How do you change the perception?

[JeffC]

In sum, a constitutional amendment tying free press back towards the road of truth might be feasible, and additionally, just as private citizens have made inroads into lawsuits against terrorist organizations for material support, I think inroads should be made against the publishers of libelous and untruthful terrorist statements.

Truth is a relative thing, Tom. Whose truth are you going to protect?

[tequila]

Yes, I'd like to know which bureaucrat or judge will be in charge of leading us down The Road of Truth. Shouldn't be too hard to find the a public servant with that sort of wisdom and integrity --- much like the whore with the heart of gold, I hear they're a dime a dozen in all the good movies.

[marct]

there are two key problems with your suggestion. The first, ably skewered by Jeff and Tequila, is the old "What is Truth and who decides" problem. The second is the complete and utter irrelevance of the US constitution to actions taken outside of the US. In the age of the Internet, physical (geographic) borders are increasingly irrelevant as are the legislated systems of morality imposed within those borders. Sam's point about common definitions (e.g. "theft") comes to mind - that one is shared with most social systems, at least in general - and *might* be enforceable, at least in large parts of the globe. Irhabi rants? Not likely !

[BILL]

"4. You're invited to provide corroborating evidence from objective sources that supports your case that Jihadist Web sites are conducting Cyber warfare activities in 3rd world nations."

Command and Control:

From forumI don't know either, but I'm betting it is untrue. The text below is said to be part of a statement from some person or group calling itself "Sawt al-Jihad" (possibly just a blogger, or maybe a provacateur of some kind). But I don't know. As yet there is no word from the big boys in al-Qaida or the Taliban. Dadullah himself, on the phone to AP, says he does not believe the claim comes from Mullah Omar.

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم


الحمد لله رب العالمين والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا محمد وعلى اله وصحبه وسلم وعلى من والاه وعمل بسنته و واتبع هداه، واشهد أن لا اله إلا الله وان سيدنا محمدا عبد الله ورسوله.

أما بعد،،،

إن "منصور داد الله" لا يطيع في إجراءاته أوامرنا نحن "أمير المؤمنين" وينفذ أعمالا لا تتوافق مع أصول الإمارة الإسلامية، لأجل هذا قررنا ما يلي:

عزل "منصور داد الله" من منصبه كقائد عسكري مسؤول وإعفائه فورا من أداء جميع المهام التي كان مكلف بها وعدم إسناد إليه أية وظيفة أو مسئولية في الإمارة الإسلامية، ولا يجب على أي أحد النظر إليه كقائد أو مسئول في الإمارة الإسلامية.

وقرار مقام الإمارة الإسلامية هذا في حق "منصور داد الله" فقط لا غير، وعلى بقية أصدقاء ورفقاء الشهيد "داد الله" مواصلة جهادهم المقدس في حدود الإمارة الإسلامية وعليهم بعد الآن عدم إطاعة "منصور داد الله" كما على أصدقاء وأهل خير الإمارة الإسلامية عدم حفظ الروابط معه.

ينفذ هذا القرار في ساعته وتاريخه وعلى الجميع السمع والطاعة.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

No proves yet when this where truth the Amir Al Mumeneen will release an Audio statement.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Decision authorities of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan removed Mansoor Dadullah from his position as the commander in charger of the Taliban


In The Name of Allah The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful

I bear witness that No God But Allah, He has no partner and Muhammad is His slave and messenger



All Praise and thanks are due to Allah, the Lord of all that exists and may peace and prayers be upon the Messenger of Allah, his family, companions in entirety



Mullah Mansoor Dadullah is not obedience to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in his actions and has carried out activities which were against the rules of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, so the Decision Authorities of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have removed Mansoor Dadullah from his post and he will no longer be serving the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in anyways and no Taliban will obey his orders any more.

This decision only applies to Mansoor Dadullah, all other friends of Mullah Dadullah Shahed will be carrying out their Jihad duties for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, all the sympathizers of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan end their relationship with Mansoor Dadullah.

