How they are using this technology

David Kilcullen, the most established author on issues concerning guerrilla warfare and insurgency, summarises the military operation in Afghanistan in a nutshell in the above diagram. In the “Theater of Operations”, the Taliban rely on foreign recruits, equipment, funds and sympathy and support in order to mobilize their cause.

Propaganda

The Taliban have realized the strength of technology in furthering their message not only in Afghanistan but on a global scale. This was recognised by the United States Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates who was embarrassed by how the Taliban & Al-Qaeda were more effective at communicating its message on the internet than America, he was quoted as saying “how has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world’s greatest communication society?”. The Taliban since the invasion of Afghanistan have been well known to effectively make use of video sharing websites such as YouTube, Dailymotion and Liveleak to distribute their videos showing Taliban attacks on NATO forces. James Appathurai, spokesman for NATO stated “they deploy with videographers, we don’t. They have DVDs out in an hour, we don’t”. This provides for a powerful propaganda machine as according to Gates they are able to spread their propaganda with “speed, agility and cultural relevance”. In addition to recording attacks on NATO forces, they are also able to capitalize on mistakes made during military operations such as civilian casualties during airstrikes and violation of local traditions for example house searches, the biggest insult in Pashtun culture (the ethnic majority in Afghanistan), providing a perfect atmosphere for Taliban propaganda to take root.

So what is the new technology used behind this? Video recordings of such violations are the main tools by which they spread their message and glorify their achievements. During 2001, the Taliban would send their recordings whether VHS or DVD to media channels such as Al-Jazeera and at the same time produce DVD’s to be sold in the Pakistani markets. However, with the increasing availability of internet in Afghanistan & Pakistan, they have cut the middle man by directly communicating their videos to the world. As such, the Taliban set up a website, Al Emarah or The Emirate, (which goes by various domains due to attempts to block it) where they distribute pamphlets, magazines, videos & audios. They have also expanded into Web 2.0 with their “Voice of Jihad” website which allows readers to share posts via Twitter, Facebook & Digg

However, more recently, the Taliban recently launched “Istiqal Media”, an official YouTube channel showing videos of car bombings and gun battles set to music however YouTube censors moved in quickly to remove much of the channel’s content. There are a number of reasons why the Taliban moved to YouTube, the main reason was the potential to reel in a vast, viral audience but secondly, it allowed access to a free, highly-reliable video broadcast service which is important as they previously had trouble with RMVB, AVI & MPEG files overloading their web servers and exhausting their bandwidth.

Additionally, another source of propaganda has come from text messages and ringtones.  This is probably the most powerful propaganda weapon the Taliban have at hand since Afghanistan today has more than 8 million mobile phone users, that is 1 in 4. Even those who can barely afford to eat now carry mobile phones. USA Today reported how the Taliban using sophisticated media networks were undermining support for the Afghan government by sending threats via SMS and spreading their views via songs available as ringtones. Some of the ringtones include “Let me go to Jihad” and “Death is a gift”, including lyrics such as “I will not kiss the hand of Laura Bush”. These text messages and ringtones are being forwarded between one another barrel rolling the propaganda.

So overall, with the addition of websites, YouTube channels and text messages as well as support from traditional forms of propaganda (radio, TV, nightletters & DVDs) the Taliban have compiled a complete multimedia propaganda package. People can now access the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” website and read through Taliban news in Arabic, English, Urdu, Pashto & Farsi, receive SMS updates and watch video footage of attacks immediately after they happen, stream Radio Shariat (the Taliban’s old FM radio station) online and share Taliban news in Digg, Twitter & Reddit.

The NATO forces, on their mission to win hearts & minds are still using traditional forms of media to communicate to the population which is why the Taliban has been so effective in its propaganda. They have embarked on a lighter touch to win allies, a response to the Americans campaign to win Afghan hearts and minds. The Taliban are able to release statements a lot quicker and efficiently than NATO. As Bruce Riedel, advisor to President Barack Obama states, a propaganda war requires a very quick time cycle which the NATO is losing at because they “look for all the facts before they comment” whereas the Taliban using the SMS, videos, e-mails to journalists and radio broadcasts are able to quickly shape the narrative about attacks. This change in tactic to adopt new technologies and engage in propaganda means the Taliban perhaps are preparing for a long-term fight thus requiring the sympathy and support of the people.

