
recruitment has reached the highest echelons of al-Qaeda. In June 2010,
the group released an audio message from Shaykh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid--
third-in-command behind Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri--hailing
``my brothers--the shadowy knights of the [jihadi] media, a school
whose alumni includes the hero `Abu Dujanah al-Khorasani' . . . and
those who remain and continue their efforts and sacrifices'' and
calling on them ``to stand in the trench that Allah has chosen them for
their own well-being . . . You are the thundering voice of jihad, its
mighty arrows, and its roaring weapons that have caused so much concern
amongst politicians at the White House.''\10\ Yet, perhaps what is most
startling about this phenomenon is the sharp increase in the use of
brand-name U.S. commercial social networking services such as YouTube,
Twitter, and Facebook by terrorist organizations and their supporters.
On password-protected top-tier al-Qaeda web forums, contributors are
boasting that ``YouTube is among the most important media platforms in
supporting the mujahideen, as it is ranked third in the world with more
than 70 million daily visitors.''\11\ This is reflected in the
increasing occurrence of hardcore jihadi videos hosted by YouTube as
evidenced in Federal terrorism cases.
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\10\ As-Sahab Media Foundation. ``He Who Equips a Fighter Has Waged
Battle Himself, by the Mujahid Shaykh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid-May Allah
Accept Him.'' First released: June 15, 2010.
\11\ http://www.al-faloja.info/vb/showthread.php?t=62982. May 16,
2009.
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On February 1, 2011, Colleen R. LaRose (aka ``Jihad Jane'')
pled guilty to charges in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,
including conspiring to provide material support to
terrorists.\12\ LaRose was an unusually prolific presence on
YouTube; court documents highlighted a particular posting--
under the name ``JihadJane''--in which she indicated she was
``desperate to do something somehow to help'' suffering
Muslims.\13\
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\12\ ``Pennsylvania Woman Pleads Guilty in Plot to Recruit Violent
Jihadist Fighters and to Commit Murder Overseas''. U.S. Department of
Justice Press Release. February 1, 2011.
\13\ U.S. v. LaRose. Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Criminal No.
10-123. Superseding Indictment. Filed April 1, 2010.
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On February 24, 2011, Northern Virginia resident Zachary
Chesser was sentenced to 25 years in prison ``for communicating
threats against the writers of the South Park television show,
soliciting violent jihadists to desensitize law enforcement,
and attempting to provide material support to Al-Shabaab, a
designated foreign terrorist organization.''\14\ According to
court filings, ``Chesser . . . started his own YouTube.com
homepage, utilizing userID LearnTeachFightDie, where he posted
videos and hosted discussions. Chesser explained that this name
perfectly symbolized his philosophy at the time: Learn Islam,
teach Islam, fight for Islam, and die in the name of Islam . .
. ''. After closing that account, ``he then opened a YouTube
site utilizing user name AIQuranWaAlaHadeeth.''\15\
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\14\ ``Virginia Man Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison for Providing
Material Support and Encouraging Violent Jihadists to Kill U.S.
Citizens.'' U.S. Department of Justice Press Release. February 24,
2011.
\15\ U.S. v. Chesser. Eastern District of Virginia. Criminal No.
1:10mj504. Affidavit of FBI Special Agent Mary Brandt Kinder. Filed
July 21, 2010.
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Joseph Jeffrey Brice was charged in May 2011 for making and
detonating an Improvised Explosive Device--consisting of TATP,
APAN, and ANFO--along a highway in Washington State. According
to court filings, Brice--who was seriously injured in the
blast--set up a YouTube channel that ``was used to post videos
that depicted the use of explosives. Some of these videos
contained the embedded logo of the Al-TawhidWal Jihad (al-Qaeda
in Iraq) and a jihad chant soundtrack, known as Nashid . . .
two of them depicted the use of explosives in the Clarkston,
Washington vicinity.'' He also posted numerous comments on
YouTube. For example, on January 8, 2011, in response to the
shooting of Congresswoman Gifford, he wrote, `` . . . as long
as it's one more dead American kuffar, what difference does it
make to me if she is a democrat or a gop?'' On December 27,
2010, he wrote, ``NPED [non-primary explosives detonator] can
now be purchased in most states legally through pyrotechnic
dealers.''\16\
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\16\ Re: 538 Riverview Boulevard No. 3. Clarkston, WA. 99403.
Affidavit of FBI Special Agent Leland C. MeEuen. May 6, 2011.