Ameer Al-Mu'meneen

Mullah Mohammad Omar Mujahid

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

it has been officially confirmed yesterday in the forums
the reason for the sacking of mansour dadullah are still unclear though

the statement is signed by mullah mohammed omar
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The problem I am having with the question, which is excellent, I've experienced , but gave no consideration to preserving proof.

The question is what we mean by "Cyber warfare activities"
and "in Third world nations."

Cyber warfare, I would include, command and control or Recruiting. As the above conversation shows command and control, even awaiting the verbal command from a web site.

If the web site is in the native language then it can be said they have cyber warfare for that nation.

I am thinking your looking for actual activities of cyber attack in a third world country.

We have that also, in the web site al-jinan, who recruited members to down load an DDos program and perform group attacks on sites.

We took them out:
Al-Jinan.net is BACK.


and burned the leader:
"CYBER ALERT" Islamofascist head ...


They were attacking web sites in third world countries.
Their attack list ran maybe 50 sites total?
This is a good example of my confusion in how to answer your Excellent question.
This guy lived in Syria, and ran a web site hosted in the USA ( at one time, I think, almost sure, can't remember, their site was knocked down several times ) and recruited members from SA, PK, Af, even USA, to attack sites world wide, some in third world countries.
"conducting Cyber warfare activities in 3rd world nations?" I say yes, on many levels, but it is complicated, as we see above.


If I'm missing your point please ask for clarification.

Bill

[Tom OC]

there are two key problems with your suggestion. The first, ably skewered by Jeff and Tequila, is the old "What is Truth and who decides" problem. The second is the complete and utter irrelevance of the US constitution to actions taken outside of the US. In the age of the Internet, physical (geographic) borders are increasingly irrelevant as are the legislated systems of morality imposed within those borders. Sam's point about common definitions (e.g. "theft") comes to mind - that one is shared with most social systems, at least in general - and *might* be enforceable, at least in large parts of the globe. Irhabi rants? Not likely !

I'm aware of key problems with my proposal, and its Orwellian overtones, but the main point is to follow a 1st Amendment path to control of the media and not tamper with other freedoms there such as freedom of association, speech, etc. It's agreed that truth, like perception, is relative, but as Mary Mapes' book, Truth and Duty, points out, there are such things as facts and fact-checking which media wonks hype as the "truth to power" ideology. Too often, I think, this phrase is taken as a blank slate to bash anyone in power, but it also betrays the idea that the true definition of truth lies submerged within the journalistic mission, not some Ministry of Truth bureaucracy. I'm not suggesting that the government step in any more than necessary to prosecute liars and distorters, and am actually recommending civil not criminal penalties against the media as a corrective. As far as constitutional universality or dual sovereignty goes, I think it is fair to say that constitutional rights (such as a right to truth which I am proposing) devised in the U.S. do often find their way into international law, and with regard to the diverse cultures argument, I would think "truth" is about as universal as "theft."

[marct]

Hi Tom,

It's agreed that truth, like perception, is relative, but as Mary Mapes' book, Truth and Duty, points out, there are such things as facts and fact-checking which media wonks hype as the "truth to power" ideology.

Good point. As far as I am concerned, the point of no return is reached when the logic of "I give you the TRUTH, facts are irrelevant" is dominant.

I'm not suggesting that the government step in any more than necessary to prosecute liars and distorters, and am actually recommending civil not criminal penalties against the media as a corrective.

That makes sense to me - I would far rather see civil liability for spreading "untruth" via bogus "facts".

As far as constitutional universality or dual sovereignty goes, I think it is fair to say that constitutional rights (such as a right to truth which I am proposing) devised in the U.S. do often find their way into international law, and with regard to the diverse cultures argument, I would think "truth" is about as universal as "theft."

On your first point, I would have to say "maybe" and,even if it does make it into international law, that frequently is not applied in other countries (Saudi Arabia anyone?). US Constitutional rights are, in the end, only valid within the US' jurisdiction and, even there, historically there have been many cases of organizational avoidance of them.

On "truth" being as universal as "theft" - no way ! "Theft" is a linguistic term that has a specific referent, while "Truth" does not have a specific referent, being a second order linguistic term (it refers to the observational validity of other referents and/or systems of referents). We can only speak of "Truth" within a system of meaning and/or experience (a classic problem in mysticism BTW).

