Gordon Corera

Gordon Corera is the BBC Newsnight's Security Correspondent

Jihadi Conspiracy on the Internet

On 16 January 2008, Corera was the presenter of the Newsnight program "Terrorist 007" on the Cyber-Al Qaeda. The program reports about a young British-Muslim who was allegedly conducting "jihad" on the internet. It is a sprinkling of allegations, quotations from terrorologists, and the imprisonment is taken as final proof of his mass criminal proclivities. That is, spreading information translates to a heinous crime.

In the program ther are some curious comments.

Corera: He viewed footage like this (unarmed civilians walking down the street in Falluja -- and bombed afterwards… the pilot exclaiming "Oh, dude"…) taken from the cockpit of a fighter jet as evidence of a western plan to wipe out Muslims across world. It is alleged that it shows innocent Iraqi civilians being killed in Falluja -- the real facts are unclear.

Corera states that the fact that the young Muslim was incensed at what happened was taken from videos showing the killings of Muslims, but then the videos are merely "alleged" to have shown American crimes. While in the program the "facts" are clear about what the young Muslims were up to, the American crimes in Iraq are "alleged" or merely unclear.

NB: In this program Corera speaks from London, Washington DC, Bosnia... a minor segment produced at a huge cost.

So what can be done to censor the internet. Paxman ended: "tomorrow we will bring you the Home Secretary's response on what can be done about use of the internet by terrorists."

People Quoted in the program

• Aaron Weisburd
• Evan Kohlmann
• Peter Clark – Met Police
• Amit Yoran – the "US's first cyber-security czar"