The organization says it has taken down more than 1,000 Jihad sites. Their success logo is a blue drawing of an AK-47. To target websites perceived as threats, the organization relies upon its web community to find jihadists, and use a free "whois" service to determine if a US-based server hosts them. If so, as in the case of mawusat.com and its host
Go Daddy, Internet Haganah operatives express concern about the nature of the site and ask the host to remove it. If this does not work and if the site concerns the
US State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, or the
US Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control's list of
Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons, Internet Haganah contacts the banks and financiers of the host, who could face serious penalties for engaging in unreported transactions with the suspect website. If all else fails, the media may be contacted. However, their targets often find countermeasures against these actions. In the case of GoDaddy.com and mawusat.com, the site was attacked, but appeared on a different server within a week.
Newsweek reported: It’s no coincidence, they argue, that in just the past year, Islamists have gotten savvier in their use of the Internet. In early 2004, Iraqi insurgent Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and his group posted the video of the execution of Nicholas Berg, an American contractor working in Iraq, to one Web site, which was quickly overwhelmed with traffic. Today, jihadis post evidence of their operations on dozens of sites and coordinate their operations on secret e-mail lists, password-protected Web sites and audio chat services like PalTalk, which don’t leave behind a printed record. “The level of sophistication of these groups has become just unbelievable,”says
Rita Katz, who monitors Islamic Internet activities as director of the D.C.-based Site Institute. – Stone, Brad (July 13, 2005.) == Founder ==