The March fatal shooting of two American airmen in Frankfurt by a Kosovo Albanian. The bomb plot on Fort Hood, Texas, soldiers - possibly inspired by the 2009 shooting rampage on the Texas Army post. The foiled attack on Fort Dix, New Jersey, by a tiny cell of homegrown terrorists. These Islamic terror plots share something in common with Anders Behring Breivik, the Norway killer who hated Muslims. They are the work of extremists who are confoundingly difficult to track because they hardly leave a trace. In today's transformed security landscape, authorities and experts say, the 9/11 plotters would surely have been caught.
It's widely believed that these days there's no way a cell involving 19 hijackers and an extensive support network could have plotted attacks in a Hamburg mosque, trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan, and took flight lessons in the United States without being picked up by countertenor operations. And President Barack Obama said in a CNN interview on Aug. 16 that a "lone wolf" terror attack in the U.S. is more likely than a major coordinated effort like the Sept. 11 attacks. Western authorities have infiltrated major jihadist groups, planting moles, eavesdropping on chatter, keeping tabs on radical mosques, and carrying out regular terror sweeps. Some say the tough measures have eroded civil liberties.
But lone wolves or small homegrown cells that blend into the general population present a more slippery challenge. "The biggest threats are people working alone or in very small groups," a senior German intelligence official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "So it's not important whether we have 40 or 50 or 60 followers of the jihad (under observation) ... that doesn't really make much of a difference. The question is are there some that we don't know but who are planning it?"
Modern technology is also making things harder for authorities. As extremists adapt to the anti-terror crackdown, they have taken more advantage of the Internet to cloak their communications and recruit new attackers. "Before, people were recruited in mosques where you'd hear speeches - Finsbury Park or Baker Street" in London, French anti-terrorism judge Marc Trevidic told the AP. "Then that totally stopped. Today, there is not a single case where group members weren't recruited on the Internet." "The ability to self-indoctrinate online is a big concern, because not being in a group complicates our task of surveillance," he said. A terrorist group, he said, "is easier to monitor, moves around and has meetings."
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