How did USA get Binnys tape, before release?

Ever wonder how Osama bin Laden videos move from the Internet to the television in your living room?

The Washington Post has a fascinating story today about the community of private individuals and companies who troll the Internet in search of such videos, usually managing to get hold of them before the government's intelligence agencies -and often before al Qaeda intends them to be seen.

Yesterday's Bin Laden tape, for example, was publicly aired thanks to the efforts of a 50-year-old graphic designer working from her South Carolina home who goes by the pseudonym Laura Mansfield.

The al Qaeda dispatch was downloaded and handed to the government by the SITE Institute a full day before the terrorist organization publicly released the video.

The hackers use "a combination of computer tricks, personal connections and ingenuity to find and download password-protected content" from al-Qaeda-affiliated Web sites, according to the Post.

The woman who calls herself Mansfield is a self-described "computer geek" and an Arabic speaker who said she was inspired by the Sept. 11 attacks to "look constantly" online for such messages. "The video may be in an accessibly place for only 15 minutes, and if you're not there at the right time, you might miss it," she said.

Rita Katz, founder of the SITE Institute, a service offering access to an archive of terrorist-group image and materials, declined to comment on the methods used to obtain the footage.

She told the Post that al Qaeda's "propaganda team is getting larger and more sophisticated." When the terrorist group was ready to release Friday's video, for example, it made the vides reading for downloading with nearly 650 different and user-friendly Internet addresses in a variety of versions like for cellphones or with audio only.

But so far, al Qaeda is almost always scooped by groups like SITE, who distribute the videos as much as 24 hours ahead of time.

So, while the U.S. might not be able to find bin Laden, we can at least take heart that we are managing least stick it to his terrorist group by breaking their news embargoes. source