Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

INTERNET • 277talist websites and chat rooms consists not so much of exchanges oftactical information but rather of arguments over which tactics andtargets are, or are not, “permissible” according to their own interpretationof Islamic law.The advantages for terrorists of using the Internet include thelack of effective censorship or control over the Internet by nationalor international authorities; the anonymity of its communications,which dovetails with the terrorist group’s requirement of clandestinityin order for it to evade official repression; and the ability ofotherwise isolated terrorist groups, individuals, and their supportersto achieve synergy through networking, pooling their resources, andcoordinating their actions and statements in campaigns of netwar.Another new peril of the Internet-enabled terrorist is that of an enhancedcontagion effect of terrorist ideas and technology: no longermust would-be jihadists or ethnonationalists physically contact aterrorist recruiter, travel to a training camp, and receive sophisticatedtraining in scouting, evasion, and bomb-making techniquesto become an active terrorist. The aspiring novice can now acquirebomb-making instructions via the Internet and then, by reading theblogs on successful and unsuccessful bombing operations as well asother coverage of effective counterterrorism measures, continuallyupgrade his terrorist skills. This process of learning and improvementthrough feedback using the information made availablethrough the mass media and the Internet is what intelligence analystsnow label “emergent intelligence,” in which all participants developmore sophisticated tactics and effective strategies. The sheer mass ofInternet communications makes it much more difficult for nationalintelligence agencies to surveil as-yet unidentified terrorist Internetchannels. However, even in the case of known terrorist channels,encryption programs (for encoding text communications) and steganography(a means of hiding text messages within a graphic file)allow the terrorists to evade or reduce the effectiveness of externalsurveillance of their channels.A major advantage of the Internet for terrorists is that it enablesthem to bypass the regular mass media in order to contact their targetaudience, whether that is the enemy being attacked or the largerconstituency they claim to serve. In the 1990s, as the traditional massmedia and news agencies became more aware of the CNN syndrome,that is, their unwittingly allowing themselves to become co-opted by