From the front page of Saturday’s Washington Post:
The Internet, which was created in the 1960s as a communications network that could survive a Soviet nuclear attack, has emerged as a prime tool of Islamic radicals. They use its anonymity to coordinate operations secretly and to get their message to the public sphere with little fear of detection.
Half a dozen federal agencies have assigned teams to monitor sites that carry postings from Abu Maysara and other radicals.
[…]
Radical groups have also used the Internet to research potential targets, communicate with each other, plan attacks and raise money…. Today, nearly every active guerrilla group has an online presence, spread across hundreds of Web sites, according to Gabriel Weimann, who was until recently a fellow at the federally funded U.S. Institute of Peace.
From the same section in the same Post:
The nation’s top cyber-security official resigned unexpectedly on Thursday, raising new questions about the progress of efforts to protect the nation’s vast computer networks from terror attacks, electronic viruses and other threats, government and industry officials said yesterday….
[Amit] Yoran is the third cyber-security chief to leave in less than two years. He declined yesterday to say why he left his post after giving just one day’s notice. But industry officials said he had been disappointed that he was not given as much authority as he was promised to attack the problem.
“Cyber-security has fallen down on that totem pole,” said Paul Kurtz, executive director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, who previously worked on security issues in the White House.
[…]
“There was a sense it was essentially a powerless position,” said [Kevin Poulsen, a cyber-security specialist, and] news editor at SecurityFocus.com. “In an age of physical terrorism and real-world threat, [the Bush White House is] not giving cyber-security much attention.”