Should we disrupt terrorists on the Internet?

For Foreign Policy, I write about an old CVE and CT debate: Is there a benefit to knocking terrorists off the Internet?

Somali al Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab woke up one January morning to discover that its popular English-language Twitter account -- @HSMPress -- had been suspended, apparently because it had issued a direct, specific threat of violence in breach of Twitter's terms of service. This rare termination dusted off one of the counterterrorism industry's most-cobwebbed debates: Should we let terrorist groups use the Internet, or should we try to knock them offline?

Labels: Al-Shabab, CVE, Internet

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