Was Jihad Jane caught by bloggers?

By now, most of you have heard about Colleen LaRose, AKA Jihad Jane, a suburban Pennsylvania woman charged in Federal court with using the Internet to recruit jihadist fighters to carry out murders and violent attacks overseas.  What you may not know, is that multiple citizen cyber-sleuths had been tracking her for three years.  From ABC News (Photograph: AFP/Getty Images):

While the rest of America was stunned to hear that a suburban Pennsylvania woman allegedly used the Internet identity of Jihad Jane and tried to join militant jihadists, for a group of 'Net vigilantes it was old news.

Suburban Pennsylvania woman is charged with recruiting extremists online.In fact, at least one of the Web sleuths claims to have alerted the feds to Colleen LaRose's alleged efforts to raise money and recruit fighters for Islamic terrorists and to carry out her own jihad.

Groups like JawaReport, Quoth the Raven and the YouTube Smackdown Corps claim they had been monitoring LaRose's growing militancy for three years, and watched as the Internet -- particularly YouTube -- fed her fervor.

They also said "Jihad Jane" is not the only one on the Internet that the groups are monitoring.

"There are certainly many others out there who are more eloquent and appear to be more dangerous from the way they talk," a man calling himself Rusty Shackleford told ABC News.

 "Rusty Shackleford" has more here at the Jawa Report.

StarCMC is another blogger who has been on the trail of LaRose.  In a March 9 post, she laments the fact that news organizations are only now showing interest in a story that these groups have been trying to draw attention to for years:

I want to know why they are just now asking these questions, when we’ve been at this for around two years just trying to get some people to take it seriously. We cheered when Joe Lieberman took up the cause for a couple months and YouTube removed videos like crazy, but as soon as he focused elsewhere, YouTube slipped back into a less responsive role when we flagged terrorist videos.

I have several posts here on my site linking YouTube videos to known terrorist websites and forums – here are just a few of them:

http://starcmc.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/youtube-taliban-video-host-of-choice/

http://starcmc.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/youtube-continues-to-carry-water-for-the-terrorists/

http://starcmc.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/youtube-beheadings-and-assassinations-r-us/

http://starcmc.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/youtube-free-server-space-for-the-enemy/

http://starcmc.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/youtube-gateway-drug-to-violent-jihad/

I am just a mom in the midwest. If I can find this stuff, I KNOW the big guns can find it. One of the news guys I spoke with today asked me how we find the videos to flag. I just had to laugh. I told him that all you have to do is search YouTube for al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Mujahideen or any number of keywords and you’ll see tons of videos that are in violation of both YouTube’s TOS and Executive Orders.

StarCMC, I submit that you are not "just a mom in the midwest" and the folks at Jawa Report, YouTube Smackdown Corps and Quoth the Raven are not just bloggers.  You are modern day sentries of our republic, citizen journalists of the highest caliber, and patriots all.  Thank you.