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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."
How does he know this wasn't a plant? They've could placed fake plans/email/etc knowing this person would turn it over to authorities and thus throw them off the trail. To make things look even more real, you could lightly erase the data and let the CIA recover it.
WRONG!
You can use memos, emails etc to connect people and trace paths of communications which lead to... more people! Construct your dependancy map, then identify the hubs/people that need to be removed to cripple an orginization.
So we drew their attention to the fact that bio and chem weapons can be produced simply with easily available materials.
If that is correct that wmds are that easy to build, we should acknowledge that and adapt to the threat.
Simply put, if we did keep quiet the terrorists would eventually figure it out anyways. Security through obscurity doesnt work. open source anti terrorism.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
To: The American People
From: Osama bin Laden
Folder: Publications
Date: October 3, 2001
So what exatly is the email address for "The American People?" I mean, if the found email had that as the address book name, what was the address listed?
Seriously, I think this could very well be a well executed plant. Be assured that the Office of Special Plans is still hard at work.
Guru Meditation #6d416769.21610a21
Just a comment to all. THe date on the e-mail, if true, about chemical weapons is April 15, 1999. Mr. Clinton was in office. The big one hit on Mr. Bush's watch. So the next time someone says George Bush did this or Bill Clinton did that and it made the situation worse, remember this.
The terrorists don't give a damn about who's in office. They have been planning all this for many years. Bush or Kerry is irrelevant in the long-term as long as whomever is elected find a permanent solution to this one way or another.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
Bush is certainly willing to deprive Americanns of their liberties, though. It's irrelevant who is in office in terms of whether or not an attack is launched - but certainly not in terms of its results on our society.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For instance, take this extract from a letter written by Ramzi bin al-Shibh (written after the Afghan invasion, but before the Iraqi invasion):
Because of Saddam and the Baath Party, America punished a whole population. Thus its bombs and its embargo killed millions of Iraqi Muslims. And because of Osama bin Laden, America surrounded Afghans and bombed them, causing the death of tens of thousands of Muslims ... God said to assault whoever assaults you, in a like manner ... In killing Americans who are ordinarily off limits, Muslims should not exceed four million non-combatants, or render more than ten million of them homeless. We should avoid this, to make sure the penalty [that we are inflicting] is no more than reciprocal. God knows what is best.
And then there is this, written by Bin Laden himself:
Our current battle is against the Jews. Our faith tells us we shall defeat them, God willing. However, Muslims find that the Americans stand as a protective shield and strong supporter, both financially and morally. The desert storm that blew over New York and Washington should, in our view, have blown over Tel Aviv. The American position obliged Muslims to force the Americans out of the arena first to enable them to focus on their Jewish enemy. Why are the Americans fighting a battle on behalf of the Jews? Why do they sacrifice their sons and interests for them?
Now, of course there is no denying that the mindset behind all this is evil. But it is rational in its twisted way. There are specific and clear reasons for why these people commit acts of terrorism. By absolutely refusing to face these reasons, America and its allies risks alienating every single militant Muslim in the world, little by little. Why are the real reasons behind terrorism so rarely discussed?
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
The loss of a large ammount of the al-Qaeda leadership would spur a change in communications patterns, but the geographically diverse nature of the network necessitates consistent code words and communications patterns so that the network isn't broken. Also, the isolated nature of action cells requires that communications patterns not change drastically.
Pod Six was jerks- Capt. Murphy
It's that fact that makes this era so dangerous, as it leading to laws being passed to restrict information and freedoms. :-(
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Terrorists kill 4000 in order to launch a war that they can feed off. 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. By launching two wars against "terror", Western civil society has guaranteed Al Quaeda a place in history and guaranteed a generation or two of on-going fighting that will cause the deaths of many, many more people.
/me expects to be burnt for saying this but it must be said.
I think every country faced with local terrorists has learnt through bitter experience that force does not solve this kind of problem. Dialogue and negotiation are always, finally, the only way to end the cycle of violence.
