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Inside Al-Qaeda's Hard Drive
prostoalex writes "Alan Cullison covered the events in Afghanistan for Wall Street Journal in late 2001. On the day that Kabul fell Cullison was offered to buy a bunch of computers from a local al-Qaeda office. For $1100 Cullison purchased an IBM desktop and a Compaq laptop. Before giving the hard drives to CIA agents in Afghanistan, Cullison copied the contents and shares some of the electronic messages in September's Atlantic Monthly. Interesting insight on al-Qaeda's financial operations and their merger with Taliban movement. The letters include e-mail messages from Osama bin Laden himself."
I think this will answer your questions effectively.
I'll give the short version:
There is only one way to 100% remove all information from a hard drive. Immolate it in fires exceeding 750 degrees Celcius for more than 30 minutes. This causes the magnetic iron in the platters to lose their magnetic properties and "forget" what was written on them.
Otherwise there is a way to recover the information after destruction by any other method that is easily within reach of authorities.
Although previously it was considered "safe" to overwrite the drive with 10, 20, or 30 passes of pseudo-random numbers, the fact is that the ability to recover data from more and more deeply overwritten data improves constantly and the only limiting factor is money. Even this does not truly erase all information, either, as after so many rewrites a sector will become "bad" and the drive will automatically remap that sector to a fresh one and discontinue writing over the one flagged bad. The problem is bad sector is completely readable and may have been written over by significantly fewer passes or even none at all if it failed before the drive wipe. The equipment needed to do this costs in the thousands and is at the disposal of any local police station in the developed world.
Obviously shattering a drive would make it difficult to recover from, they are more than capable of putting it back together or analyzing individual fragments. Very few would want to recover a drive that was shredded, but there are people that have perfected the technique and are able to do it.
Finally, some seem to think that you can degauss a hard drive but this is simply not practical. The magnetic fields required to do this would require medical or military grade equipement and a very large amount of power. Information destroyed in this way is also recoverable regardless, simply at an increasing cost for the power of the magnetic field used.
To answer your original question, authorities will go as far as they need to go within the limits of their funding. The CIA/NSA certainly posesses the ability to look back as far as they want to go back short of the drive being demagnetized by flames. The question is whether the taxpayer thinks the need is important enough to warrant that expense.
Would they use an electron microscope to see investigate Joe Sixpack's computer when he's under investigation for tax fraud on $100,000? Maybe not, but they will probably take a stab at it. Would they use it to unearth files from a serial killer's computer? Possibly. The equipment is a fixed cost and the experts are paid on salary anyway. Just send it to the FBI crime lab and have at it. Would they use it to investigate the personal computer of Osama bin Laden? Oh you better bet they would. They'll go all the way back to the original hard drive manufacturing quality assurance test writes. They spent a couple hundred billion so far, a few hundred million on this computer would probably be money well spent.
It's really very simple: dehumanizing the enemy. If you make your enemies out to be less than human, then there will be few objections to slaughtering them.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
If Western civil society had simply condemned the act, given the Taliban 30 days to deliver the criminals and been very careful to not kill a single innocent civilian, Al Quaeda would have been ostracised by their own support base.
In case you hadn't noticed, we did ask the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden and other al-Queda persons residing within Afghanistan.
They sort of refused.
Then we sort of got medieval on their asses.
Not like we went from 0 to medieval in 60 seconds. We gave then several weeks to do the right thing. They chose to not do the right thing. Big mistake on their part.
Actually, that's pretty much what the US did. It asked the Taliban to extradite Bin Laden or else. The Taliban said no, and the US answered "OK, then else." War followed.
Get a map. Sardinia is Italian.
The quote is rather amusing.
However, it looses it's school-yard amusement when placed in it full context
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.We must never stop thinking about how best to defend our country. We must always be forward-thinking"
Basically.. Bush is saying that in order to prepare for an attack against a vulnerability we must fist identify that very vulnerability ourselves.