Recruitment

The tactics used for propaganda correlate with those used to recruit, as propaganda is an essential tool for recruiting more fighters. Undoubtedly, the US Armed Forces, NATO & the UN recognize a marked increase in the fighting force of the Taliban between 2002 and 2006 which Giustozzi, an international relations professor at LSE, believes is a conservative estimate. Much of this early recruitment in 2002 was done through traditional means – madrassas, tribal system recruitment in Pakistan, clergy recruitment, returning Mujahideen & training camps. This would provide the Taliban with a significant number of recruits however the Taliban recognized the problems with this system as they had to get many recruits across the border which was risky and expensive. Since then however, there has been a shift in the way the Taliban have been recruiting since 2002.

Did technology play any role in post-2002 Taliban recruitment? Hosting martyrs’ speeches, stories, successful attacks and civilian casualties caused by the “enemy” on sites such as YouTube are one of the main ways they can appeal to disgruntled, disenfranchised & poverty stricken youth of Afghanistan. This is done through footage of intense battle scenes, flash logos, banners and songs. They have even released video footage of a graduation ceremony for a new class of suicide bombers which is again part of their recruitment propaganda, recording the students’ motivations and highlighting students who have come from western countries, as a method of appealing to those who might sympathize with the Taliban cause to come forward.

The Taliban also benefit hugely from sympathizers in the west who set up websites which promote their material, one such site was Azzam.com, a London-based publisher which produced manuals such as “How Can I Train Myself for Jihad”. These websites provide the gateway for potential sympathizers to join the ranks of terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda but sometimes also the Taliban. The BBC has reported variously on finding British nationals fighting alongside the Taliban. Peter Jones in his recent documentary “Generation Jihad” described how recruiters were setting up websites such as Azzam to pool together recruiters and sympathizers in an online community, a sort of Jihadi milkround. Those who are then willing or brainwashed into joining the cause are usually trained by the recruiters in Pakistan to fight the “infidels”. Essentially, without the use of modern technology such as the Internet, it would have been impossible for the Taliban to brainwash and recruit fighters from areas such as the Mill Towns of West Yorkshire. A classic example of this was when a young Virginia man was “headhunted” by a Taliban recruiter based in Pakistan from a comment he posted on a YouTube video. This case illustrates how technology, especially the internet has made the world much more accessible for the Taliban and how they have moved from a traditional form of recruitment to a complex recruitment system not too different from those employed by Western graduate recruiters.

Logistical Support

We have been inundated with reports since 2002 of the Taliban deploying IEDs (improvised explosive device) to counter NATO forces. Road side bombs, physical ambushes, suicide bombers and targeted assassinations are one of the many traditional forms of guerilla warfare employed by the Taliban.

However, recently the Taliban have been using more complex technology to support their operations. It was reported by the Daily Mail that the Taliban were using Internet phones, specifically Skype, to communicate with cells across the country. The reason for this was that it is “devilishly hard to crack”  because unlike traditional mobile calls, internet voice calls are broken into millions of pieces of data before being sent down the line therefore it is virtually impossible for intelligence agencies to intercept calls. The Taliban have been able to capitalize on the increasing ease of accessibility to Internet in Afghanistan to help them avoid detection from American & British forces. Recently, GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) have been placing pressure on Skype to log all web activity but so far Skype has refused to comment on the issue.

Similarly, the Taliban were able to intercept live video feeds from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using commercially available technology such as SkyGrabber. This method, also popular with Iraqi insurgents, allows the militants to intercept and record television feeds from drones which has two affects, it means they can evade being seen by the drones and they can also locate the position of NATO forces, a very serious potential breach of security placing them at a serious risk of ambush.

A widely publicized story of how the Taliban were using the Internet in their logistical operations appeared in 2009. The Washington Times reported on how the Taliban used US uniforms and infrared patches to get close to US and allied forces on the battlefield and at bases. These infrared patches were designed to protect foreign forces from being targeted by friendly fire during battles, especially during night combat. The Government Accountability Office said that the Taliban had managed to seize a huge amount of the patches mainly over the internet, where it can be purchased for as little as $10 each. The buying and selling of such items is perfectly legal within the U.S. Thus these stories reaffirm the reports that the Taliban movement is growing more technologically capable, moving from road side bombs to using high-tech intelligence tools and powerful online software.

