Forwarded From: Erik Parker <netmaskat_private> 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- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Hacker News Network [www.hackernews.com]
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