FBI gives Al-Qaeda hack the brush-off

A US webmaster gained control of a key Al-Qaeda website, handing the FBI a potential weapon to use against the terrorist organisation on a silver platter, but apparently the government organisation did not want to know.

Entrepreneur Jon Messner, who runs a number of online porn sites, uses software programs to keep track of domain names that are about to expire, so that he can bag any good ones to add to his empire.

When Alneda.com, an Al Qaeda sympathiser site that posted messages from its commanders, came up for renewal on July 16, Messner grabbed it and populated the site with content he had copied from it before it expired.

Thinking he was doing a public service he contacted the FBI and offered them the site to use as an intelligence and information gathering tool, or as a disinformation weapon.

Messner was already getting plenty of hits from Arab nations and it appears that many militants had been taken in by the fake site.

But according to reports, Messner then endured a week of frustration while the FBI came up someone with enough technical knowhow to consider his proposal.

After a week of deliberation the FBI turned down the offer saying that: "The FBI doesn't encourage private citizens to take on investigative techniques".

Messner has since redirected the site to Itshappening.com, an anti-terrorism discussion board, and put up a banner saying Alneda.com had been "hacked, tracked and now owned by the USA".