The “whack-a-mole” strategy of pulling terrorist videos offline

From the new head of al Qaeda core, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to terror propagandist Ayman al-Awlaki, using the Internet to spread the jihadist message is a tool of the trade for terrorists.

In the last six months of 2011, Google agreed to remove some 640 terrorist videos from YouTube at the request of law enforcement officials in the United Kingdom, because the videos violated the company’s guidelines. The disclosure was contained in Google’s biannual Transparency Report, which provides data on government requests from throughout the world to remove content from Google’s YouTube and search websites.

Aaron Zelin, who started monitoring jihadist websites in 2002 in Washington, has seen a myriad of propaganda and do-it-yourself terror tricks posted in the form of videos. 

The problem with trying to take some of the more egregious material off the Internet, said Zelin, is that it has a way…