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On December 2, 2011, Virginia resident Jubair Ahmad pled
guilty to providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba
(LeT).\17\ According to DOJ, ``in September 2010, Jubair
produced and uploaded a propaganda video to YouTube on behalf
of LeT, after communications with a person named `Talha.' In a
subsequent conversation with another person, Jubair identified
Talha as Talha Saeed, the son of LeT leader Hafiz Mohammed
Saeed. Talha and Jubair allegedly communicated about the
images, music, and audio that Jubair was to use to make the
video. The final video contained images of LeT leader Hafiz
Saeed, so-called jihadi martyrs, and armored trucks exploding
after having been hit by improvised explosive devices.''\18\
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\17\ ``Pakistani National Living in Woodbridge Pleads Guilty to
Providing Material Support to Terrorist Organization.'' U.S. Department
of Justice Press Release. December 2, 2011.
\18\ ``Woodbridge Man Charged with Providing Material Support to
Terrorist Organization''. U.S. Department of Justice Press Release.
September 2, 2011.
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Nor has this phenomenon been limited to the United States. In the
United Kingdom, a 21-year-old woman, Roshanara Choudhry, made headlines
in May 2010 when she stabbed and attempted to assassinate British MP
Stephen Timms at a community center in East London. According to
British authorities, ``When interviewed by police, Choudhry said she
stabbed Mr Timms because he voted for the Iraq war and she wanted to
achieve `punishment' and `to get revenge for the people of Iraq'.''\19\
In her police interview, she explained that she ``wanted to be a
martyr'' because ``that's the best way to die.'' She further told the
interviewer that she had adopted that perspective after listening to
lectures by Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in a U.S.
drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. Asked how she found out about
al-Awlaki, she explained, ``On the internet . . . if you go on YouTube,
there's a lot of his videos there and if you do a search they just come
up. I wasn't searching for him, I just came across him. I used to watch
videos that people used to put up about like how they became
Muslim.''\20\
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\19\ ``Woman sentenced to life imprisonment for attempted murder of
MP''. Metropolitan Police Service Press Release. November 3, 2010.
\20\ Roshonara Choudhry police interview. Interview conducted on
May 14, 2010, in Forest Gate police station.
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It is often forgotten that YouTube is not merely a video hosting
site, but also a formidable social networking forum. Contributors can
draw the attention of registered subscribers who then are able to
comment on video uploads and communicate back and forth with the
original source. Users subscribe to each other's feeds based on mutual
interests--in this case, various aspects of al-Qaeda and violent
extremism. The process is so efficient and precise that it has
repeatedly attracted the interest of the Pakistani Taliban, not merely
to spread propaganda, but also to engage in a dialogue with viewers and
even recruit those interested in joining a foreign terrorist
organization. On December 9, 2009, five young Muslim-American men from
the Washington, DC area were arrested by authorities in the Pakistani
town of Sargodha. The men were accused of attempting to join al-Qaeda
forces on the Afghan-Pakistani border. According to a Pakistani police
report quoted by ABC News and the New York Times, a Taliban recruiter
first made contact with the group via Ahmed Abdullah Minni, who had
``repeatedly posted comments on YouTube praising videos showing attacks
on American troops.''\21\ The 20-year-old Minni had allegedly ``become
a regular feature'' on YouTube with his campaign of on-line vitriol--so
much so that a Pakistani Taliban recruiter known as ``Saifullah'' took
an interest and began writing back to him.\22\
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\21\ Shane, Scott. ``Web Posts Began Tale of Detained Americans.''
New York Times. December 14, 2009.
\22\ See: ``Interrogation Report: Profiles of the Foreigners
held''. Abbas Majeed Khan Marwat PSP, ASP/UT SARGODHA. Available at:
http://a.abcnews.com/images/Blotter/ht_interrogation_report_091211.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Pakistani Taliban carried on their brazen recruitment campaign
using YouTube in May 2010. Within days of a failed car bombing in Times
Square, New York by Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American recruited by
the Pakistani Taliban, the group published a video recording featuring
its leader Hakimullah Mehsud boasting of its role in the would-be
attack.\23\ The video was posted by an official Taliban on-line courier
``TehreekeTaliban'' registered as a contributor on YouTube, who engaged
in a back-and-forth discussion with critics and supporters in the
comment section on the video. One respondent asked, ``what is he
saying? Can someone translate?'' The courier replied, ``subtitles are
in English, you can easily understand inshaALLAH.'' When another viewer
condemned the Taliban for their role in the Times Square incident,
``TehreekeTaliban'' insisted, ``I would recommend you to read Quran
again with good translation and . . . to do learn . . . from a good
shaykh like Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki. You can download his lectures from
net, just search google.''\24\
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\23\ http://www.youtube.com/user/TehreekeTaliban. May 2, 2010.
\24\ http://www.youtube.com/user/TehreekeTaliban. May 2, 2010.
