In the same way that terrorist groups establish a physical presence in states with permissive or otherwise weak governments, they also seek permissive web site hosting service providers to establish a virtual presence in cyberspace.
TRC has noted instances in which web site hosting service providers have willingly hosted an array of extremist and other types of dangerous content. In one case, TRC noted that a Dallas, Texas-based web site hosting service provider was host to both white nationalist and Islamic extremist web sites . More recently, TRC has observed that Telekom Malaysia , touted as “Malaysia’s Number One provider of information communication technologies,” is host to a variety of Islamic extremist web sites and one high profile web site involved in organizing the activities of the cyber criminal underworld.
Telekom Malaysia has hosted sites connected to Hamas , the Chechen Rebels , the Russian cyber criminal underworld, and Islamic hacking groups. That these groups use the same service provider does not signal a deeper connection among these groups, however. Rather, these groups use Telekom Malaysia because of its permissive hosting policy. Oother providers with equally permissive hosting policies exist; the Internet is littered with extremist and otherwise dangerous content.
Blacklists as the Middle Ground
Many dangerous sites are hosted by a subset of service providers?some of which are outside US legal jurisdiction. However, that many of these dangerous sites can be traced back to a few providers may aid in creating a solution to the problem of perilous content on the Internet.
As all the extremist and otherwise objectionable sites hosted by the same service provider share an IP address within the same range of addresses, it would be easy to create a blacklist that blocks access to those dangerous sites. In the case of Telekom Malaysia, many of the extremist and otherwise dangerous sites are assigned an IP address between the range of 202.75.32.0 and 202.75.63.255. Therefore, the US government could legislate that all US-based Internet service providers blacklist this range of IP addresses.
This proposed solution finds a middle ground between those who advocate attacking and taking offline extremist web sites and those who argue that sites should remain on-line without disruption to permit talk over action and to allow for monitoring. Letting these sites stay on-line risks providing inspiration and guidance to future terrorists and criminals. Whereas, shutting sites down risks losing the ability to gather valuable intelligence on the strategic mindset of the extremist and criminal groups worldwide.
The middle ground in this debate is blacklisting sites. Blacklisting helps prevents proliferating extremism and training material among a wider audience. At the same time, it does not take these sites offline and, therefore, allows law enforcement and intelligence officials to continue to gather valuable intelligence on extremist and criminal groups.