Where we do have some overlap with "theft" is in the area of a "truth claim" of a specific referent. In effect, we can say that a statement with a concrete referent might be amenable to having its truth claims checked and refuted - e.g. the truth claim of a statement such as "by January 1st, 2008, over 3000 US military personelle had been killed in Iraq". This form of a truth claim can be tested, unlike the truth claim in a statement such as "We went into Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction and make life better for Iraqis" (how can you test past motives?), "Democracy is the best political system" (how are you defining "best"?), or "There is no God but God" (how can you formulate a testable hypothesis outside of a specific system?).

[BILL]

Something I thought might be implied in this Question, or alluded to, is that the al Qaed/Insurgent Internet Jihadist are not a real threat.

"4. You're invited to provide corroborating evidence from objective sources that supports your case that Jihadist Web sites are conducting Cyber warfare activities in 3rd world nations."

If that is an assumption with in the 'Internet Jihadist Paradigm', I would like to try and dissuade you of that hypothesis.

While the Iran Nuclear problem is a serious security problem, we are facing other ( and I believe bigger threat ) serious and more immediate threats.

The technology to take down the Internet world wide is available and deployed. Only the will is missing.

The terrorist are at most 3 years or less from being able to deploy it.

http://warintel.blogspot.com/2007/08...l-harbour.html

The article has been vetted by Civilian experts, "spot on"....

The only defense I am aware of is an Independent world wide "intra net",
for the Military, maybe satlite deployed.

There are eneties out there that have attacked the Internet, by accident,
Nine of the internet's 13 "root DNS" servers have been taken out. ( click LONG link above for details )

There are eneties out there that are suspected to have the ability to take out the WWW NOW, RBN.

The Internet probally would survive an Nuclear attack its not so sure it would survive an all out DDos attack.

I'm sure your all aware of the effects that would have the world markets and economy.

Gerald
Current "Paradigm Intel" forecasts the Bot nets start spam verbal phone calls,
probably most related to "aural robot sex" ( a new spin on Phone sex, they call you and talk dirty and charge to keep talking to smarter bots, the bots "talk"...( also recruiting suicide bombers and fund raising world wide, for the terrorists )

[selil]

BILL,

I know I don't know much about this Cyber Warfare stuff. I really wish I had a little more knowledge about computer mediated conflict. I guess what you're saying is that we're about three years away from terrorist entities having the capability to take down the Internet. So what would an attack like that look like? Is it simple violence of oppression or something like that the reason for taking out the Internet? I've heard that there might be some literature out there by Eberschloe, Vernton, Lewis, and others discussing possible "Cyber Pearl Harbor" scenarios. It would be great if we had some military capability like the Air Force or civilian capability to fight cyber terrorism like the NSA. Wouldn't it be great if the Department of Homeland Security promoted something like an emergency support functions for cyber events?

BILL, you know that if the eastern seaboard central switching office for almost all Verizon in New Yorks primary region was destroyed in something like 9/11 the entire Internet might collapse. In fact it might take months to get that facility back up and running. I wonder how long it would take to get the stock exchange back up and running through a primary data hub that had been blown up almost completely?

I wonder what a cyber attack would look like. Maybe if there were millions of bots out there capable of attacking simultaneously it might look like a storm. And when they fired up on December 29th I wonder what the entire effect might be? Gee what if a foreign government like China hacked the pentagon daily and ran all of their communications through Israel, Taiwan, Thailand, and other pseudo friendly nations?

If we only could find experts that had touched hundreds of thousands of sites on the Internet or been involved in building large chunks of the Internet. Maybe we could have a reasonable discussion about risk and less hair on fire fear that something might NOT happen. Don't you think prognastications of specific time frames are going to be difficult to back up when they've been occuring since 1968? Did you know that there is a low speed wireless network capable of handling massive amounts of data and is highly redundant and nobody even realizes it exists. It is the ham radio packet radio network. If a bunch of guys with soldering irons and tin hats built something like that I wonder what the telephone companies and military have built?

Bill, do tell us more.