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As the social networking website Facebook has quickly become a
ubiquitous part of many Americans' on-line activity, it too has enjoyed
increased significance as an amplifier for violent extremist viewpoints
and a way for al-Qaeda supporters to identify each other and build
budding relationships. In March 2010, one user on al-Qaeda's then-
preeminent ``Fallujah Islamic Network'' appealed, ``the least we can do
to support the Mujahideen is to distribute their statements and
releases.'' He added, ``we wish from the brothers to also distribute
the statement via Youtube and widely . . . and on Facebook.''\25\ The
user offered a cautionary note about using Facebook: ``the suggested
method is to always access it via proxy, otherwise you're in danger.
Make one e-mail on Yahoo that's dedicated for the [on-line] battle
only. After creating the email, register on Facebook under an pseudonym
with the email you created, and via which the account will be
activated. Search for all the profiles and groups.''\26\
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\25\ http://www.al-faloja.info/vb/showthread.php?t=105942. March 6,
2010.
\26\ http://www.al-faloja.info/vb/showthread.php?t=105942. March 6,
2010.
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Like YouTube, the role of Facebook in terrorism investigations can
be charted as it increasingly surfaces as evidence in Federal criminal
indictments. In December 2010, Baltimore resident Antonio Martinez was
charged with plotting to attack an Armed Forces recruiting station in
Catonsville, Maryland. As recounted in a press release from the U.S.
Department of Justice, ``Martinez was arrested . . . after he attempted
to remotely detonate what he believed to be explosives in a vehicle
parked in the Armed Forces recruiting station parking lot.''\27\
According to the USDOJ:
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\27\ ``Maryland Man Charged in Plot to Attack Armed Forces
Recruiting Center''. U.S. Department of Justice Press Release. December
8, 2010.
``On September 29, 2010, Martinez publicly posted on his Facebook
account a statement calling for violence to stop the oppression of
Muslims, and that on October 1, 2010, he publicly posted a message
stating that he hates any person who opposes Allah and his prophet . .
. On October 8, 2010, an FBI confidential source (CS) brought these
public postings to the attention of the FBI. On October 10, 2010, in
response to these postings, the CS began communicating with Martinez
through Facebook . . . During Martinez' discussions with the CS over
Martinez' Facebook page, Martinez wrote that he wanted to go to
Pakistan or Afghanistan, that it was his dream to be among the ranks of
the mujahideen, and that he hoped Allah would open a door for him
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because all he thinks about is jihad.''
Additionally, on October 17, 2011, Martinez allegedly posted the
following on his Facebook page: ``I love Sheikh Anwar al Awalki for the
sake of ALLAH. A real inspiration[sic] for the Ummah, I dont care if he
is on the terrorist list! May ALLAH give him Kireameen.'' Court filings
further note that his Facebook ``Friends'' included ``two radical
Islamist websites affiliated with a radical group called Revolution
Muslim: Call to Islam--a United Kingdom-based on-line movement
dedicated to the implementation of Sharia law world-wide (as stated on
its website); and Authentic Tawheed--a pro-jihad group providing links
on its website to materials put out by known terrorists such as Anwar
al-Aulaqi.''\28\
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\28\ U.S. v. Antonio Martinez. District of Maryland. Case No. 10-
4761 JKB. Complaint. Filed December 8, 2010 and U.S. v. Antonio
Martinez. District of Maryland. Case No. 10-4761 JKB. Government
Response to Defendant's Motions to Dismiss Indictment and Suppress
Statements and Seized Evidence. Filed September 27, 2011.
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There is no doubt that YouTube and Facebook have been making
genuine efforts in an attempt to thwart the on-line activities of al-
Qaeda supporters and violent extremists. However, a quick search for
jihadi videos on YouTube is a fairly compelling demonstration that
these efforts have thus far been insufficient in addressing the
problem. On-line jihadists have reacted with mirth at YouTube's overly-
optimistic strategy of relying on its own users to self-police and help
to flag individual illicit contributions. The service has, in fact,
added a category to its content feedback flags labeled ``Promotes
terrorism''--that which is ``intended to incite violence . . . This
means . . . videos on things like instructional bomb making . . . [or]
sniper attacks. Any depictions of such content . . . shouldn't be
designed to help or encourage others to imitate them.''\29\ Repeated
violations can lead to a user being kicked off YouTube, whose stated
policy is that ``if your account is terminated you are prohibited from
creating any new accounts.''\30\ Nonetheless, there is minimal
enforcement of this policy and users with terminated accounts often
simply create new accounts under different user names, many of which
are only minor variations of their blocked accounts. A user on al-
Qaeda's top-tier ``Fallujah Islamic Network'' instructed his associates
in May 2009 that if on-line adversaries start to ``search for jihad
clips . . . so that users can vote to delete them . . . then we must
make them pull out their hair by re-uploading deleted scenes,
commenting on them, and supporting them. Remember that YouTube is the
biggest media podium, so the jihad videos should appear right in the
face of those who enter it.''\31\
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\29\ http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/
answer.py?hl=en&answer=139838. Last accessed December 2, 2011.
