al-qaeda
Latest
US officials seize cryptocurrency accounts tied to al-Qaeda and ISIS
Agents recouped about $2 million worth of virtual currency in total.
Facebook details its fight to stop terrorist content
Last June, Facebook described how it uses AI to help find and take down terrorist content on its platform and in November, the company said that its AI tools had allowed it to remove nearly all ISIS- and Al Qaeda-related content before it was flagged by a user. Its efforts to remove terrorist content with artificial intelligence came up frequently during Mark Zuckerberg's Congressional hearings earlier this month and the company's lead policy manager of counterterrorism spoke about the work during SXSW in March. Today, Facebook gave an update of that work in an installment of its Hard Questions series.
YouTube bans all videos from an extremist cleric
YouTube's efforts to catch and take down terrorist videos include some far-reaching measures. The New York Times has learned that YouTube recently removed and blocked all videos from Anwar al-Awlaki, a cleric who turned extremist and was killed by an American drone strike in 2011. While it's only his later clips that technically run afoul of YouTube guidelines, the streaming giant determined that all of them ultimately had to go. Supporters of his terrorist cause have reposted his moderate material in a show of support -- getting rid of everything theoretically prevents these adherents from finding something to rally around.
US builds a $100 million African drone base to fight Boko Haram
The Department of Defense announced on Friday that it is investing $100 million in a drone base located in Agadez, in central Niger. The base will serve as a central surveillance hub in the fight against both Boko Haram and roaming militant groups linked to al Qaeda.
America's drone strike program needs a low-tech fix
Last week, The Intercept released a trove of classified documents (provided by an unnamed source) relating to America's use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as weapons of assassination. These activities took place between 2011 and 2013, throughout both active combat areas in Iraq and Afghanistan and nations like Yemen and Pakistan. And while plenty of people are discussing the shortcomings of human-controlled UAVs, nobody's talking about how to fix them. Could the answer be more technology like the fully autonomous weapon and surveillance platforms that the Department of Defense (DoD) is developing? Or, when it comes to aerial assassinations, is less more?
Former detainee consulting on Guantanamo game
Moazzam Begg spent three years locked up at Guantanamo Bay after being arrested in Pakistan by the CIA as a suspected member of al-Qaeda. Now he's helping UK developer T-Enterprise develop a game based on the prison, aptly titled Rendition: Guantanamo, serving as not only a consultant on the reality inside but as a financier on the project. "This will not demean the reality of Guantanamo but it could bring those issues to people who would not usually think about it," Begg told Deadline Scotland. We're not sure if it's just us, but this is starting to sound a lot like Six Days in Fallujah in that it falls under the "probably not the best premise for a video game" category. Don't believe us? Check out the trailer after the break and decide for yourself.[Via GamePolitics]
Al-Qaeda endorses... the Zune on Conan O'Brien
Because as we all know, "The iPod is the Devil's MP3 player!" Enjoy this charming clip after the break.Note: Video is only available in the US. And only to Real Americans.
Don't panic: Fallout 3 concept art linked to terrorism
US-based monitoring group SITE said there has been a video released on Islamic militant forums encouraging terrorists to detonate WMDs in America. According to Australian-based News.com.au, "SITE also released a computer-generated image, showing Washington DC in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, which reportedly appeared on an Islamist forum." If that released image, featured in the article and reprinted above (sans kangaroo, we added that), looks familiar, that's because it's concept art from Fallout 3, released back in May 2007 (a high-resolution image is available here). To be clear, we're not faulting SITE or anyone else involved in this story -- after all, it's an unmarked piece of concept art that does illustrate the terrorist's goal, and SITE doesn't make any claims as to the origins of the image. It's more of an oddity than a joke, but it's interesting to see how a simple thing such as concept art can be interpreted in different ways.%Gallery-3507%[Via A Post Nuclear Blog; thanks, Andy]
Britons build working replica of the Turing Bombe
Just in case Al Qaeda or other "evildoers" du jour decide to start communicating in code via the WWII-era Enigma code -- we'll have the Turing Bombe on our side. This working replica of the machine used by British cryptologists at Bletchley Park, the epicenter of the counter-Enigma effort was unveiled at that site earlier this week. According to an article by The Register: "The Bombes used 108 electromagnetic spinning drums to test combinations of letters and reveal the likely keys to the Enigma code used in a particular message." The article goes on to say that Churchill ordered the 200 Bombes that had been built dismantled by the end of the war, and that it wasn't until the 1970s that the classified nature of these devices was lifted. Unlike the shrouded secrecy that its original was wrapped in, this replica will be open to the public -- from September 23-24, there will be a reunion of Bletchley Park veterans and a special demonstrations with war re-enactors in period dress. No word on who will play Alan Turing, though, but our own England bureau chief, Conrad Quilty-Harper, is a likely candidate.[Via The Register]
Play the news: kill Al Qaeda's al-Zarqawi
If you've recently witnessed the news on TV or your disagreeable neighbor's house getting blown to smithereens, you'd likely be aware that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in a decisive US air strike earlier this month. If this is the first time you're learning of it, the news is reaching you in a way quite dissimilar to the way in which the people behind Kuma Reality Games want it to. Reaching you is just the beginning for them -- they want it to grab you by the arm and yank you into a Source-powered, 3D recreation.The goal of Kuma\War is elaborate and intriguing, though much like a minefield, it's also laced with topical traps that require careful movements to navigate successfully. For every major battle or newsworthy event that takes place in the ongoing war on terror, Kuma\War offers a free, downloadable counterpart, plunging you right into the war-torn boots of an American soldier and tasking you with carrying out the very same mission. Just a scant few weeks after al-Zarqawi's death, Kuma\War will be offering "players" the opportunity to call in the airstrike that killed him or, alternatively, rush his house with a group of comrades in tow.
