Fergie's Tech Blog

Internet vigilantes doing more harm tham good?

Brad Stone writes in his weekly Plain Text column in Newsweek:

Freelance counterterrorist Aaron Weisburd is not an employee of any of the three-letter federal agencies. He works alone in his attic in Carbondale, Ill., far from the hotbeds of terrorist activity. Yet for the last three years, the 41-year-old computer programmer has been obsessively monitoring dark corners of the Internet such as Qal3ah.org, the Web site where, last week, a group called the Secret Organization for Al Qaeda’s Jihad in Europe placed a dubious claim of responsibility for the London bombings that took at least 52 lives.

Weisburd is the creator of Internet Haganah, a self-proclaimed "global open-source intelligence network dedicated to confronting Internet use by Islamist terrorist organizations, their supporters, enablers and apologists." In other words, he’s an Internet vigilante. When terrorists emerge on the Web with beheading videos, propaganda or recruitment pitches, Weisburd—or any of his dozen, virtual colleagues around the country—move quickly to get them booted out of cyberspace. This makes Weisburd either a hero or a nuisance, depending on your point of view.

posted by Fergie @ 7/17/2005 09:45:00 AM