\30\ http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines. Last accessed
December 2, 2011.
\31\ http://www.al-faloja.info/vb/showthread.php?t=62982. May 16,
2009.
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YouTube and its parent company Google have defended their seeming
inability to prevent their video sharing service from being manipulated
by al-Qaeda supporters and other violent extremists. According to
YouTube, ``More than 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute.''\32\
Due to the sheer volume of new videos being posted each day, YouTube
asserts it is ``simply not possible'' to prescreen content \33\ and
thus relies on its user community to flag inappropriate material. Yet,
with this amount of incoming new material, it is equally fanciful to
assume that YouTube's user community possesses the subject matter
expertise or contextual background to effectively block the spread of
violent extremist content. Without some sort of automated filtering
process, it does not seem realistic to believe that the use of YouTube
by terrorists and jihadi extremists will begin to decrease.
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\32\ http://www.youtube.com/t/faq. Last accessed December 2, 2011.
\33\ Benett, Brian. ``YouTube is Letting Users Decide on Terrorism-
Related Videos.'' Los Angeles Times. December 12, 2010.
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If Google is indeed serious about addressing this problem, the
company should start by leveraging its own existing technological
solutions to ensure known violent extremist content is not distributed
via YouTube. A quick comparison with how YouTube manages copyright
violations is instructive. YouTube utilizes a system called ``Content
ID'' whereby ``Rights holders deliver YouTube reference files (audio-
only or video) of content they own, metadata describing that content,
and policies on what they want YouTube to do when we find a match. We
compare videos uploaded to YouTube against those reference files. Our
technology automatically identifies your content and applies your
preferred policy: Monetize, track, or block.''\34\ Users deemed to be
acting in violation of copyright law are ``required to attend `YouTube
Copyright School,' which involves watching a copyright tutorial and
passing a quiz to show that you've paid attention and understood the
content before uploading more content to YouTube.''\35\ It is hardly a
great jump in logic to apply this same strategy to the large, but
hardly unmanageable subset of notorious open-source terrorist
propaganda videos--archives of which are maintained by private
organizations like Flashpoint Global Partners. YouTube has been able to
effectively block the majority of pornographic video contributions,
reportedly through the use of specific algorithms; similar algorithms
should be developed to stem the flow of violent extremist content.
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\34\ http://www.youtube.com/t/contentid. Last accessed December 2,
2011.
\35\ http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/04/youtube-copyright-
education-remixed.html. Last accessed December 2, 2011.
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In a further development, YouTube's parent Google has recently
acquired Pitt-Patt, a Carnegie-Mellon spin-off that is considered to
have market-leading facial recognition software.\36\ This technology
can theoretically be leveraged to identify offending video content and
user profile photos that match those of known terrorists, leading to at
least an automatic flagging--if not full deregistration--of the
account. Avatar images featuring depictions of high-profile terrorists,
such as Usama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, or the watermarked logos
of groups such as Shabaab al-Mujahideen and al-Qaeda in Iraq, are
unfortunately nowadays common on YouTube. However, when paired with the
right image recognition filter, these watermarks and avatars can
provide a powerful, effective roadmap to identify suspect contributors
engaged in illicit activity. Similar technology could potentially also
be deployed with similar effect by Facebook, Twitter, and other
commercial social networking services beset with infiltration by
supporters of violent extremism.
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\36\ http://www.pittpatt.com. Last accessed December 2, 2011.
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If real progress is to be made towards cleansing on-line social
networks of terrorists and their supporters, the U.S. Congress must
bring pressure to bear on commercial providers who are themselves being
victimized in the process to start acting more like aggrieved victims
instead of nonchalant bystanders. While any proposed curbs on the
freedom of speech should always naturally give one cause for a moment's
hesitation, in this case, it is unclear why official terrorist
recruitment material is any less of an odious concern for YouTube or
Facebook than pornography. Unfortunately, current U.S. law gives few
incentives for companies like YouTube for volunteering information on
illicit activity, or even cooperating when requested by U.S. law
enforcement. If such companies are to be trusted to self-police their
own professed commitments to fighting hate speech, then they must be
held to a public standard which reflects the importance of that not
unsubstantial responsibility.