Columbia Daily Spectator October 30, 2001
Reckless.gov
By Ben Wheeler,
Thomas Friedman calls it "Jihad Online." The Sept. 11 attackers used modern means: some used e-mail to coordinate; they formed in decentralized networks, thwarting attempts of counterintelligence to infiltrate their structures; they chose recently built Boeing planes as their weapons of destruction.
Yet at the same time, the attacks were shockingly low-tech, practically involving kitchen utensils. And though the network theory sounds fancy, in practice it rests on old-fashioned secrecy and patience. Osama bin Laden is perceived by the American public as a Luddite, a kindred spirit of the Unabomber who envisions a society lived out of caves. This image was constructed at least in part by bin Laden himself, who chooses to pose in natural settings as if in the field of battle, rather than in comfortable dwellings indoors where he actually spends most of his time.
But Islam's relationship toward modernity is far more nuanced than commentators like the Times' Friedman would have us believe. "What makes [the terrorists] super-empowered, though," writes Friedman, "is their genius at using the networked world, the Internet, and the very high technology they hate to attack us."
Do members of al Qaeda hold opinions about technology anywhere near as strongly as they do about United States foreign policy? Not likely. But our government certainly knows that they and other clandestine groups use technology, as we all do, to further their aims. For this reason, Congress has long worked to selectively block their access to certain technologies.
A key technology that has aroused controversy is strong cryptography, featured in applications like Pretty Good Privacy (PGP, www.pgp.com/products/freeware) that allow anyone to send encrypted messages readable only by the intended recipient. The proliferation of PGP would mean an FBI nightmare -- electronic communications that are impossible to tap. Until recently, the government classified PGP as an armament so potent that it was illegal to export or post for downloading. In the name of the surveillance powers of the FBI, the privacy of the broader public was compromised.
Hacking also poses a complex problem in the eyes of the government, though it is difficult to see how the penalties introduced in last week's USA PATRIOT Act will hinder terrorism. The list of "federal terrorism offenses" now includes practically any low-level computer intrusion -- even though such hacking was already a crime under other laws. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization that focuses on computer-related rights, warns that in addition to possible life-sentences, the act means "adding broad pre-conviction asset seizure powers and serious criminal threats to those who 'materially assist' or 'harbor' individuals suspected of causing minimal damage to networked computers."
Other targets are Web sites, which face censorship both by governments and by hosting companies. Since Sept. 11, many Web pages that feature military blueprints, maps of government facilities, or other sensitive material have been voluntarily removed by their owners. Other sites considered pro-terrorist have been taken down in the United States and Britain, including 55 sites in a jihad-related web ring that Yahoo disabled at the request of federal agents.
Completely removing information from the Internet, however, is not easy. Sites are frequently mirrored by other sites, cached by individual browsers, or stored by search engines for later searching. Even when sites are taken down, a copy usually remains at google.com, which has the Web's most prominent cache of much of the Web.
Google.com has offered to remove its cached copies, but not all censors know it exists. As a spokesman for militant site azzam.com told The Wall Street Journal, "One cannot shut down the Internet."
It often makes sense to censor sites that pose a clear danger to the public good; consider sites that provide home addresses of doctors who perform abortions. But cause for censoring websites is frequently ambiguous. When the company that hosts azzam.com received threats and requests -- including one originating from the FBI -- that the site be disabled, they complied. Of course, there is no way now to evaluate the decision, since we don't know what the offending content was.
Nor is censorship consistent. Some sites in the Azzam-affiliated Qoqaz network have been shut down; others have not. The Qoqaz France site remains, linking to bin Laden videos and featuring the quote, "Only jihad and the gun. NO negotiation, NO conferences, and NO dialogue." Should it, too, be unequivocally censored? Because censorship, once in place, is unequivocal.
Censorship can also be pointless. When John Pike of globalsecurity.org was asked to pull old military data from his sites, he looked at the information and decided the request was mere paranoia. "Apart from demonstrating the fact that these facilities exist," Pike said, "there was nothing that would help a terrorist planning an attack." He decided to keep the info on the site.
The current wave of censorship is nothing if not reckless, and legislation is not far behind. The biggest problem with the measures being passed during this period of urgency is that they are as permanent as all laws are. Later sessions of Congress may realize the dangers of such draconian measures, but they will be loath to strike down legislation so deeply associated with patriotism. After all, restricting Internet rights may have nothing at all to do with fighting terrorism. But protecting these rights amid the fervor for security? That would be downright un-American.
(C) 2001 Columbia Daily Spectator via U-WIRE
