Fergie's Tech Blog

Chertoff: Web Could Be Terror Training Camp

I'm not exactly sure why this article disturbs me, but it does.

It's not that the Internet can be (and sometimes is) used by radicals to disseminate potentially damaging idealisms, but more that the scare tactics associated with the "War on Terror" seems to be edging towards more and more efforts to curb Internet privacies, and erode freedoms of ideals and speech (and enable more surveillance opportunities).

Via Reuters.

Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday.

"We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet," Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.

"They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination," Chertoff said. "Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites."

posted by Fergie @ 10/17/2006 09:49:00 AM