Cyber-Jihad: to boldly go where no intel service has gone before...

[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...575276,00.html

For years, al-Qaida and other terror groups have set up shop in the Internet. Those who track them have covertly followed. The companies SITE and IntelCenter have penetrated even deeper into the terror Web than most intelligence agencies. (...) "I never trusted the news to give the full picture," says Venzke. He says that he wanted to understand "how things really worked."

It tells something when this kind of work is more successfully done by profit-oriented business than by intelligence agencies themselves. Also, it potentially puts non-legitimised private business into positions of extraordinary power that should not be in the hands of private institutions outside governmental services, and their availability should not become object of financial profit calculations and negotiations. By this, I do not so much demand these business companies being closed, sinc eobviously currently nobody can replce then, but that the intel services are in demand to do much better work, and should be refitted and reorganised accordingly. This stupid phrase, war on terror, describes a fight that is not so much a military one, but points at the need for comprehensive and enduring intelligence and infiltration operations. As was said, counter-terror operations would be a much more adequate terminology.

Some weeks ago British news reported about internal reports by the MI6 that it has given up attempts to establish profiles of the "typical terrorist" by which he could be recognised and identified against the social background of the ordinary population, saying that any such attempts have collapsed, and that the usual social clichées of what makes and forms a terrorist, simply do not work. What they said is that everybody could turn out to become a terrorist. and the Spanish and British bombers social background confirmed that, they did not match with the image of socially disadvantaged, badly integrated migrants with a bad family background, that is so popular with the defenders of social theories of terror. Social factors, or the Youth Bulge theory, can contribute to the overall effect, yes, but both are by far no satisfying and sufficient explanations in themselves.