When players of "World of Warcraft" and other massively popular online role-playing games want a bigger challenge, they might be ready for an all-too-real online game of life and death. The unofficial title: "Find the Terrorist Web Sites and Then Help Shut Down the Ones Hosted by American Companies."
Of course, it's anything but a game -- especially to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which has found many of those sites.
The nonprofit organization, created in 1998 and based in Washington, D.C., monitors the media from that volatile part of the world to document the degree of hatred for the U.S. and Israel.
In a recent column, the reader learned that the institute cited SiteGenie LLC Networks. The Rochester, Minn., company had been hosting a site for Islamists to discuss how best to attack U.S. military bases. It included diagrams of potential targets, and plans and angles of attack.
According to the institute, the discussion forum included:
The short-range units must (open fire) in order to divert the attention of (the soldiers) inside the base, while the vehicles begin to proceed toward the (base's perimeter) fence. If the fence is solid (and cannot be crushed by leaning a metal plate against it), it can be destroyed with a missile. ... (Then) the unit designated to attack the target (inside the base) must carry out its task.
SiteGenie did not reply to my calls and e-mail requesting comment. Around that same time, however, it appears that SiteGenie shut down that abomination.
But MEMRI discovered that the site had moved to another host, Layered Technologies Inc. in Texas.
"I could pull the plug on that server, but it's like playing Whac-A-Mole," said Jeremy Suo-Anttila, Layered's chief technology officer. "I would rather not blindly pull the plug."
Mr. Suo-Anttila said that when he received a complaint about the site last week, he informed the FBI.
"We cooperate with law enforcement," Suo-Anttila says. "I want to do the right thing."
By Wednesday morning he had not heard back from the bureau.
American hosting companies typically charge less than foreign ones and there is more broadband availability in the U.S., he says. "They probably don't know they are hosted on an American server."
Suo-Anttila thinks it might be better not to shut down terror sites. "Nothing is stopping the U.S. government from monitoring those points." If the terrorists are chased back to a host in the Middle East, it would cut off a potential source of information, he says.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
"These Web sites don't contain anything that can contribute to foil an attack," says Yigal Carmon, MEMRI's founder and formerly chief adviser on counterterrorism to Israeli prime ministers. "We have nothing to learn about jihad. There is no need to understand more about their ideology, goals, inspiration and even training. We know it."
The Web sites are weapons in the hand of the terrorist, he says. "Do we need to know about the weapon they shoot at us or should we take it off the hands of the shooter?
"What kind of distorted logic is this?"
Gamers who flush out terrorist sites in today's world of warcraft will score points with a grateful public in the never-ending mission to save the planet.
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