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Echelon Used to Capture Terrorist
An anonymous reader writes "Echelon was used to track and capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed." Ahh, bitter sweet victories. The article kind of explains what Echelon is, and pretty much says that those disposable phones really don't have much security at all.
Tools not have moral, only the ones that use them. But give a tool like that to someone paranoic and it will be bad, very bad.
To me, if they were tracking him, that tells that they knew where he was. So, why didn't they just use the tracking from Echelon to capture Mohammed, instead of paying out 27 million to someone else also?
To quote Bill Maher:
Khalid Sheikh Sheikh Sheikh, Sheikh Sheikh Sheikh, Sheikh Mohammed!
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
This guy is a fair and legitimate target for electronic surveilance. He's a know leader of a network of individuals who are dedicated to causing harm to untold millions of people whose biggest crime is living in a country whose ideals he disagrees with. If Echelon is used fairly and honestly in these types of situations, then I will not complain one bit about the extraordinary secrecy of its network.
-Shadow
Looks like mr Mohammed wasn't wearing his tinfoil hat...
There are some tools with no reasonable purpose besides evil.
While this instance proves that Echelon can be used for good, who insures that?
Considering This and This, He may already be dead.
I find the entire thing suspect personally.
You say you want a revolution....
$25M and a legal visa... terrorism seems to pay well.
If they stuck with the sticks and clubs, no one would be after them. Running a camel into the WTC would not have caused much damage.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Just because it on the internet doesn't make it so.
Just because a government spokesman says it doesn't make it so.
If your mother tells you that the stork brought you, it doesn't make it so.
Always remain skeptical and ask yourself why they want everyone to have this information.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
It seems it was a tip-off, not Echelon, that ultimately led to Mohammed's capture. Read the article, and you'll see that some lucky Al-Quayda grunt turned coat and pocketed a cool $25 million dollars.
It's in the US's interests to hype Echelon ("Woooo! We can seeeeeee you!") rather than admit they really got their man through good old fashioned bribery and traitors. Sure, Exchelon helped once they KNEW THE GUY'S STREET ADDRESS. But it was pretty much useless until they were told where to look.
Still, good catch. Here's hoping there's another footsoldier of god out there who'll take $25mil in small bills in exchange for Osama's current location.
People, we live in a new world. The same technology that allows us to expose the dirty laundry inside of corrupt organizations can also be used to expose and dirty laundry in your hamper.
The rules of the game have changed. You can no longer sit back and wonder if someone can see what you are doing, good or bad. They either can observe your actions directly, or they can retrieve the records to reconstruct the event. Political parties now have databases of everything someone has said in public, and can quickly cross reference even the most obscure quote. Sportscaster have massive databases of player statistics and can call up on a whim every dropped ball or missed catch.
What begs the question in my mind, is what are the rules of courtesy? When do you draw the line between what can be retrieved and what should be retreived. Too many people assume that just because you can do something you are compelled to do it. That is a fallicy that was first recognized by the greeks.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
If they "had been tracking him for some time", I wonder why they waiting so long to do anything. I suspect that the human intelligence had more to do with it than the alleged use of Echelon. The last person I would believe is some anonymous, talking-head Echelon apologist. I think there is some FUD involved. Exactly how do you provide oversight over a project like Echelon? I think that the system is probably used more to spy on people whose whereabouts are known than to track down some people in some sort of Hollywood "Bourne Identity" drama. If Echelon was designed to be a lost-and-found device that actually found Mohammed, I think you would hear a lot more chest-thumping from the intelligence community. The rest of the article is the real story. The NSA/CIA/EIEIO paid off some guy who sold his boss down the river.
What we can do is start and maintain a dialog with any phone that is turned on. This in turn enables the triangulation. The phone does not indicate this to the user in any way unless you put it next to your speaker/tv/etc that picks up the transmission.
In fact this is done every two to eight hours (operator specific) in order to determine roughly where the phone is so the network can route incomming calls to the phone.
TCAP-Abort
TCAP-Abort
Trying to protect your ass by continuously 'inspecting' it is not was most people want....
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
...any tool can be a weapon, if you just hold it right.
It seems that a lot of people are saying that it's good that the terrorist was caught, but that the goverment should be able to spy like that on us? Shouldn't the government be able to spy on terrorists? If you have dealings with a terrorist (either on purpose or by mistake) you can get caught by a LOT of other means, and then you'll have a bunch of things to explain.
Some weeks ago, the store that my parents own was robbed. They put a gun to my father and mother. They even put a gun to my 4 year old sister. Luckily no one was hurt. They also stole my father's cell phone, and even answered when we called. Do you think that I would be happy to be "tracked" by my phone's location, just so those assholes could have been caught? I sure will.
please excuse my apathy