Funding

There is little evidence to show that the Taliban use the Internet to receive funding however sites set up by sympathisers such as “Taliban Online” contained information on how to make financial donations to the Afghan militia, however it is no longer operational. However, more recently it was uncovered that the Taliban were using PayPal to receive donations. The “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” website was open to “collect contributions to the Emirate” which allowed for users to donate through Paypal at the bottom of the page.

What is the response by the allied forces?

The U.S. military as part of their “hearts and minds” initiative have launched a Facebook page, a YouTube site and feeds on twitter to communicate to a wider audience rather than newspapers as they have previously done in Afghanistan. This is proving to be rather effective as recently news relating to combat injuries were posted on Twitter hours before announcing it in a formal press statement. This is to counter the false claims made by the Taliban about how many U.S. soldiers its killed or how many civilians might have died in an airstrike. For the first time, astonishingly, the U.S. army has caught up with information technology systems employed by the Taliban, at the start of the invasion, the Taliban were far more efficient at reaching people by word of mouth, then through radio, newspapers and TV and finally though mobile phones & the internet. Although the U.S. army has had to play catch up in all three stages, it is finally at a stage where it can compete with the Taliban.

Final thoughts…

The Taliban have successfully entered the modern information technology era. They have been able to make use of household technology in remarkably innovative ways. The debate rages on, one side states that we should censor them all together from websites such as YouTube who use the logic that it can glorify terrorism and attract sympathisers to their cause. The other side of the debate is based on the fact that we should censor wisely, encouraging open and intellectual participation with the which Taliban may be more productive than simply gagging them as part of their appeal to Western sympathisers is because of the censors placed on them.

In case Amazon cleans it, that is a product for a ‘steering wheel desk.’  Clearly a horrid idea due to inevitable misuse.  But the remarkable thing is that, of 287 reviews (when I clicked on it) every single one in the 5 pages I skimmed was completely tongue-in-cheek and sarcastically humorous.

For example:

“…loved my Laptop Steering Wheel Desk so much I got one for my 90yr old mother. She is an avid crossword puzzle fan and now she can work on them while she is driving back and forth from bingo at the senior center…”

“…great! I use it as a “mini-bar” when the friends and I go out to the bars. I can quickly fix multiple shots of tequila for myself and the friends as we drive from one bar to the next…”

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287 reviews.  All consistently tongue-in-cheek.  Now I recognize that its entirely possible that some honcho over at 4chan dreamed up a campaign… but if that isn’t massive coherent behaviour (and humorous!) I don’t know what is.

(I’m pretty sure they took down the review about the male gigolo already.  Or it’s buried.)

Anyhow, what I find interesting is how ideas like these gain traction.  I first came across VRM in the beginning of this year, and its been around in its current incarnation since 2006 or so, I believe.   Not a whole lot of coverage had been devoted to it, outside of the interested in the media and blog sphere.

Then I see VRM, and the ideas it spreads, start popping up in other places, as illustrated by Doc’s post and others.  I even see business models that have similar concepts.  It was also heavily covered at a recent conference.

Doc is a far more eloquent speaker on the subject of VRM than I.  What I wonder on seeing that is, how do potentially revolutionary ideas  spread?  Evangelism and quality, sure, but how do you create widespread distributed change in a repeatable, or at least manageable fashion?  We are a far more complex and distributed society than we were during the revolts of history, or even the protests and rallies of the middle of last century.  An immense amount of pressure needs to be exerted to influence the institutional forces of the world today – at least in a meaningful fashion.

Not saying it can’t be done.  The effect of a good idea and persistent evangelism is enough to make an impact, as shown above.  But the days of rallies and focal media channels are ending, and in the noise of a society where we all have a voice I have trouble seeing how to fight institutional forces.   This is a problem when the powers-that-be – governments, corporations, cultures, and economic forces – may not be on the right track.   Instead of a globalized world, are we turning into a highly fragmented, isolated world?

