Funding Terrorism with Information about Wretched Situations
March 2, 2021
People often try to help. I recall talking to a street person in San Francisco in the chocolate chip cookie shop near the Diva Hotel on Geary. The chocolate chip shop is, I believe, long gone. I asked the person which cookies he liked the best. He said, “I buy them every day for my family. I get a dozen or so. I eat one on the BART to Daly and then take the rest to the family.” I asked, “What do you do?” He said, “I beg. It works really well. People are very generous.”
“Funding the Needy or Funding Terror?” reminded me of this little life lesson from the 1980s. What looked like a person who was down on his luck was a hard working exploiter of people’s desire to help others. None of those Berkeley coupons for the beggar in the cookie store. Now the stakes are higher.
The article reports:
Last year, online fundraisers began to appear on behalf of al-Hol residents. Many were seeking to finance escapes, others to pay for food and supplies. (While some donations have likely gone toward terrorism, the campaigns are careful to avoid mentioning violence.) The petitions spread via social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and often involved PayPal and other payment systems as well as messaging apps, like WhatsApp and Telegram. Before long, intelligence and law enforcement agencies began to monitor them.
The idea is that money flows in and some of it goes to fund activities not included in the video, the email, or the TV commercial.
How do social media platforms police this allegedly fraudulent activity?
Well, that’s a good question.
The write up reports:
he architects of these networks tailor their messages and methods to geography, specific donors and goals, and national laws and platform regulations. Of the Facebook accounts identified by Rest of World that claim links to al-Hol, only some explicitly asked for donations. Others disseminated pictures or news from the camp in different languages, alongside Islamic scripture and memes. A few users fondly reminisced about their time in the caliphate. Facebook disables and deletes accounts that share terrorist propaganda, so ISIS was never explicitly mentioned. Instead, references to the organization were camouflaged by alternative spellings. “I miss the Dawl@,” one said, with a crying emoji, referencing the Arabic word for “state” in ISIS’s full name.
Again. What are social media platforms doing to address this issue?
Outputting words, forming study teams, and hand waving.
Is this a problem? Not if there are cookies at the meeting. No faux street people needed.
Stephen E Arnold, March 2, 2021
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