Web Neighborhood Watch

In the nine years that separated the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the United States pioneered a revolution in information technology by popularizing and expanding the Internet and the World Wide Web. Now, with homeland security of foremost importance following the most recent attack, the domain of the Internet must be considered when defining the boundaries of the ‘homeland’ being protected. One of the characteristics of the Internet is that it offers geographic anonymity to its users. This has led to an increase in terrorist content and communication on the web, with few means of determining if it is located within the homeland, and where. The first step in securing the Internet homeland is devising a method of mapping Internet content to geographical locations.