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In other news,  if anyone else would like to get involved in the WebCoherence Project,  let us know.  Heeman has been busy at work, and far more of my writings and interests don’t fit into the ‘coherent behaviour’ framework.  Interested in highlighting oddly synonymous behaviour on the web?  Let us know.

Anyhow, a recent news story came across my consciousness. I don’t recall which one, precisely – let’s say it was the balloon boy thing. Now, I have a decently established methodology for learning about what’s been going on, at least things that I care about. Generally, I don’t care about the balloon boy thing. General news falls pretty low in my process, I’ll admit, but I noticed the balloon boy thing, and one thing about it stood out. Almost everything of ‘general news’ that I’ve noticed lately I didn’t notice from the internet news services, or twitter, or my RSS feeds, or the paper on the tube.

So what do Ted Kennedy, Michael Jackson, recent US football scores, the balloon boy, the old guy on the Tube, and other general news stories have in common?

Facebook. People talking about these stories on this bizarre misanthropy of a social networking site, one that doesn’t quite seem to know what it’s purpose is. And I’m not an avid Facebooker, nor do I track down history streams (whatever they’re called?) when I don’t log in for a couple days.  Yet I still noticed all of these via my friend’s ramblings on Facebook.

So – I end up with heavily filtered, likely inaccurate pictures of what’s going on of general import. Once or twice was understandable… but lately its been a trend. Are we creating a method of social news distribution that is more focused on inaccuracy than accuracy? Sure, we can see what people care about – but people are going to come to rely on this, something the opposite of journalistic distribution.

Opinions?

*On the subject of Twitter – yes, I could learn of things like this from twitter, but for whatever reason I find twitter tends to carry more professionally relevant information. I can think of a couple reasons out of hand, but that’s not the point of this post.

http://applicant.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/b4.jpg

If it were up to me, this wouldn’t matter since I am a firm believer in if you show up and do your job, then anything that happens outside work should not matter. But this is not the world we live in. People who make false injury claims and then post skiing videos from the weekend on facebook are going to get caught. It all comes down to common sense. If you add your boss on facebook, then don’t bash them. Or otherwise don’t add them if you intend to bash them. A friend of mine once said: “It’s a window into your life and if you’re dumb enough to change in front of it without closing the curtain first then you’re going to get seen by a lot of strangers passing by.”

You wont need all of that anymore. I have recently come across a website that allows anyone to hunt for personal information at a single click. The website hosts a free to use service which gives information about any person just on the basis of “firstname lastname” and results in presenting a whole load of information containing photographs, email addresses, youtube videos, biographies, books, blogs, news articles, IMs and even social networking profiles including Facebook, myspace, Twitter, Linkedin and many more… The search results are aggregated from a plethora of common and uncommon search engines, social networking sites, blogs, news channels, ecommerce websites, photo album websites such as Flickr and Picasa and hundreds of other websites that you wouldnt have even heard of.

The website is 123people.co.uk. This afternoon, I tried putting in my own name and I was shocked to see quite a lot of my own information being presented on a single page. I would recommend that you search yours and check if your information is being correctly displayed?

If the website shows your accurate information as results, don’t blame your parents and complain about your unique name. The results you see on 123people.co.uk are fruits of your activities that have created information on the web which is now aggregated for anyone to spy on you. If you see too much information being displayed and would like to get rid of it, think about changing privacy settings of websites that are contributing to your information being displayed.

Just to let to know, several web ecologists at WebCoherence are working on finding solutions to these problems of personal identity management on the web. If you are willing to participate and contribute in our solution finding exercise, please write to us at webcoherence [at] gmail [dot] com.

In the meanwhile, please do leave in your comments and suggestions based on your findings and experiences. This will help us in our research.

I attended a public guest lecture by Prof. Manuel Castells at the LSE last month where he introduced us with his new research and book titled Communication Power. He pointed out during his speech that the Green agenda has been here for over 30 long years! Indeed we all know that cutting trees or burning coal is detrimental to the environment but the reason why we see enhanced awareness in recent times is attributed to the power of Internet.

