Internet-Haganah | Red lines

12 June 2011

Red lines

[A little emphasis added for the benefit of the not-so-literate among the readership. It seems to be a Twitter-induced condition - little beyond the first 140 chars gets processed.]

There are some good reasons for allowing at least a few jihadi forums to operate. While this opinion does not enjoy consensus, there are enough agencies in enough governments who share this view that they tend to get their way, occasionally going so far as to intervene to keep particular forums online.

However, there are limits to our ability to exploit all the intelligence opportunities a forum may present. To put it another way, jihadi forums contribute to future terrorism in ways that are unpredictable and/or beyond our ability to control. This would be the view held by those other government agencies who prefer to seek out and destroy forums and to take down forum activists.

For my part, I can live with keeping online those forums we have sufficient access to monitor and resources to manage. Having said that, a few topics occur on jihadi forums from time to time that should not be tolerated. One is weapons of mass destruction, by which I mean CBRN not Federal statutory WMD. Another is assassination, specifically discussions whose express purpose is the nomination of candidates for assassination, and the collection and dissemination of information about the proposed targets.

Start of hit list discussion at Shmukh forum

Such a discussion is ongoing at the password-protected Shmukh forum. It began with a recent as-Sahab video which advocated the assassination of prominent Americans and others seen as associated with the USA and the West generally. This call for assassinations was warmly embraced by the Shmukh activists here...

http://202.149.72.130/%7Eshamikh/vb/showthread.php?t=113047

A subsequent discussion at Shmukh...

http://202.149.72.130/%7Eshamikh/vb/showthread.php?t=113057

...has reached nine pages and over 100 posts over the course of a week. In it dozens of individuals are marked for death. Targets include the executives of a number of American defense contractors, some European billionaires, and a reasonable sampling of Jews and other Zionists and/or Neo-Cons, among others. Also targeted is the entire civilian and military leadership of the US Department of Defense, as illustrated by this:

The red line having been crossed, what is to be done? My ideal end-state would be one where forum administrators and activists have learned that hosting or participating in such discussions will result in bad things happening to them and their belovéd site; they should neither allow such discussions to occur, nor should they participate in them. What kind of bad things? Use a little imagination. I'm not a big fan of the denial of service attack, and whatever it is should not be entirely fatal to the forum, as that would harm our own interests. In any event the administrators and forum activists should know when it's over that it was because they had crossed this line, and that it will be done again, should they cross another line. We want them to police themselves and moderate their own behavior.

To assist in the targeting process, I include below the forum activists who have participated in the hit list discussion so far (thread 113057). They are presented in the order by which they made their first appearance in the discussion. I stopped at 100 posts - there are more.

01.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=11681 (Creator of the hit list)
Post 1, 2, 6, 7, 17, 18, 23, 28, 60, 88

02.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=10984
Post 3

03.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=6029
Post 4, 9, 12, 68, 89

04.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=9683
Post 5, 11, 15, 74

05.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=14232
Post 8, 14

06.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=12164
Post 10

07.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=1114
Post 13, 33

08.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=12265
Post 16, 27

09.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=12443
Post 19, 37

10.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=787
Post 20,

11.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=2784 (targeting NASA Director)
Post 21

12.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=1039
Post 22, 24, 43, 45, 48, 49

13.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=13248
Post 25, 42, 47, 51, 57, 59, 64, 69, 70, 71, 81, 82, 98

14.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=11389
Post 26

15.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=11961
Post 29

16.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=10052
Post 30

17.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=4365
Post 31

18.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=1501
Post 32

19.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=12520 (Targeting G.W. Bush)
Post 34

20.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=13369
Post 35, 38, 40, 41

21.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=12020
Post 36

22.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=12545
Post 39

23.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=14139
Post 44

24.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=12567
Post 46

25.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=11744
Post 50

26.

http://202.149.72.130/~shamikh/vb/member.php?u=11853 (He suggests that maybe posting the hit list in a public place is not such a good idea - the discussion has continued at least 4 more pages, ignoring this arguably sound advice)
Post 52