CAIRO - The Internet has become a favorable and easily accessible mechanism used by world intelligence services. Chat rooms, social networking sites, blogs and many other components of the Internet provide good opportunities for exchanging views, reaching out essential information and for recruiting new agents.

Relevant reports show that hundreds of millions of people around the world make use of these communication tools on a daily basis. Intelligence agencies step up their efforts to monitor the exchanged information, analyze personalities of frequent visitors to recruit them as new agents with or without their knowledge.

Many young Arabs have fallen victim to these operations by international intelligence services including the Israeli Mossad.

Israel alone manages more than 100 specialized organizations registered in the international IT stock markets. The primary role of these companies is to monitor and assess personalities of Arab youth by tracking their conversations on the Internet whether on local or international websites. Reports revealed that Israeli intelligence hackers have penetrated well known Arab blogs.

Mossad agents, who have trained at the Israeli Security College often sneak into these sites and join in discussions with large numbers of Arab youth with the purpose of coercing them to talk about critical issues to determine their views. Their reactions are later scrutinized by experts who spot points of strength and weakness in the Arab personalities to determine who can best be recruited as agents. Later on agreements are reached with the new agent after ensuring that he has accepted the offer.

Apart from its dependence on western intelligence services, Israel prefers to implant agents with good Arabic and who can work according to the “mechanism of simulation” which was mentioned in the book the “Language of Security” by a former Israeli Mossad agent.

Israeli intelligence services also make use of Arab youth who openly discuss sensitive issues such as sexuality and politics under the pretext that they are anonymous especially since Arab societies are generally conservative in dealing with similar topics.

A number of Egyptian youth reported to FI what they believed to be Zionist attempts to draw them to spy on their own country. They told FI that they were once alerted to a person who is a frequent visitor to one of the famous Egyptian blogs using the pseudonym “Mua’ath”. They noticed that he was always asking questions about very critical and controversial issues including those relating to Egypt’s national security and always insisted on getting answers from the Egyptian youth. What was surprising is that when they questioned him, he evaded giving direct answers and procrastinated for days or weeks before giving an answer and sometimes ignored their questions.

There are many like Mua’ath. Those agents prepare reports on each member of the blog and classify him as an ‘enemy’ or a ‘friend’ depending on his interaction and participation in the blog.

Some of the Arab youth could be trapped and then used by the agents to get necessary information from them without being aware of that. At a later stage the young people can be used as an easy tool to obtain official information. This has happened before with the Egyptian spy Mohammed Sayed Saber who was recruited through his biography on the Internet in Hong Kong by means of a business company.

Arab experts explained to FI that the Israeli intelligence services started to use this method because, compared to the traditional way of recruiting agents, it is cost effective and less dangerous.

They said Tel Aviv and Washington have entered into an espionage partnership designed to track organizations and political groups which have sites on the Internet.

An article in the French Magazine Le Soir describes US-Israeli intelligence cooperation on the Internet operated by Israeli specialists who trace young people in Egypt and other Arab countries in addition to other countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

According to Arab experts, this phenomenon is increasingly dangerous. More than 10 million people, many from Arab countries, visited one of the Israeli websites with spying activities. Over time, this website obtained significant political and military information from Arab youth.