Product Description

Terrorists fight their wars in cyberspace as well as on the ground. However, while politicians and the media have hotly debated the dangers of terrorists sabotaging the Internet, surprisingly little is known about terrorists’ actual use of the Internet.

In this timely and eye-opening volume, Gabriel Weimann reveals that terrorist organizations and their supporters maintain hundreds of websites, taking advantage of the unregulated, anonymous, and accessible nature of the Internet to target an array of messages to diverse audiences. Drawing on a seven-year study of the World Wide Web, the author examines how modern terrorist organizations exploit the Internet to raise funds, recruit members, plan and launch attacks, and publicize their chilling results. Weimann also investigates the effectiveness of counterterrorism measures and warns that this cyberwar may cost us dearly in terms of civil rights.

Illustrated with numerous examples taken from terrorist websites, Terror on the Internet offers the definitive introduction to this emerging and dynamic arena. Weimann lays bare the challenges we collectively face in confronting the growing and increasingly sophisticated terrorist presence on the Net. A publication of the United States Institute of Peace, distributed by Potomac Books, Inc.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #241032 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781929223718
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Publisher
Describes how terrorist organizations use the Internet to coordinate group action and publicize their ideology and their successes.

Assesses the cyberterrorist threat we face.

Suggests how to balance the competing concerns for cyber security and civil liberties.

About the Author
Gabriel Weimann is a professor of communications at the University of Haifa, Israel, and a former senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. A prolific analyst of terrorism and the mass media, his publications include five books, among them Communicating Unreality: Mass Media and Reconstruction of Realities and The Theater of Terror: The Mass Media and International Terrorism. He lives in Israel.

Customer Reviews

not for physical sabotage
Weimann's book is a good antidote to those oft-hysterical screeds on cyberterrorism. These might proclaim that nefarious scoundrels could launch attacks across the Internet, to disable power plants or chemical refineries. While not impossible, the technical obstacles are vast. Such fears are really warmed-over Y2K hysteria, transferred to terrorism after the Y2K bust and the events of September 2001.

Instead, Weimann points to more prosaic uses of the Internet by terrorists. [Sorry to disappoint some potential readers.] These mundanities involve communication between cell members, propaganda and fund raising. The first two are shown to be far easier than in the pre-Web era. Anonymous email accounts and an increasingly deep global reach of cybercafes and other Internet access points give what can be effectively anonymous communication. This reach of the Internet is true in developed countries and in the major cities of developing countries. Terrorists can operate in both, as is already known.

The use of a website to spread a terrorist message, to enemies and supporters, is also amply documented in the book. Far safer and more effective to those groups than having a smarmy member pass out flyers in bad neighbourhoods.

One conclusion is that for purely pragmatic reasons, terrorists have little incentive to attack the Internet itself. It's simply too useful to them.

A Very Frightening Book
I had heard that the various terrorist organizations around the world were using the Internet as a communications medium. But until I saw this book I never realized just how widespread that use is. The book says that they have identified some 4,300 web sites belonging to terrorist organizations. It further says that to keep the sites up they change URLs and hosting companies every few days. That would make sense as keeping it up very long would attract counter terrorist organizations pretty rapidly. The book does not give the URLs of very many sites, but if they change frequently, it wouldn't make sense to list expired URLs.

There seem to be three main uses of the Internet:

o to distribute information. The old days of publishing phamplets and the like are replaced by web sites that can be moved around from country to country with the speed of light. The new URLs could well be posted on the site. If you have a site hosted in Tahiti and run it for three days, then you shift it to Kenya it would be hard to track. The information on the site could be anything from a video of Osama to instructions on how to make a bomb.

o Research for Targets. I suspect a lot of companies, organizations and the like have their disaster plans on the net, a map on how to get to them, all kinds of stuff useful to a terrorist.

o Inter organization communications. If I am travelling I often go to a public library somewhere to check my e-mail. So do they.

Then there is the risk of cyber-terrorism. Beyond the normal malicious hackers, there's the opportunity for terrorists to do the same sort of thing with viruses and worms. This appears to be a potential use rather than a real one -- so far.

This is a frightening book. It clearly shows the result of a lot of research, and discusses things that the terrorists know but that the rest of us need to know.

Thinking about Terror
This is a comprehensive study of the Internet, how it is used by terrorist group--not just Islamic terrorists or al-Qaeda, but also the IRA, and South American terrorist groups as well--and what measures are being taken to combat the growing use of the Internet by terrorists. Perhaps the most valuable portion of the book is the discussion of civil liberties and tracking/surveillance of the Internet. Mr. Weimann does an excellent job of pointing out the problems inherent on both sides of the issue, but does more than that--he offers solutions to the questions he raises. A bit outdated, the Patriot Act update was not yet passed by Congress when this book went to press. Many of the concerns of Internet surveillance were addressed in the Patriot Act update of 2006. Still, a great resource for the average thinking person who wants to be reasonably informed on the dangers facing our country. Politically neutral.