This lesson has been learnt by the British in Northern Ireland, by the Spanish in the Basque Country, by the French in Sardinia, the Sri Lankans... it does not matter how "evil" the men with guns are. Nothing short of genocide - and even that is not certain - will stop more embittered and manipulated youths growing up to fill the gaps left by arrest, detention, assassination.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
You're right, but you neglect to mention the reason: Supreme Court appointments. Whoever is President in the next four years will very likely get to nominate two or three new SC justices. The justices that are likely to be retire or die (O'Connor, Stevens, ...) are also some of the more liberal justices. The SC is pretty well balanced at the moment. Give Bush the opportunity, and he will appoint conservative, anti-abortion justices who will affect the nation for decades to come. Just something to keep in mind if you support Bush but you're not a fundamentalist Christian.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
The UN imposes all sorts of penalties on all those who contradict its religion. It issues documents and statements that openly contradict Islamic belief, such as the International Declaration for Human Rights, considering all religions are equal, and considering that the destruction of the statues constitutes a crime ...
It's interesting that I had a lively debate during lunch a few days back with a colleague about religions and what they mean in the modern world. Mind you, a healthy unbiased debate, not an argument.
I happened to mention that I think that all religions are equal, atleast at a higher level (as in if you ignore the minor details like forms of worship, etc) and that I think that they were created with a common goal of imposing "morality" and the "good" way of life back when law and order were difficult to maintain. The fear of God was a common deterrant to "bad" or "immoral" behavior.
I agree that many people find this view in contrast to the traditional beliefs of religions being God's word, but I just put forth the point since this was a debate, and I wanted to hear his opinion on it.
What I found troubling was that his *main* disagreement with what I said was the former part - the part about "all religions being equal" in the long run or from a high level. He (being a fundamentalist Christian) was totally revolted by the idea that I would say that the belief that "God is One" is the same as believing in the "Trinity". I tried explaining that those are exactly the sort of differences that people look at (in addition to form of worship etc) to argue against the inferiority of other religions, when it doesn't really matter, since all of them teach us to pray and have faith, and behave in a "good" way.
Well, I didn't get through, and the next day, he presented me a book (which I found quite outrageous) published by a campus Church group explaining why "religions are different" and how "they'll all find salvation at the feet of Christ". How can you hope to write a so called unbiased book, if your conclusion is that they'll be "Saved" only if they follow Christianity?.
Anyway, the point which I had wanted to make is that there are a *surprisingly* large number of people who refuse to believe that the best service to their religion that they can probably do is to increase tolerance towards other religions rather than denounce them and try to proselytize the masses under the guise of "saving them". I've personally seen Christian, as well as Muslim missionaries and other entities offer food/clothing and money to poorer people in Africa etc so as to convert them to their religions, *all* the while preaching that they won't be saved otherwise.
So ANY religious fundamentalism is bad, not JUST Islamic fundamentalism or Christian fundamentalism, or fundamentalism under the guise of any other religion. Hey, if you want to believe strongly in something, you're free to do so, but don't try to change my thinking or impose it upon me.
Sorry for the rant.
Liar, you're not a Muslim. Why?
1) Allah is spelled with two l's.
2) Jihad was never against "western society"; against who? I will let you answer.
P.S. Yes, I am a muslim and a firm believer in God, alwahidul ahad.
> Rather than invade Iraq, our resources would have been wisley spent finding a solution the real problem. About 300 miles to the west of Iraq. The terrorist threat will never cease until the middle east problem is resolved fairly to everyone involved.
I definitely agree that that should happen and that it will resolve a large part of the terrorist problem there, but settling that problem will not stop people like Osama. He has religious motives, and has no problemm attacking other muslims who don't follow his exact interpretation of Islam either. It would help a lot in removing the conditions that allow him to recruit deperate people tho.
At any rate, his claims regarding 'the fight against the jews' are quite likely more political then anything else. It helps with gaining support in that area and since desperation is extremely common among young pallestinians, it makes for easy recruitment. Israelhas been helping with that for quite a bit by trying to reduce the strength of Hamas (but well.. that is a choice between 2 evils for them)
Actually, the worst part is anything he passed on is legally inadmissible. I'm guessing he did the copying without using a write-blocker. That effectively tampers with the evidence. Granted, that won't stop the CIA from acting on it.
