{"id":738,"date":"2007-12-10T03:39:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-10T09:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=738"},"modified":"2007-12-10T03:39:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-10T09:39:00","slug":"fighting-terror-on-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/12\/fighting-terror-on-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting terror on Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

M<\/span>ike Rosenblum<\/span>, the godfather of video journalism, has an interesting post<\/a> on Facebook<\/span> and its potential use by intelligence agencies as a means of mapping networks. I\u2019m sure he doesn\u2019t quite mean to go as far as this quote suggests, but you will get his drift: <\/p>\n

A few days ago, I typed in the name al-Sudari. This is the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, the direct descendants of King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, the country he named after himself. Well, lo and behold, there are lots of members of the Saudi Royal Family on Facebook!<\/p>\n

Lots of princes…and princesses. Go do it yourself. Now, if you start to follow the links and check out \u2018friends\u2019 of \u2018friends\u2019 it starts to present a fascinating look into the ruling family of the Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There are more than 100,000 \u2018friends\u2019 in the \u2018Saudi Arabia\u2019 group alone. And there are lots of other ones.<\/p>\n

The first thing you will notice is, it is not very Islamic … In fact, the deeper you go, the less it looks like The Islamic Kingdom and the more it looks like Beverly Hills 90210…on steroids.<\/p>\n

Now, I am no CIA analyst, but I think there is something here worth paying attention to.<\/p>\n

Something very strange is going on in The Kingdom.<\/p>\n

My guess is that there are not too many CIA operatives on Facebook, or who even know what it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given that the CIA has already advertised for recruits<\/a> on Facebook, and that numerous conspiracy theories<\/a> connect the agency to its funding (cue lots of groups on Facebook), Mike is being a little pessimistic<\/a>. (Though maybe they struggle on MySpace<\/span>.)<\/p>\n

With the usefulness of social network maps<\/a> in tracking links between key individuals (and its potential dangers in suggesting connections where they\u2019re absent) I would imagine every intelligence agency worth the name is using Facebook – effectively a huge voluntary disclosure resource – not least because it can capture links before<\/span> radicalisation.<\/p>\n

In a piece picked up by Munir Umrani<\/a>, Saudi journalist Mshari Al-Zaydi<\/span> highlights a growing awareness of the dangers of online radicalism<\/a> in the Kingdom: <\/p>\n

To a large extent, Al Qaeda is a by-product of the internet after it made its entire literature and books available online.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Al-Zaydi begins his piece with a fascinating vignette of an advert produced (so he says) by the Saudi Intelligence Service: <\/p>\n

A group of men were playing the popular Saudi card game \u2018Baloot\u2019 when at the peak of the game one of them asked another, \u201cWhere is your son?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSurfing the internet,\u201d he answered, nonchalantly.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow could you leave him alone to surf the internet?\u201d he asked, \u201cDo you have any idea what websites he is browsing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat can I do?\u201d the father helplessly asked, \u201cIt is the language of the age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cut to a scene in which the father leans over his son\u2019s shoulder to look at the computer screen with an affectionate paternal smile.<\/p>\n

This is one of the television advertisements that were launched by the Saudi Intelligence Service in the information technology (IT) campaign, which helped pave the way for an \u2018open\u2019 conference entitled \u201cInformation Technology and National Security.\u201d The conference was held at the King Fahd Cultural Centre in Riyadh at the beginning of this month.<\/p>\n

The aforementioned advertisement reflects the aspect that the Saudi Intelligence Service seeks to highlight and make Saudi families aware of, which is the window that the internet offers and through which fundamentalist and Al Qaeda youth are able to communicate away from the eyes of general censorship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is also a window for progressive conversations. Let\u2019s hope they\u2019re just on Facebook.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Rosenblum, the godfather of video journalism, has an interesting post on Facebook and its potential use by intelligence agencies as a means of mapping networks. I\u2019m sure he doesn\u2019t quite mean to go as far as this quote suggests, but you will get his drift: A few days ago, I typed in the name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}