Assorted Materials: Johnny Ryan

One of the benefits of having published Countering militant Islamist radicalisation on the Internet: a user driven strategy to recover the web with the Institute of International & European Affairs is that I am free to make the book freely available. It has attracted interest from unforeseen quarters. I recently discovered that it was on a training course for FBI agents. I think it’s now time to make it freely available in its entirety on Google Books - see the entire text at http://books.google.com/books?id=hsUGK-PpEuUC&printsec=frontcover

I spoke on the issue of Internet governance at the Swiss Government’s counter terrorism seminar on 29 April 2008. Here is the presentation. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: Since I am writing a book on the value of ‘openness’ on the Internet, I have begun to appreciate the worth of making what might otherwise be defendend as intellectual property public. Here follows a stripped down and un footnoted version of my PhD plan. Read the rest of this entry »

I spoke at the Pluscarden Conference last weekend. Here’s the paper. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m putting together a document at work that will define the scope of our Digital Future group. The question is, what issues should be included and why if the group is to examine digital competitiveness in Ireland in the coming years?

In 1999 the Government’s Action Plan to Implement the Information Society noted that: “we are at the early stages of a new industrial revolution - one which will have more dramatic implications than any other single industrial development in the history of the State”. Today, the information and communication technology sector accounts for about one third of Irish exports and directly employs 93,000 people in more than 4,000 enterprises. Larger still is the digital sector, which could be far more broadly defined to include sub-sectors of the financial services, medical research, foreign development initiatives etc.

An important contributor to Ireland’s future competitiveness will be the government’s capacity to produce foreword looking policy that enables it to adapt to, and leverage the benefits of, the digital revolution that is currently underway. This means foreseeing not only the benefits of digital convergence and user-driven innovation, but also the vulnerabilities inherent in an increasing dependence on vulnerable - but indispensable - communications technologies. This is particularly true if Ireland is to remain attractive to the forward looking, innovative companies that can enhance our competitive edge and maintain Ireland’s E-ready, knowledge-rich economy in the decades to come. Read the rest of this entry »

There was little detail in the speech by the UK Home Secretary yesterday, but one possibility is that the CleanFeed system of hybrid URL filtering might be applied to attempt censorship of radical material on the Internet.

I was interviewed for the BBC World News Service and BBC Radio’s Simon Mayo programme. One thought which occurred is that the Home Secretary’s use of language about “grooming” suggests a belief that violent militant radicalisation is a top down process, similar to an adult grooming a child for criminal purposes. I think this is perhaps misleading. Radicalisation on the internet seems to be bottom up and horizontal, a process in which like minded individuals consult the Internet for information that will support their assumptions, and lend foundations to their political perspective. Fighting violent radicalisation as “grooming” would prioritise the identification of “groomers”, which could divert effort from the true priority: tacking the narrative that some young people in Europe are using to groom themselves as militants. Read the rest of this entry »

“…experts have expressed serious doubts about what can be effective to prevent radicalisation over the Internet, saying little research has been carried out.

Johnny Ryan, Senior Researcher at Dublin’s Institute of International and European Affairs, has told Reuters that users could easily circumvent any restrictions imposed by the authorities.

Web sites could relocate from one country to another unless there was international agreement, while the controversial content was often distributed through services that are hard to block, such as legitimate chat rooms, he said….” Read the rest of this entry »

The European Commission’s impact assessment on Vice President Frattini’s Internet censorship proposals was made public on 6 November 2007.

My book was cited (10 citations of 112 total) in the report, which happily concluded that censorship was not a practical response to violent radicalisation on the Internet. This is a major event in the debate over whether to attempt to regulate online content.

See the European Commission DG FSJ impact assessment {COM_SEC(2007)1424}, 6 November 2007 [at this link]

I spoke recently at the OSCE’s restricted experts meeting on means to counter radicalisation to terrorism on the Internet. See coverage by Reuters here.

This is a draft transcript of my speech

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Excellencies, Ladies & Gentlemen,

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Reuters reported on some of our presentations at the OSCE annual experts meeting on violent radicalisation on the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a new article I published on openDemocracy (http://www.opendemocracy.net)

European Union member-state governments are increasingly aware of the danger of terrorism perpetrated within their own borders - sometimes by their own citizens. From late 2005 onwards, the European commission and justice and home affairs (JHA) council of ministers have rightly begun to place a high priority on curbing radicalisation and recruitment into terrorism, particularly on the internet. The latest manifestation of these efforts is the adoption by the European commission on 6 November 2007 of a new “counter-terrorism package”.

