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Good news or bad news? There are now about 5,600 websites spreading al Qaeda's ideology worldwide, researcher Khaled al-Faram told the Information Technology and National Security conference in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh yesterday.

Not enough? About 900 more of such websites are appearing each year.

The researcher said it was difficult to track most of the sites, though hardcore al Qaeda sites often change addresses to avoid detection or start up again elsewhere once infiltrated.

Faram was addressing a conference organized by the Saudi intelligence agency to encourage the public to cooperate more with the government and share expertise on how to survey the Internet for militant activity.

Tools of the governments

The long lull after 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US seems to have put Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, on the guard. It has identified the Internet as a key battlefield with militants who launched a campaign to topple the U.S.-allied ruling royal family in 2003.

"The Internet, chat lines, text messages -- these are the new warriors," Alessandro Zanasi, an expert on Internet monitoring known as "text mining", was quoted as saying in the Reuters story.

This week, the Saudi intelligence agency launched a website in an effort to open up to the public and change the negative perceptions of security services. People can now send information anonymously to the site about any suspicious activity.

As a rebranding Exercise, the Saudi authorities are using the word 'Istikhbarat' to refer to their intelligence agencies, instead of the regular word 'Mukhabarat', which is generally feared in the Arab world as governments' tools that abuse human rights.