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by shafiq on March 4th, 2005

shafiq

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Why aren't terrorists tracked down through their emails or websites?

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  • by BoundSyco on March 6th, 2005

    BoundSyco

    The basic answer: Tracking individuals on the internet is a very difficult and time consuming task. If someone wants to stay anonymous on the internet they usually can.

    The reason why: Basically there are very few things to trace individuals down with. The most common of which are IP addresses, which uniquely define a single connection to the internet at a given time. Responsable Internet Service Providers maintain logs connecting users and their corresponding IP address for the periods of time they are logged on, however the US governement requires search warrents in order to obtain this information (user privacy is important to everybody. The US governement needs a warrent to search your house, they need a warrent to search your computer). Beyond these legalities within the US, the US governement has very little, if any, control over foriegn ISP's and may not be able to gather this information at all. On top of all of this computer savy internet users can easily hide all of their information behind proxy computers. Proxy computers are computers that sit on the internet, allow incomming connections and forward them to their destination, but reveal no information about the source computer. Fortunately not very many open proxies (anyone can use them) exist. Unfortunately hundreds of thousands of computers on the internet have become unwitting accomplices to these illegal activties through the use of viri and trojan horse programs designed to turn the everyday computer into an open proxy.

    For a terrorist to become untrackable they only need to find one of these infected computers and conduct their illict buisness through this computer. Typically there is no way to trace the invidual beyond this infected computer.

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    • Just look at how much trouble the authorities have in tracking down spammers. I doubt that terrorist create that much volume

      Glenn Blaylock

      by Glenn Blaylock on December 23rd, 2005

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