10 Jun 2016

Warning to the West: Jihad groups acquiring cyber capability to bring major cities to standstill




The Director of the UK Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) has warned that jihad terrorist groups are gaining the capability to bring major Western cities to a standstill with the click of a button, adding that these groups have “no threshold when it comes to loss of life”. In other words, they are killing machines and destructive without boundaries.
Just a few examples of Islamic calls to attack us:
1.  The Islamic State (ISIS) issued calls to attack the West during Ramadan.
2. The latest issue of al Qaeda’s online magazine “Inspire” calls on jihadis to destabilize the American economy by assassinating business leaders and entrepreneurs. Photos in the magazine include that of Bill Gates spattered with blood with a pistol close by.
3. In the words of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri: “The first matter is striking the West and specifically America in its own home, and attacking their interests that are spread everywhere.”
4. The Islamic State issued a broad threat in 2014 that “the best thing you can do is to strive to your best and kill any disbeliever, whether he be French, American or from any of their allies.”
Most revealing about that last listed threat issued in 2014 is that the UK Home Office called the message “propaganda” and called for Internet providers to pull it down; and the UK has also banned Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller from entering Britain. It’s preposterous that the ban has not been since lifted in light of Jihadist crimes and massacres that have swept Europe since that unjustifiable and contemptible ban. And now the the Director of the UK Government Communication Headquarters has issued his warning about terrorists having “no threshold when it comes to life” and that at the click of a button, our cities could be crippled.
Insight from Tom Joscelyn, senior fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
In fact, the article containing the 2014 ISIS threat was entitled “Western allies reject ISIS leader’s threats against their civilians.” In it, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve stated that “France is not afraid” because it is “not the first time we have been threatened by terrorist groups that attack our values of tolerance, humanism, respect for human rights and democracy.”
Well, that downplaying of the IS threat was prior to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and the coordinated Islamic State attacks on Paris in mid-November 2015 by Jihadist gunmen and suicide bombers who targeted a concert hall, restaurants, bars and a major stadium, leaving 130 people dead and hundreds wounded.
Then there was the attack on Brussels and the catastrophic fallout from the flood of Muslim refugees into Germany.  Now, at the click of a button, a major city may soon be crippled.
“Terrorist groups acquiring the cyber capability to bring major cities to a standstill, warns GCHQ chief”, by Henry Bodkin, The Telegraph, June 9, 2016:
Terrorists and rogue states are gaining the capability to bring a major city to a standstill with the click of a button, the Director of GCHQ has warned.
In a rare public appearance, Robert Hannigan said the risk to cities like London would increase as more physical objects, such as cars and household appliances, are connected online – the so-called “internet of things”.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Science festival, the intelligence chief warned that nation states were currently developing the kind of cyber programmes that could attack the UK, but that terrorist groups were also looking to take advantage of the technology.

“At some stage they will get the capability,” he said.
“There are certainly states and groups with the intent to do it, terrorist groups, for example, who have no threshold when it comes to the loss of life.
“We’re not quite there yet, but as the world becomes ever more connected that will become a greater risk.”….

jihadwatch