CNN: Hunting Online Hate Groups & Potential Terrorists

[Turborama]

Run time: 02:57 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y7PpEX4bqs   Posted on YouTube: April 20, 2010 By YouTube Member: MoxNewsDotCom Views on YouTube: 168   Posted on DU: April 20, 2010 By DU Member: Turborama Views on DU: 706

 
VELSHI: The Internet has been a boon to hate groups. It's the perfect place for them to spread their twisted messages, to recruit and sometimes to plot. And while they used to sneak around the darkest corners of the web, these days, they've seized on social media just like the rest of us. CNN'S Casey Wian logged on with some of the folks hunting hate online, he joins us now from Los Angeles.

What did you find, Casey?

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ali, we recently spent the day with a man who spends most of his time hunting online racists and potential terrorists. He's an undercover warrior in the battle against hate in social media.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WIAN (voice-over): This looks like a typical office, where one employee spends most of his days on social networking sites like Facebook. His friends include, Adolf German, Duce Mussolini, and Aryan Butcher.

RICK EATON, SENIOR RESEARCHER, SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER: I have racist -- quote, "racist friends" all over the world.

WIAN: But Rick Eaton has the full blessing of his employer because he's hunting online racists and potential terrorists for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization. He also infiltrates groups undercover, so he's asked us not to show all of his face. EATON: The only way to really find the material is get down in the mud with these people, and join their group. You don't have to be, you know, rah, rah, let's go off and blow up an airplane, but you do have to get in there and make comments occasionally.

WIAN: The Wiesenthal Center has identified more than 11,000 hate groups on the Internet, a 15 percent increase from last year. The growth, it says, is fueled by social media.

RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER, SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER: Extremists of all stripes, in all cultures, are streaming to Facebook and similar social networking, with a neighborhood of 400 million separate users, and growing. That is an environment, a climate that allows extremists to do a hit-and-run, maybe use it for a day to do a propaganda hit against their enemies.

WIAN: When Eaton identifies a site, he notifies federal authorities and the operator of the social network. He said Facebook in particular is quick to shut down offenders, but they often pop up again under another name.

(on camera): For someone like me, if I have a Facebook page, it may suggest I become friends with people I went to high school or college with or co-workers. But if you're a racist living in California, let's say, they may suggest that you should become friends with another racist group in Michigan or South Africa.

EATON: Without a doubt. It makes it so easy. And it really has eclipsed the rest of the Internet, because it doesn't take much work.

WIAN (voice-over): That's why they say it can work as a recruiting tool for potential terrorists.

COOPER: What worries me the most today is the lone wolf mentality, someone who's going to have "the guts or the courage" to step over the line. The next individual or small cell that's ready to change history.

WIAN (on camera): Given what you've seen online and in social media, do you think it's inevitable that that's going to happen?

COOPER: It is inevitable.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: What are groups -- go ahead.

WIAN: Go ahead. I was just going to say, the center asks that Internet users who encounter what they consider may dangerous content online, they can contact the Wiesenthal Center. We've got an URL here or e-mail address, iReport -- the letter i-r-e-p-o-r-t@w-e-I-s-e-n-t- h-a-l.com. Or they can also contact law enforcement offices.

VELSHI: All right, we've got that on the screen for you.

What are groups like Facebook -- how do they combat this?

WIAN: Well, Facebook says it takes these cases very, very seriously. Now, of course, there are free speech issues, but there are also content guidelines and user restrictions that any Facebook user signs when they first join. So Facebook acts very aggressively when they encounter these sites.

Now, just on Friday, there was a site dedicated to Osama bin Laden. Now, we have no way of telling if it was actually connected to Osama bin Laden, but it had been up on Facebook for about two weeks. And in that short period of time, had already generated a thousand friends.

We came across it last week. Facebook, on Friday, shut it down, Ali.

[BR_Parkway]

1. www.freerepublic.com - it won't take you long to find it

[BethCA66]

2. The Southern Poverty Law Center and Brian Levin have been tracking these folks for years

SPLC Hate Map

Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism blog

The internet has allowed leaderless cells to pop up all over the place.

Here's a CNN interview with Brian Levin