I do this all the time when securing my networks and computer - I ask my self "how would I attack my own system."
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Hey! The article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, does not mention that all religions are the same - people have a right to a religion, and that's it.
Just as a posit, do you recall the story sometime back about terrorists storing emails in web mail folders(like on hotmail) without sending the email at all? And then the remote contact logs into the same account, views the stored email, and edits it as his response. No email is sent, so no valid recipient needs to be specified, and it's never intercepted during transit. If this is a common practice then it wouldn't be shocking to learn that most of AQ's emails fail to have a valid sender/recipient.
whoa, whoa, whoa, stop right now before you continue to disseminate unfounded fears about nuclear power! First of all, there is nothing wrong with a plant going critical. In fact, if a plant isn't critical, then something's wrong because it's not making any power. There are 3 important terms to know:
Sub Critical - on average, less than one neutron is gained for every neutron causing fission (ie, neutron flux, or # of neutrons in core) is decreasing -> fewer fissions -> less heat being produced)
Critical - on average, exactly one neutron is being gained for every neutron causing fission (reactor is mainting current thermal output - GOOD THING TO DO)
Super Critical - On average, more than one neutron is being gained...yadda yadda yadda (thermal output is rising).
All modern reactors in the US would, given no human intervention, ultimately end in a shut down state, with the core below the Point of Adding Heat (POAH). There's no need to worry about one causing a nuclear explosion either...Civilian plants use fuel that is very, VERY slightly enriched. In order to cause an explosion you need to compress the U-238 (used in all of our plants, other countries also use Pu) so that the atoms are close enough together to allow neutrons to cause fission without losing too many (to put it simply). Critical mass...something that can't be achieved on any civilian powerplant. Nor on a Navy one either.
So what could terrorists do? First of all, killing all the workers wouldn't do anything (besides make lots of people angry). The core is protected by a heavy-duty radiation shield (the dome thing most people think of), so they'd have to get a pretty big bomb right next to it to even cause a little damage. If they attack the actual turbine generators, they could cause very cool looking plasma-balls, but those would only cause localized damage and not release any radiation. If they took control of the plant, it's possible they might find some way to release contaminants into the environment, but after TMI (three-mile island, the largest fake scare to cause mass hysteria in the nuclear industry...) doing that became much more difficult. Instead of depending on smart controllers controlling stupid machines, we use smart machines to make sure controllers don't do something stupid. If you're worried about them causing another Chernobyl, in the US at least, don't worry...I won't say it can't happen, but the chances of it coming about is exceedingly small.
So what's the upshot of all this? I'd be more afraid of them going in space and causing the moon to hit the US than any terrorist using a nuclear plant to kill people. Those in our subs and ships are somewhat more dangerous, but if any terrorist can get to the controls of those (and actually do anything once they get there) then we've pretty much lost already.
On the other hand, I hope more people think like you do so property values near nukes'll drop and I can get some cheap property near San Onofre (close to San Diego)!
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes
From a military perspective Israel could probably survive. But from an economic perspective the Israeli economy would not last very long without US support.
Not necessarily, most of Israel's trading is done with Europe. Most of the US support for Israel isn't comes in the form of military aid, and most of that goes directly back into the US economy anyway, to build jets, radars, etc.
Israel barely survived the 1973 Yom Kippur War sneak attack by its Arab neighbors, and the UN didn't even do anything until after Israel pushed the invading forces back and beyond into their own territory. Israel had to win every war against it, one loss would be it's utter demise. US weaponry would give Israel an edge and help prevent further attacks by it's neighbors. Statistically speaking, further Yom Kippur style Wars probably would have eventually destroyed Israel without US military support.
The issue for the Palestinians is that in 1948 the majority of them were forced out of what became Israel by what the serbs called ethnic cleansing.
