July 2, 2002 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — A militant, pro-al-Qaida Web site exploited the nature of the Web hosting business to avoid the FBI?s efforts to shut it down, according to a report by the Associated Press.
Using false street addresses, a free email account and wire transfers, the publishers of the “Center for Islamic Studies and Research,” which promotes al-Qaida and asks its readers to pray for America?s destruction, managed to disguise themselves and keep the site online, moving from host to host, despite an FBI investigation.
According to the report, the site appears to have first surfaced through Emerge Systems, a hosting firm based in Malaysia. When, five months later, the company began receiving complaints, it disabled the site and filed a police report.
The site re-emerged just days later, hosted by Texas-based CI Host. The company says when it was alerted to the site, it launched an investigation, shut down the site and called the FBI.
Until a few days ago, says the report, the site was hosted by Liquid Web, based out of Lansing, Michigan.
The FBI reportedly says the site might have been used by the terrorist organization to spread low-priority information, and its operators seemed able to contact users of the site to notify them of its new locations.
