mystery surrounds silencing of key al queda websites

[xchrom]

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/03/mystery-surrounds-silencing-of-key-al-qaeda-websites/?hpt=wo_c2

By Adam Levine, with reporting from Barbara Starr, Jamie Crawford and Santiago Melli-Huber

Key al Qaeda online forums have fallen silent in the past two weeks, leaving terrorism experts to wonder the cause and whether a key communications mode of the terror group and its affiliates has been purposely undermined.

The sites, where al Qaeda posts messages and jihadists and wannabe jihadists post messages and discussions regarding their ideology and loyalty, started disappearing on March 23, said Aaron Y. Zelin, a researcher in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University. Zelin also maintains the website Jihadology.net.

The outages were first reported by the Washington Post. No entity has claimed responsibility and U.S. officials contacted by CNN would not comment.

The online al Qaeda ecosystem starts with the different branches of al Qaeda - like al Qaeda central in Pakistan, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula based in Yemen or al Qaeda in Iraq - which produce messages through their own media production wings that are distributed by an entity known as al-Fajr Media, which then redistributes them to the various forums, Zelin explained.

[gordianot]

1. I heard speculation sometime ago they were allowed to exist to track operatives.

Interesting they are shut down.

[xchrom]

2. i find this kind of interesting myself --

i know britain is concerned that al queda may be targeting african youth in britain as possible new extremists.

so, it's sort of interesting.

[NoMoreWarNow]

3. there's little doubt that they existed with the complicity of intelligence agencies, if not actually

so definitely curious-- could be a bad sign.

[TalkingDog]

4. For around 60 bucks you can create a small, limited range "internet"

If you have enough of these you could daisy-chain information across countries without the need for the public "clear net". Chat boards and messaging, though wouldn't work as a recruiting tool.

Maybe they've decided a public face is too dangerous.

Which, agreed, makes them harder to track and hence becomes more worrisome.