e-Terror alert!

With the Internet, Terrorism now uses a new approach: E-Terror.

Wow.

Terrorists now spread their beliefs through the Internet, just like many other unlawful organisations that once spread news using primitive and small methods. Because of how the government has made Internet a platform for freedom of speech, terrorists can easily utilize this medium to air their views too, and to carry out propaganda.

As quoted from Terrorism Update, “At least 12 of the 30 groups on the State Department's list of designated foreign terrorist organizations maintain Web sites on the Internet. While U.S. officials believe that some terrorists use encrypted E-mail to plan acts of terrorism, most groups appear to use the Internet to spread their propaganda.”

When we look at journalism and the Internet, most of us only think of how beneficial it will be, but we fail to see how boundless it is. From the information above, we can see that the Internet has allowed such dangerous groups to propagate people – who knows, the person beside you using the Internet could be a potential terrorist.

It is true that online journalism has created great opportunities for citizens to air their views, and create their own ways of spreading news, but we should also be aware of the other people who misuse this tool for dangerous missions.

How do we deal with it?

As a Singaporean, I guess this is not a big matter at hand. However, I should keep up my vigilance in this matter. Just like how we have to be aware of viruses and spyware on the computer, e-terror should be something we are aware of too. Who knows if in the future, any other illegal and propagating organisations may just creep into our emails and access our information?

Let’s really keep our eyes opened.