It is widely known that al-Qaeda and its broader ideological movement uses the Internet to disseminate propaganda, train members and sympathizers, raise funds, and exercise command and control over its amorphous network. While al-Qaeda uses the Internet to achieve all of the above goals, TRC analysts believe that the overriding purpose of al-Qaeda?s Internet presence is to combine ideological propaganda with terrorist training material. The propaganda is typically designed to indoctrinate potential followers and create a fertile ground of potential recruits. The training materials are typically designed to aid those committed followers in the planning and execution of a terrorist attack. Easy access to propaganda and training materials creates the necessary pre-conditions to al-Qaeda?s stated vision of a worldwide network of self-generating terrorist cells.
It is important to note that al-Qaeda?s goal of inspiring self-generating terrorist cells relies on the wide dissemination of its propaganda and training materials. As a result, it makes little sense for it to hide its web operations. If al-Qaeda were to hide its web operations then it would be difficult for those individuals with no existing connections to the terrorist group to find the materials necessary to form a terrorist cell from scratch. As a result, it should come as no surprise that many of al-Qaeda?s web sites are relatively easy to find on-line.
In addition to relying on its network of fixed web sites al-Qaeda has relied on a strategy of ?piggy backing? on other free web-based resources. For example, al-Qaeda operatives and sympathizers have relied heavily on a number of file sharing web sites. These web sites, such as www.yousendit.com, www.sendspace.com, and other sites, allow users to upload and share files with other Internet users. For example, the associated image shows a typical posting on an al-Qaeda affiliated web site. This particular posting includes a link to a shared file on the sendspace.com website. One of the main reasons that al-Qaeda operatives and sympathizers rely on these free file-sharing services is to lighten the load placed on the groups fixed web sites by preserving bandwidth. Typically, the files uploaded by operatives and sympathizers are rather large multimedia files such as video and audio files. These multimedia files consume large amounts of bandwidth that al-Qaeda affiliated site administrators must either pay for or steal. Moreover, should one of al-Qaeda?s fixed sites disappear operatives and sympathizers will still have access the multimedia propaganda hosted on the external network of file sharing sites.
While the dispersal of al-Qaeda propaganda across a network of seemingly innocuous web sites appears to be a challenge for western law enforcement and intelligence officials, it should instead be viewed as an opportunity. For example, al-Qaeda?s reliance on file sharing services provides the intelligence community with an excellent opportunity to gather intelligence on al-Qaeda?s network of operatives and sympathizers. Specifically, the intelligence community could establish its own file sharing service and lure al-Qaeda operatives and sympathizers into using this service. Should this occur, intelligence officials would have easy access not only to newly released al-Qaeda propaganda but the IP address and potentially the geographic location of the al-Qaeda operative or sympathizer responsible for uploading the propaganda.