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Europe Police Agency Hits Islamic State Servers in Blow to Jihadist Publicity
Europe police agency hits Islamic State servers in blow to jihadist publicity
Belgian prosecutors have knocked out several internet servers used by Islamic State, shutting a large number of accounts and websites run by its news arm, in an operation led by Europe’s police agency, the Belga press agency reported on Monday.
Europol, the European policy agency, said it would release details of the initiative at a news conference later on Monday.
“We were able to shut down a large number of accounts and a series of websites,” Belga quoted prosecution spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt as saying.
Europol said in a statement it has been working with nine of the largest Internet platforms to counter Islamic State propaganda operations, including with Google, Twitter, Instagram and Telegram.
Europol said on its website it had examined “propaganda videos, publications and social media accounts supporting terrorism and violent extremism” over the course of two days last week.
European police shuts down Islamic State propaganda
European law enforcement has shut down Islamic State's online campaign channels, including Amaq, its official media office.
The operation took place over 4 days, and resulted in the removal of 26,000 items of IS-related content -- propaganda videos, publications, and social media accounts. It involved the cooperation of 9 online service providers, including Telegram, Google, Files.fm, Twitter, Instagram and Dropbox.
Most of the take-down requests were directed at Telegram, pushing a significant portion of key actors within the IS network away from the platform, according to Europol.
The action is the latest in a series starting in 2016, with a takedown against Amaq's mobile and web infrastructure. Amaq responded by creating a more complex and secure infrastructure.
To little avail: a second strike in June 2017, with US involvement, allowed for the identification of radicalized individuals in 133 countries, and more than 200 million accesses to Islamic State propaganda, by 52,000 possible sympathizers.
In April 2018, a third attack finally took down all of Islamic State's servers, forcing them to rely exclusively on social media and messaging apps. However, after a relatively short period, IS sites and accounts returned online. This fourth attack, like the former one led by Belgian police, is supposed to disable them for a longer time, and with significant financial costs.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26 2019, @09:52PM (5 children)
Weren't they supposed to be one of the good guys? Is they anybody that's safe to use anymore?
Or maybe these guys were let go, and a new more robust system is already up.
Remember kids, regardless of the content, censorship is the devil's work. It is evil at its core.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 26 2019, @10:15PM (1 child)
And wasn't the internet designed to view it as damage and route around it?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday November 28 2019, @02:56AM
Yeah, maybe the internet is, but the service providers have other ideas, and they are the single point of failure that is very difficult to reroute around. And the server/client nature of the connection is another dependency issue. We need ad hoc networking on the WAN.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26 2019, @10:30PM
There are certain realities one needs to get on board with. The
internetplatform is never safe and not allspeechmessages should be free.(Score: 1, Touché) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday November 26 2019, @11:11PM (1 child)
I can't tell you about censorship here, but what I can tell you as an insider is that when we looked at the servers, we found the invoices of Hollywood studios used to create the propaganda videos, with John McCain signing the checks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26 2019, @11:30PM
Golden rule: Always blame it (whatever "it" is) on a dead guy.