I have never read posts by more uninformed people in my life. What is the average age of the posters ? 12? Here is how you can get a life:
1. Stop watching X Files. Not everything in the world is a conspiracy theory.
2. Try actually studying a subject before you post incredibly stupid diatribes against President Bush.
3. Study the history of fundamentalist Islam before playing armchair commander. War was declared on ALL non-Islamists, not just Christians or Jews, but also Hindus, and numerous other religions.
The stupidity of Slashdot posters is simply astounding.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Yes. Further to this, the invasion of Iraq sent a strong message to other countries in the US's dog house...
Since most thought they Iraq did not have substantial stockpiles of WMD before the war (despite the claims of Bush et al) and the US attacked with a pretty good understanding that they wouldn't be requiring their chemical suits.
Alternatively, an attack against N-Korea is off the table because of their WMD programs and delivery systems, plus significant traditional weaponry which the US would have difficulty taking out before Seoul is razed.
So what is a country in the US's dog house to do now? Their rational choice is to build weapons and WMD ASAP to deter a possible US attack. Syria and Iran likely have a new urgency to their WMD programs now, but other countries are likely ramping up their programs too.
The pre-emptive war policy will have perverse results.
-b
btw, mod parent up please! = )
"True. But we've had an army looking for them since 2001."
They should hire bill collectors to hunt down al Qaeda leadership. Those bastards can find you anywhere.
Whether or not he had the right intentions, he still phrased it poorly. He said that the terrorists never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people. He did not, however, say that they think of ways that the country could be harmed, which is what our government is supposed to think about. Instead, he blocked both of us together as having ill intent. Of course, he didn't mean for it to come off that way, but the way he said it was still wrong. Something along the lines of "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and we never stop thinking of ways to stop thier ideas before the can be implemented." would have been more appropriate.
Why is it that the sexually repressed people of the world flip out and start wars and start killing people? Seriously. When was the last time a place with very liberal ideas about sex started killing people? And the USA does not count with the current crop of uber-conservative anti-sex button pushers in charge. You'd think that most of the people in the world would have figured out that we need constant, high quality sex to maintain peace and stable economies. There go my nipples again.
the article said the reporter attained these computers shortly after 9/11.
meaning they waited a while to release the info.
rtfa.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
I have read in several places that after Sept. 11, it was Tony Blair who talked Bush down from turning Afganistan into a sheet of glass.
They completely do not understand us at all, and only see our soft side of Brittany Spears, Jerry Springer and stuff like gay marriage, etc. The Japanese before WWII felt the same way, that the US was soft, weak and feckless because we didn't have our society organized on spartan, militaristic lines.
September 11 only served to wake us up and fuel the dreams of the hard men in the Pentagon who dream of sunrise at midnight in the Muslim world. The attack served no military purpose, no strategic purpose and accomplished nothing except to make anyone in America who ever had sympathy for the Arab cause to keep quiet for fear of a punch in the nose or worse. (Despite the tone of this post, I actually am, and do think the Israeli policies towards the Arabs are wrong, but, I'll never say THAT in public, especially after those films of the Eyptians and Palestinians dancing in the streets and passing sweets after the attack.
September 11th was as if the Japanese had, instead of bombing Pearl Harbour, had one day decided to randomly bomb downtown Honolulu just to kill as many civilians as possible just for the hell of it.
The present administration is a bunch of idiots, who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. Homeland Security is joke that won't stop any attacks. But, after the terrorists next attack, a different sort of cold, cruel and efficient sort will take the reigns in America and any Arab with sense will make sure to avoid major cities in his country and keep lots of canned goods and ammunition in his fall-out shelter.
It is truly tragic that children are being used as weapons. However we need to remember that the responsibility here is with the adults who raise these children to hate, and push them to make suicide attacks. A child of 7-8 is not fully capable of understanding what's going on. Indeed many adults don't seem to be capable of understanding such issues either. Raising children to hate creates a vicious cycle, and this is a great complication.
It is tragic that a parent would feel it necessary to raise their child to kill itself.
