British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith recently highlighted plans to identify and remove websites responsible for promoting terrorism. Speaking at a conference on radicalization and political violence she stated, “where there is illegal material on the Net, I want it removed.” Further, Ms. Smith compared the battle against Islamic extremism and the effort to deny jihadist groups an online haven to organize and recruit to the campaign against online pedophiles and child pornography.
Comparing Child Pornography to Jihadist Propaganda
On the surface this analogy is enticing and the goal of eliminating jihadist propaganda from the Internet is warranted. However, a simplistic comparison between child pornographers and jihadist terrorists is fraught with problems. Additionally, any attempt to remove jihadist websites will likely not drive jihadist from the Internet, instead it will likely force them “underground” in cyberspace.
Although both child pornographers and jihadist terrorists make use of the Internet, each group does so for different reasons. First, child pornographers make use of the Internet as a means to share and disseminate pornography and are not necessarily engaged in a “war of ideas” to win new recruits and gain acceptance for their “lifestyle.”
In contrast, jihadist terrorists make use of the Internet to disseminate propaganda that is designed to engender support and win new recruits to the jihadist cause. Additionally, jihadist propaganda is also designed to weaken the resolve of its adversaries. Finally, jihadist terrorists also use the Internet to discuss strategy and tactics, as well as coordinate future terrorist attacks.
The Folly of Shutting Down Sites
Therefore, an overly aggressive pursuit of jihadist websites may reduce the output of propaganda and slow down an engine of recruitment, but it may also blind our own insights into jihadist strategies, targeting preferences, and tactics – information crucial to our counterterrorism efforts.
It must also be noted that jihadist operatives will likely continue to make use of the Internet even if the network of jihadist websites is disabled. Although it may be more difficult to disseminate propaganda to a broad audience without these jihadist websites, operatives would still be able to make use of other online technologies to communicate. For example, encryption programs like the Mohajedeen Secrets could be used to secure communications and messages could be emailed via anonymization services. An increased use of these less observable online technologies would likely retard the ability of intelligence and law enforcement officials to monitor and disrupt emergent jihadist operational cells.
As such, an overly aggressive campaign that attempts to shut down every known jihadist website may be counter productive. However, a more selective campaign designed to disrupt operational jihadist cells use of the Internet may bear fruit.
A Way Forward
Instead of shutting down every jihadist website another approach would be to infiltrate the network of jihadist websites. Websites that cannot be infiltrated should be removed, as the members of these sites will likely join other infiltrated websites. Simply, the goal should be intelligence gathering not a vain ill-fated attempt to “cleanse” the Internet.
