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Passive E-Mail Monitoring Leads To Arrest

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the dropping-the-echelon-bomb dept.

www.2advanced.net writes "The world's first arrest resulting from passive monitoring of electronic communications is being reported by Globe Technology. In the article, sources reveal that 'an e-mail message intercepted by NSA spies precipitated a massive investigation by intelligence officials in several countries that culminated in the arrest of nine men in Britain and one in suburban Orleans, Ont. -- 24-year-old software developer Mohammed Momin Khawaja, who has since been charged with facilitating a terrorist act and being part of a terrorist group.'"

5 of 921 comments (clear)

  1. Orleans by dolo666 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For those of you who have no idea where Orleans is in Ontario, its very close to Ottawa (minutes away), and about 2 hours from Montreal and 3.5 hrs from Toronto, making it an ideal spot to plan terrorist action in Canada. Ottawa is a couple hours from the US/Canadian border, and for those of you who have never driven the distance, it's a very somber drive, with extremely easy access into the United States. I knew a rum-runner once who would move liquor out of the states at an alarming rate through the St. Lawrence River border; a hardly monitored area concerned more with tourism than security, then. Today, it's a different story, I'm told.

  2. Somebody forgot to use encryption! by Rectal+Prolapse · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Would the NSA investigate if PGP or similar encryption was used?

    Whatever the NSA is doing to monitor all the traffic, I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA are drooling at the prospect of using this technology to catch so-called copyright violators. Civilian applications for a military technology, natch!

    1. Re:Somebody forgot to use encryption! by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Interesting
      > Erm... am I missing something? The only instance I am aware of where the NSA gave some advice to "strengthen" a cryptographic algorithm did actually strengthen it, when an attack was found for the algorithm a decade or so later.
      >
      > Anyone remember what algorithm it was? I think it might have been RSA.

      It was DES. NSA suggested that IBM make some modifications to the S-boxes that made DES more resistant to differential cryptanalysis.

      At the time, nobody (but NSA) knew about differential cryptanalysis. NSA basically told IBM to make the changes, and that it couldn't tell IBM why the changes were required.

      At the time (1980s), "informed speculation" in the crypto community was that NSA had weakened DES. When differential cryptanalysis was "discovered" publicly, a lot of smart people with a lot of math degrees under their belts... wound up looking like they had a fair bit of tinfoil on their heads :)

  3. Re:Nice to hear by I+confirm+I'm+not+a · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Possibly not - obviously the various PATRIOT acts have changed the landscape somewhat, but hasn't it traditionally been against the law for the US government to monitor US citizens without a warrant? Echelon was established in the aftermath of the 2nd World War, and basically provided a mechanism for spying on your own citizens: Canada spies on US citizens, and alerts the US authorities, and vice verca. Insert any combination of UK, Australia and NZ governments here for the full horror.

    In other words - the NSA probably don't need to monitor you. They'll find out the naughty things you're plotting, regardless!

    --
    This is where the serious fun begins.
  4. Officially, yes; however... by parvenu74 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the big pushes after 9-11 was for all of the intelligence agencies to "cooperate."

    When I was in the navy we conducted counter narcotics patrols off the coast of Colombia and Panama. Since the military is not allowed to engage in law enforcement (that pesky Constitution and all) we simply had a Coast Guard team (they're Dept of Transportation and not Defense, so they *can* do law enforcement) that took care of the actual boarding of vessles and law enforcement. In fact, it had to be the Coast Guard person on watch who initiated the request to investivate/board a vessle. There was no "official" cooperation between the military and the Coast Guard on this, but when you get orders on the secure circuit to "think about getting to these coordinates in exactly 12 hours" which result in the Coastie on watch saying "Oh hey -- there's a boat... let's board him!" can you deny that there is unofficial cooperation going on?

    (There were further stories about SEALS and other special forces folks who were officially discharged from the military and transferred to "another agency" for two weeks at a time in order to engage in "direct action law enforcement" before "deciding to reenter the military." It's call "sheep-dipping" and is just one more thing for the tin-foil-hatters to worry about...)

    I suspect that this is probably what's going on with the NSA et al. If the agency in question either thinks/knows they're looking at a US citizen, they can just drop a pointer to the intel in the inbox of an agency who *can* legally handle it (Oh geez -- I wonder where *that* lead came from?). Or there are teams of "not officially NSA folks" who just happen to be working at NSA alongside the others who are legally allowed to investigate US citizens (similar to Coasties on US Naval vessles for counter-narc activities).

    Take your pick as to the method in use or make up another, but I am pretty sure it's going on and will not be going away anytime soon.