Al-Qaeda First Terrorist Group In Cyberspace?

Reading the following article, I can’t help but be overwhelmed with the sense that the U.S. Military is way behind the power curve when it comes to fighting this war on the Internet… And, don’t get me started on that comment about Al-Qaeda being the first terrorist group to go from physical space to cyberspace – that started back when the porn industry discovered the Internet…

U.S. Army: Enemy Posting How-To Manuals Online
5,000 Terrorist Web Sites Estimated
By MARK A. KELLNER, Arlington, Va.
Defense News

Al–Qaida and other terrorist organizations have created “more than 5,000 Web sites” that both spread jihadist messages and contain detailed instructions about how to attack targets in the Middle East and elsewhere, Lt. Gen. Steven Boutelle, the U.S. Army’s chief information officer, told the Association of the United States Army’s Institute of Land Warfare breakfast on April 11.
“Al-Qaida is the first terrorist movement to go from physical space to cyberspace” in its warfare, said Boutelle, who retires from the Army in August.

He noted that one report said there was “a notebook computer under the arm of every second” member of the group, headed by Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden, as it fled Afghanistan during the 2001 American invasion.

“Instead of [each member] carrying incriminating information, it’s all online,” Boutelle said. Such Internet-enabled terrorism is “probably the greatest threat to this nation since the Civil War.”

Moreover, he added, suggestions that the Army move to somehow block Internet Web sites such as “Jihad Unspun”, which posts, among other items, videos of attacks on coalition forces “in theater,” may be unrealistic.

“How can you block what your enemy does?” he asked.

Instead, Boutelle suggested mining the data available from such sites and other sources.

At the same time, he conceded, “we’ve got systems that are gathering a terabyte of information a day — how do you sort [all of] it?” He said a terabyte is equal to “one-sixteenth” of the contents of the Library of Congress, and that the Army is at a “20 percent to 30 percent level” of effectiveness in mining that incoming information, versus what he said is a 75 percent to 80 percent effectiveness rate in building out the service’s networks.

After his presentation, Boutelle said the Army is not — despite contrary media reports — mulling the creation of a new major command for cyberwarfare that would parallel the November designation of the Eighth U.S. Air Force wing as that service’s “cybercommand.” For the Army, the Network Enterprise Technology Command, NETCOM, under the direction of Brig. Gen. Carroll Pollett, also commanding general of the Ninth Army Signal Corps, “does our role,” Boutelle said.

“We have it, we are now engaged [in cyberspace], it is a separate major command,” Boutelle said.

While the Army has its mechanisms in place, Boutelle told the AUSA breakfast audience, “we need to get our head in this ballgame of instant messaging, SMS [short message service] and Web sites,” since “everything has changed because of the network world.”

He cited the rise of such Web sites as “IslamicYouTube” as well as general social networking sites including Second Life, as items which the military needs to be aware of: “You owe it to yourself to see what is being said about you, and it is being put out to billions of people” online.

“We’ve got to understand how this world is driven,” he said.

Part of gaining that understanding, Boutelle said, is his office’s creation of an “Enabling Battle Command Workshop,” a two-day seminar program being given to all Army general officers as well as other senior leaders. Asked if industry personnel could participate in that course, Boutelle said that since “it involves a lot of the three-letter agencies, the answer is probably no.”

At the same time, Boutelle asserted, the Army should move towards more collaborative means of online working, since “all of us are smarter than any of us.” He said Army officers — who are still taking notes during joint training sessions while their European colleagues are collaborating over the Internet and using Skype to stream seminars back home — are learning to work collaboratively, in part via seminars Boutelle is teaching at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
Boutelle’s successor, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, most recently deputy for acquisition and systems management in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, said that while his “biggest concern” is over systems architecture issues, to “make sure we can synchronize” data, cyberwarfare will be an area he plans to deal with.

“I was in military intelligence,” Sorenson noted, including a post as the Army’s program executive officer for tactical missiles.

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