Tell a lie enough times it becomes true. Most Palestinians actually voluntarily left, at the urging of their Arab neighbors, to get out of the way of the invading Arab armies, and then move back after the Jews are defeated. It is estimated only about 1/3 of the Arabs actually were forced out.
That statistic in itself, however, doesn't describe how to treat those refugees and their descendents today.
And similarly, anti-Israel folks like yourself ignore the similar number of Jews that were forced out of Arab countries, or "ethnically-cleansed" since you prefer that terminology. However, since they were welcomed by Israel, they seem to lose refugee status and suddenly become the 'bad guys' because they're now Israeli.
Then after the 1967 war the remaining Palestinian territories were invaded by Israel which has occupied them since and has been illegally attempting to annex them through the settler movement.
Bullshit, there was every reason to expect Egypt, Jordan, and Syria to invade and you know it. If Israel didn't sneak attack it would most likely cease to exist today.
Plus, you mention the occupation, and conveniently ignore that prior to this, West Bank was occupied by Jordan, and Gaza was occupied by Egypt. Why, then, weren't these occupations fought against? Why did Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, and Palestinians all focus their attacks against Israelis? Why didn't the Palestinians EVER ONCE fight their Egyptian or Jordanian occupation?
The problem with Israel is that you can't have a democratic Jewish state any more than you can have a democratic white people's state or a democratic Christian state.
True enough, and similarly you can't have it any more than a non-racist Muslim state. So if you think it's bad for Israel to be a Jewish state then you must simultaneously condemn every single Muslim state, both Arab and non-Arab.
There is a whole rack of discriminatory legislation that makes Arab Israeli citizens second class.
Hey, don't stop there, why not talk about similar legislation that makes Jews second class citizens in some other states. Jews are specifically forbidden to be citizens of Jordan. If Israel made a similar law for Muslims there'd be worldwide condemnation, but no condemnation goes for Jordan.
Let's look at the PA. I bet you're not aware that it is illegal under penalty of death for any Palestinian to sell land to any Jew. Period. Note - not Israeli, but JEW. Why doesn't any human rights champion condemn this? It seems only Israel is the violator of human rights in the region.
Israel has turned itself ito an appartheid state.
It wasn't Israel turning itself that way, it was the actions BOTH of Israel and its Arab neighbors that led to the situatio
make world, not war
According to the Koran, the practices of the Prophet, and Islamic Law, Islam *may* tolerate, and has tolerated, both Judaism and Christianity ... but only in very limited and second class ways.
... others are not and the Koran commands no toleration of them.
They are called the "Dimma" and are basically Jews and Christians subject to a contract that requires them to stipulate to their second class status. Dimma may not serve in Islamic armies, hold weapons, conduct public worship of their faiths, hold public offices, or "offend" Muslims in other ways. Their places of worship must be small, and they cannot build new ones. Their rights to own and use property are restricted.
They are subject to their own laws, and their own selected leaders who are held responsible for any Dimma misdeeds.
It's essentially Jim-Crow Segregation according to religious beliefs not race. Also, please note that OTHER religions such as animist, Bhuddists, Bahai, etc are not recognized and ARE persecuted severely because while Jews and Christians are held to be authentic inheritors of God's revealation (now sadly corrupted)
The Dimma WAS pretty tolerant when the comparison was the Spanish Inquisition. Not so much in the modern era.
As far as the First Gulf War (1991) Bin Laden objected specifically to non-Muslims setting foot on "sacred" soil i.e. Saudi Soil since Saudi was the caretaker state of Mecca and Medina. It was the cause he cited in launching Jihad against the US (and Saudi).
Saddam in any case was a) a nominally Muslim ruler, who fulfilled all the obligations of a muslim, and therefore according to doctrine was a muslim and b) a profoundly hostile to the US regime. While extensive co-operation was unlikely the probability of a Stalin-Hitler type pact was always possible. Two leaders with relatively weak military forces, both muslims, hostile to the US seeking an alliance of convenience? I'd be surprised if there were not any intelligence sharing at the least.