Remarkable story in the Globe and Mail this past weekend – remarkable in part for its length (it’s roughly 3,600 words. So set aside a few minutes to read it), but also for its expansive dissection of the emerging new battle ground for the “war on terror.”
In the piece, Globe reporter Omar El Akkad, who apparently has established a certain degree of expertise in the online activities of terrorist organizations, explores the online propaganda war that has become a major part of worldwide terrorist activity.
Given the Globe’s focus, the article pays particular attention to the possible role of Canada in the distribution. It points to examples of companies like Tucows and a Canadian arm of Register.com being used by terrorist-supporting websites to disguise registration information, so the registrants of addresses used to distribute material including videos glorifying terrorist attacks can’t be easily uncovered by a simple whois lookup.
The domain privacy issue, of course, is a minor bookend to a much larger article. And not a serious impediment to justice. Most of us are quite aware that a friendly “you appear to be providing private registration services to an arm of al-Qaeda” email is probably enough to get a domain name pulled in most cases. And the registrars providing the privacy services have the accurate registrant information.
Private registration services aren’t enabling terrorism. But they’re emblematic of a larger problem with law enforcement efforts to combat terrorism online:
“Even on the traditional counterterrorism front, law-enforcement officials are coming up against a major wall: For the most part, the legal system was not designed for cyberspace.”
Akkad uses the example of child pornography or neo-nazi material, other widespread online causes for concern. Law enforcement was behind on fighting each of these.
“In the case of child pornography… there was a lag of about five to seven years before independent groups began forming for the purpose of shutting illegal sites down. The delay might be equally long with terrorism sites.”
Ultimately, this article ought not to teach you about how to run your business. But it could open your eyes to another possible offense that could be taking place on your servers.
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