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Michael Holden’s piece for which he interviewed me is at Reuters
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL2658640020071106

the same day that I was interviewed on the same topic by FM4 Radio (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) http://www.iiea.com/audio/jryaninternet.mp3 Read the rest of this entry »

Published in: Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 30, Issue 11 November 2007 , pages 985 - 1011

Abstract: This article suggests that a single interpretative framework can be used to understand Islamist militant rhetoric, and to compare it to supposedly more orthodox campaigns such as Irish Republican militancy, differences of culture, scale, and lethality. Both refer to histories of persecution; cite exemplars of their just cause drawn from historical precedent; maintain utopian ideals and justifications of violence that drawn from culturally relevant versions of piety; and use examples of perseverance against overwhelming odds drawn from their respective histories. This framework of “4Ps” - persecution, precedent, piety, and perseverance - is apparent even on the Internet, where rhetoric is necessarily atomized.
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Published on openDemocracy (http://opendemocracy.net/article/democracy_terror/islamism_web)

On the internet, in gymnasiums, bookshops and video-clubs, recruitment propaganda is viewed by and debated among prospective Islamist militants. This wide-ranging material contains four recurrent themes; understanding them is the first step to forming an effective counter-narrative to dissuade the next generation of would-be militants from embracing violence, and channelling their energies and ideas into democratic routes of political and religious persuasion. Read the rest of this entry »

I was interviewed about this on RTE’s Prime Time TV programme, 5 July 2007. Adrian Lydon’s report, and my contribution to it, are available here. See also my letter to The Times (London), published on 6 July 2007.

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DOSSIER SECURITY AND DEFENCE: EU must take its anti-terrorism fight to the Internet

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“Ryan offers a comprehensive policy-based solution to the issue of militant Islamist rhetoric on the internet. … This book demystifies the “intellectual-unknown” of the internet and its use by groups such as al-Qaeda. … The book represents the unique and positive contribution that Irish defence scholars can make at EU and international level”

- The Irish Times.

Review in The Irish Times, Saturday 16 June 2007, Review Section, p. 11. Full text below… Read the rest of this entry »

Countering Militant Islamist Radicalisation on the Internet: a User Driven Strategy to Recover the Web 160pp, ISBN: 1-874-109-86-9, hardback.

Buy it now!

By Johnny Ryan, Senior Researcher. Foreword by Alan Dukes, Director General of the IEA, and former Minister for Justice and for Finance. Order from Amazon.

Praise

“This book is a valuable aid to reflection among all those concerned to protect our lives and democratic liberties against the evils of international terrorism”

-Alan Dukes, Director General of the Institute of European Affairs and former Irish Minister for Justice.

“Ryan, a former Cambridge University researcher - who worked alongside Prof Christopher Andrew, president of Corpus Christi College and chair of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar - reveals in this work the elaborate, web-based virtual communications networks employed by groups such as al-Qaeda to connect with, radicalise and recruit young Europeans to their terror cells. … Ryan offers a comprehensive policy-based solution to the issue of militant Islamist rhetoric on the internet. … This book demystifies the “intellectual-unknown” of the internet and its use by groups such as al-Qaeda. … The book represents the unique and positive contribution that Irish defence scholars can make at EU and international level”

- The Irish Times. [read full review]

“This book is food for thought. … We really do have a problem in society, and this is chapter and verse what this book is about.”

- Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, UK Shadow Security Secretary, speaking at the launch of the book on 9 July 2007.

Summary

Violent radicalisation on the Internet is at the nexus of two key trends: the democratisation of communications driven by user generated content on the Internet; and the democratisation of strategic violence driven by mass-casualty non-state terrorism. How best can Europe capitalise on the first trend to counter the second?

This book examines this question using primary materials drawn from web forum conversations, al Qaeda documents, texts of leading Islamist thinkers, opinion polls, policy documents and interviews with technology and security specialists.

As this book argues, the answer to violent radicalisation on the Internet lies not in censorship of the Internet, but in the “user driven” Internet revolution.

This title should have read “Islamist militants on the Internet”.

Published in Magill, May 2005.

In Britain the speed with which the Muslim diaspora embraced the internet was demonstrated by the British Muslim Parliament’s order to all mosques and Muslim schools to install web access as early as 1996. With so many young Muslims in Europe and America using the web to maintain contact with family and friends, it has become a key arena for Islamist propagandists. The internet gives security services and curious browsers the opportunity to explore the extremes of political Islam. Read the rest of this entry »