Hacking and politics have contrived to make strange bedfellows. According to a report by the British news organization, The Sun, hackers have come forward and started to take down Web sites that are fomenting terrorism and inciting terrorist acts - something which the government cannot do with any sort of haste, if at all.

Neil Doyle, a British investigative journalist, and author of the book Terror Tracker, explained that “The role of patriotic hackers in taking down extremists’ Web sites is clouded in deep secrecy, as it is illegal,” adding that “The simple rule of thumb is that if a site has gone down quickly, maybe within minutes or hours after first being identified, it’s likely to be hackers. Hosting companies and the authorities are usually slow to react and often nothing can be done, unless there’s been a clear breach of the law.”

Many believe that al-Qaeda is using the Internet to communicate with cells, foment unrest and terrorist activities, and recruit new members - and quite successfully by all accounts.

Doyle said that it is also believed that al-Qaeda’s master hacker has been operating out of…

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