As published in the New York Law Journal Friday, February 5, 2010 Expert Analysis COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA LAW Can We Blame The Net? By James C. Goodale How much can we blame the Net for the Christmas bomber?The Net doesn’t make bombs, humans do.But the Net can take its fair share of the blame. Recent studies have shown that terrorists are not necessarily radicalized at mosques, they are radicalized on the Net.It is highly probable that the Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was too. The Net is media.The use of media in this fashion to terrorize the world is unprecedented.It represents a corruption of free speech. These terrorists are not recruited, they meet each other on the Net.They recruit themselves.They are frequently well educated, well off and very proficient with computers. Mr. Abdulmatallab grew up in a wealthy Islamic enclave.He was religious.He spent his days and nights reading the Koran.He was highly vulnerable to outside influence.He was very skilled on the computer. He went to college in London where he sought other Islamists as friends.Using the Net, he began a path of self-identification and brainwashing.He used the name Farouk1986 on a chat room which he visited over 300 times intwo years. He said on the Net he was lonely and sought an answer to his loneliness.He fell under the influence of a notorious Internet Imam, Anwar al-Awlaki.He was influenced by the imam’s Internet sermons.At some point he began to communicate with al-Awlaki. When he left college he became indoctrinated.He withdrew from former associates, transformed his persona and adopted a spiritual “sanctioner,” namely al-Awlaki.A “sanctioner” justifies acts of terrorism. Once indoctrinated he became a jihadist.He reached out to al-Awlaki and went to Yemen to meet him.There he became trained as a terrorist. Marc Sageman, a terrorist expert, has studied the patterns of over 500terrorists worldwide.The Net played a major role in their radicalization.The patterns he has discerned fit Mr. Abdulmatallab to a T. His books “Understanding Terror Networks” and “Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks” are leading works in the field.The analysis in these books was the basis of a highly influential report: “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” published in 2007 by New York City’s counter-terrorism unit.Mr. Sageman was a consultant to this unit. Both this report and Mr. Sageman’s book predicted Mr. Abdulmatallab behavior with uncanny accuracy.The path to terrorism has four phases in which the Internet plays an important part. In the first phase, “pre-radicalization,” 15 to 35 year-old males, form internal networks.“[T]hey are from moderate, religious, caring, middle-class families.”[1]“This group is particularly vulnerable . . . they are at an age where they often are seeking to identify who they really are and trying to find the meaning of life”[2] As these individuals seek identity, they turn to the Net (phase two).They find propaganda on Web sites, where they meet like-minded individuals.It is hard to avoid the aggressive ideology of militant Islam on-line. This phase leads to indoctrination through the Net (phase three).Password-protected chat rooms play a large part in this indoctrination.Anonymous members brainwash each other and achieve a sense of legitimization for their views.Consequently, these members reach the fourth and final stage, jihadization. As jihadists, they may either engage in homegrown terror or seek training at a camp, again, with the help of the Net.Homegrown terrorists, such as the U.K. terrorists, use the Net for bomb making instruction. Mr. Abdulmutallab went through each of these phases: 1) vulnerability (pre-radicalization), 2) self-identification, 3) radicalization, 4) jihadization.He was vulnerable, sought identification on the Net, used chat rooms, fell under the influence of a Net imam, transformed his personality and joined the jihad. The Net, therefore becomes an extraordinarily dangerous medium.More dangerous perhaps than any other form of media the world has heretofore known. Because of its multiple facets, the Net would appear to be much more dangerous than the microphones which brought us Nazi propaganda.Militant jihadist propaganda on the Net is generically similar to the Nazi’s.But its accessibility and worldwide reach is unprecedented. The important distinction, however, between the Net and other modes of propaganda is that the Net is interactive and it is anonymous.As such, it is revolutionary and unprecedented in its ability to enable users to brainwash each other and themselves. The problem with the phases of radicalization from a free speech perspective is that some of them seem harmless.Would-be terrorists are not the only ones who feel vulnerable in their early adult years, or who use chat rooms to seek self-identity, or who are highly influenced by the Net, even brainwashed, perhaps. The terrorists have corrupted these seemingly innocent activities.They have turned free speech into a sword. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff without destroying the rights of free expression as we and other societies have known it?This is very difficult to do. Dangerous chat rooms may be hard to find.Jihad terrorist propaganda may be hard to locate.Internet Imams may be hard to stop. But even if you can locate militant Islamic Web sites and you can stop them, you may not want to.It may be because they are in fact innocent and do not urge terrorist action. We should use every effort to eliminate terrorism as it appears on the Net.We may however, have to accept the fact that despite all the benefit the Net has brought us, the Net is a highly dangerous form of media.As long as we have the Net we may well have terrorism generated, in part, by it. _______________________________________________________________________ James C. Goodale is the former vice chairman of The New York Times and producer/host of the television program “Digital Age.”