According to Professor Castells, it’s the Internet enabled Communication and Networked Power that has helped spread the message far and loud which has created waves of awareness and has enabled society at large to consider the issue which has been ignored for the past three decades. Companies now publish their sustainability reports on the web which are picked up by the common man and evaluated of its merit.  The pressure of open evaluation is playing an important role (though it is NOT the only influencing factor) in helping us go green.  It still remains a question if the reports display accurate carbon metrics, but it can safely be predicted that - though some of the figures on sustainability reports might have be extrapolated or incorrectly calculated, there are definitely some efforts being put by organisations to go green and the networked power of the Internet has an overall positive impact on the environment.

“Oh! I just love Twitter.”
“Twitter is cool.”
“I can write on the move and the message goes out! Isnt that great!”
“I confess, I am indeed obsessed.”

These are some of the responses I have received from Twitter users who tweet more than 20 times a day. The community of users who adore Twitter and find it useful is no doubt huge. Along with it is growing the number of Twitter applications that could be used. Fancy some? The web is full of applications which could generate move value for a Twitter account with free to use functions like Personalised Auto responders to Twitter follow requests and messages, auto-follow whoever follows you, Twitter Rank Check, Twitter Friend Suggest or even you could try the Twitter CRM. There are thousands of applications, just google them up!

Twitter users are now increasingly using these innovative free to use tools, but do they ever check who owns these Twitter applications? I found that some of these Twitter applications were developed as school or college projects and were launched by students for people to use it for free. Amazing! isnt it? No, its NOT. Most Twitter applications ask you to supply your credentials so that the applications can work with Twitter and you dont know who is storing your passwords!!

And are these applications bug free? You never know, afterall they are student projects. I have just heard a sad story from a friend who lost all his followers because he was using a free tool to send personalised messages back. The tool malfunctioned and all his Twitter contacts were lost!

‘She’s just a devil woman, with evil on her mind,

Beware the devil woman, she’s gonna get you from behind.’

In 2006 Sir Cliff Richard had a conservatory built onto his house on the Wentworth Estate in Virginia Water, Surrey, but it had been erected without planning permission. On the 30^th June 2009 he applied to the Planning Committee of Runnymede Borough Council (RBC) for retrospective permission. Instead the Council ordered him to demolish the £30,000 structure.

Sir Cliff was upset, but his fans (mostly female) were furious. Quite spontaneously they started e-mailing RBC to express displeasure. They wrote in their thousands, in their tens of thousands. The Council system was overwhelmed – and crashed.

I’ve been trying to e-mail two of my councillors since last Sunday – today is Wednesday. All I get is a message telling me that my letter has been ‘enqueued’ and is ‘undeliverable.’ They should have added ‘Congratulations!’

Cliff’s Devil Women have succeeded in getting RBC from behind with a classic example of a denial of service attack!

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Erm.  Incoming ‘information.’   And we got to discussing how we processed these inputs.  In particular, the individual methods we used to filter and sort out the gleam from the dross.

Before I go on, please note, I’m not talking about spam here.  We all sort that out to varying effectiveness with our spam filters.

I’m really just referring to the amount of input your average digerati tends to (chooses to) process.  It reminded me of how I approached a recent situation.  I had to contact someone, rather urgently, as I had forgotten to RSVP for an event that night that I needed prior permission for, which was then two hours away.

I chose to email two of their email accounts and send them a tweet.  I did not call them, despite having their phone number.

Let’s dissect that.  I saturated their email and primary digital input method (twitter.)  I did this because I knew they checked those, and yet at the same time did not feel my lack of initiative justified interrupting them via a demanding attention mechanism.

Ignoring the huge degree of choice and personal preference exercised there – what if I hadn’t known?  How did I know this person would check their email or twitter?

…

What the information saturated among us are developing are our own personal set of information processing heuristics.  Each person approaches this type of thing in different ways, reads different info, and finds different methods of contact socially acceptable at any given time.  Worst (best?) – these standards are *all* individual.  Without a personal degree of knowledge, something that doesn’t scale over time or quantity, we can’t know the best way to contact people.

So this brings us to the new standard for personal information management.  A very… individual standard.  How do we know how to contact our (distributed) friends as distance continues along it’s path to zero?

As always… just a point for thought.