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South Florida: A Terrorist Hotbed

Florida, if you recall, was the training ground for the terrorists that flew planes into the World Trade center, killing thousands of innocent Americans. It was in Florida's sunny environment that many of the Islamic fundamentalists were able to live, unnoticed, while attending a flight training school that would prepare them to commit the most devastating act of terrorism on American soil, ever.

It seems that terrorists love Florida, even cyber-terrorists.

South Florida has plenty of disgruntled Cuban exiles and opportunity-seeking Bahamians. Both groups have been known to be very vocal about issues that affect their home nations. But it is becoming all too clear that some of these people are taking their new found American liberties a bit too far.

The Cuban group are the ones responsible for kidnapping little Elian Gonzalez a few years ago. Then, defying the US government to the point where Federal marshals had to go free the little boy from the terrorists who held him.

The Bahamian group has produced such despicable characters as the young man who raped an eight-year-old girl, then left her for dead in a dumpster. That certainly terrorized that girl and her family, as well as the neighbors and relatives.

Back in The Bahamas, the leading Bahamian website reports on all such activities. BahamasB2B is the largest, highest-traffic website in, or about, the Bahamas. They receive more traffic than several little sites like The Bahamas Guide or the Bahamas Vacation Guide put together. And no wonder! The site's traffic isn't just tourist traffic, like on the other sites. BahamasB2B also features an excellent all-Bahamian directory, robust Classified ads, the most complete Bahamas Real Estate portal in the world, and the most visited Bahamas news portal anywhere. So, you can see where their traffic would outstrip mere tourist sites by leaps and bounds.

But with that high-traffic comes lots of unwanted visitors... hackers and nuisance hits. Aside from the usual amount of hacker activity that you would find on a site that size, BahamasB2B receives a fair amount of targeted hacker activity, much of which comes from South Florida.

"Every time we run an article on Cuba, that is NOT derogatory, we get Cubans in the US attacking our site," says one of the several BahamasB2B Webmasters. "When we publish an anti-Cuban article, the pro-Cuban hackers attack us. You can't win," he says shaking his head.

Then, there are the Bahamian organised crime groups that masquerade behind the initials of political parties. If the Website prints an article critical of the FNM, the FNM hackers attack the site. When they print an article that is critical of the PLP, a shower of trouble begins. "Clearly, the PLP has more and better cyber-terrorists working for them than the FNM," another of the Webmasters quips.

The server administrator at BahamasB2B claims that often, when the site publishes an article that reports crime or news that might negatively affect the Bahamas tourism industry, Bahamians in South Floridia launch an attack. "We have their IP addresses and we watch them come in and read the article, then ten minutes later, a flurry of people hit the same article, all from South Florida, and all from an email referral. Ten minutes after that, the hacking attacks start. It's so obvious, it would be funny if it weren't a Federal crime," he says.

The environment is another area that arouses strong passions and therefore residual web activity. BahamasB2B and Web developer Benelda.com, who maintains the site on a local level, have received numerous hacks, threatening emails and slanderous material posted on a jokey Bahamian Weblog, because they support the Baker's Bay development in Guana Cay, Abaco. The eco-friendly development will relieve the crowding in Nassau by moving jobs and people to a Family Island.

"The Guana Cay opposition is a particularly nasty group who use tactics like intimidation, hacking and threats, because they have nothing to support any logical arguments against the development. The opposition is primarily composed of foreign home owners and a few selfish Bahamians who want to keep the island as their own personal fiefdom," said a source close to the controversy.

Indeed, it is suspected that, as recently as this morning, the Guana Cay opposition group has sent virus-infected emails out to hundreds of people, forging the return address to make it appear the emails came from BahamasB2B or Benelda.com.

"Some of these 'supposed' environmentalists are nothing but cyber-terrorists and many are located in South Florida and use BellSouth to connect to the Internet," says one of the BahamasB2B Webmasters, a third degree black belt who goes by the nickname "Shogun".

We have complained to BellSouth but they are deluged with spam and hacking activates. So, we are thinking of hiring our own security experts, three guys who will reformat the hacker's hard-drive, using nothing but a baseball bat," jokes Shogun. "But then we'd be just like them and we don't want to sink to their level," he adds.

Posted by admin at July 6, 2005 10:38 AM | TrackBack