Forwarded From: Erik Parker <netmask@303.org>
http://www.wired.com/news/news/email/explode-infobeat/politics/story/19208.html
3:00 a.m. 20.Apr.99.PDT
Future terrorists will take to the Internet to pursue campaigns of
disruption instead of destruction, a new report predicts.
Terrorists are already tech-savvy, the Rand Corporation paper claims.
Osama bin Laden's remote Afghan retreat is well wired: "The terrorist
financier has computers, communications equipment, and a large number of
disks for data storage."
Hamas has also taken to the Internet to exchange operational information.
For example, operatives communicate via chat rooms and email.
The report distinguishes between "cyberwar" -- a military operation -- and
"Netwar," which, the authors believe, will consist of nonmilitary attacks
perpetrated by individuals rather than countries. "Whereas cyberwar
usually pits formal military forces against each other, Netwar is more
likely to involve nonstate, paramilitary, and irregular forces."
The report, prepared for the US Air Force, recommends that the Pentagon
stop modernizing all computer systems and communications links. "Full
interconnectivity may in fact allow cyberterrorists to enter where they
could not [before]," it says.
The report warns that terrorism "will focus on urban areas with strong
political and operational constraints." Translation: It's difficult for
the Air Force to bomb the bejesus out of a terrorist nest if it's in
downtown New York.
Another recommendation is that the Air Force develop better spying
technologies. Instead of trying to break encryption, the military should
develop "capabilities for reading emanations" from computer monitors,
perhaps through "very small, unmanned aerial vehicles."
Other studies have reached similar conclusions about online terrorists.
"The Internet -- and the window to it, the computer terminal -- have
become two of the most important pieces of equipment in the extremists'
arsenals, not only allowing them to build membership and improve
organization, but to strike alliances with people and groups, even a
decade ago, that they might never have known about or been able to easily
communicate with," says a report prepared in April 1998 for the Chemical
Manufacturers Association. The report's authors are former officials from
the US Secret Service and the CIA's counterterrorism center.
-o-
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Received on Fri Apr 23 08:31:26 1999