A problem with the scenario that you put forward of the child being captured and discovering that Jews can be nice is that this is a very difficult picture to see when your home has been destroyed by Israeli helicopter gun-ships.
It is very easy to brand people as terrorists, and forget that they might consider themselves freedom fighters. They do not have sophisticated weapons, whereas their enemies do. What then are their options?
Would they continue to with suicide bombing if they had their own helicopter gun-ships and missiles?
I doubt that they would. However war is not a very civilised activity. If "the enemy" hits civilian targets then it's very tempting to go after their civilian targets too.
I agree with you - it is a very nasty world we live in, and there have been wars continuing in this vane for tens of thousands of years, not just the last 2000. I am not so naiive as to think that there are easy solutions, and I also doubt that this will be resolved within our lifetime.
Part of the problem here is that one of the countries that supported the rise of fundamentalist Islam was the USA. The CIA was instrumental in putting the Taliban in charge in Afghanistan. They funded the organisations that went on to become Al Quaeda, since they were fighting against Russian/communist oppression. It is also well documented that the USA supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. Unfortunately what goes around comes around.
It is a collection of stories put into a lumped group gathered as acceptable by the cult leader you subscribe to. Each one includes the stories that best support the cult leaders views, which is why the other ones are left out and usually forgotten.
Use your intellect and research the other 70 odd stories not included in what is labelled as the new testament.
I prefer books more modern and filled with facts.
Anything that would have been useful to CIA before wouldn't be now that all this has been made public - any financial information would be useless, since with this online, they would have taken the money out. Intel is really only useful if not everyone knows it.
It can be pretty useful still for many things. First of all, you can discover the methodology of Al Qaeda. That is not something you can change overnight, even if you know that information about you is discovered (especially since Al Qaeda is very decentralized). It also tells you what kind of loopholes the group likes to use, which is useful because someone will usually only use the type of methods that they are familiar with. This can help you to predict replacement methods. Secondly, it allows you to track the past behaviour of the group. This allows you to build up evidence against already arrested Al Qaeda members or to detect sleeper cells, scouted targets and activity areas in general.
And as for freezing accounts, if the group has any common sense, transferred funds won't be left in the accounts for long anyway. A smart terrorist would take it out as cash and either pocket it or put most of it in another account (not the full amount and leaving some time between withdrawal and deposit). Voila, no link between the accounts.
Porter Goss
...
Ok, I'm not Goss, I'm George Tenet.
I read semi-thoroughly through the first section of the article you mentioned but didn't gather just how the use of an electronic microscope (or anything else) makes it possible to make sense of randomized data. Unfortunately the article provides a lot of links but some of them are fluff - such as:
"Recent developments at the National Institute of Standards and Technology"
Where there is no link to the article describing this Technique, but simply to www. nist.gov.
Perhaps someone with a better understanding of how all this works could elaborate a little more. If I overwrite a section of hard disk with a 7-pass algorithmn, what exactly is an electronic microscope going to be able to do to help figure out what was there? I assume there must be a way to see whats been there before (how?) and then somehow detect the chronological order to differentiate whatever the original data was versus the overwritten junk (how?). This article doesn't mention either, nor does it provide a link explaining either (that I found anyway).
A little deeper explanation of how a hard disk is put together, and how one might be able to unearth was on a healthy sector after it's been overwritten 7 times would be appreciated. Though I don't obviously know any facts, I find it very difficult to believe there's really any useful or effective technique by simply reading this article. Without a deeper understanding of how hard drives are put together, it would seem a rather impossible task to take a section of overwritten hard disk and make sense of what was once there.
This isn't really right. Judaism is a religion, but the Jews are absolutely a distinct ethnic group as well. Certainly, one that has had intermarriage with host nations to a certain extent over the centuries, but there are many genetic indicators of population distinctiveness of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe (I would assume a similar case for the Sephardic Jews of Spain, North Africa and Arab countries). Of course, race and ethnicity are funny concepts - what makes an Armenian an Armenian? Is it the language, the culture, the identity, the genetics, or all of the above? In any case, the specifics of whether modern Jews correspond exactly as an ethnic group to the original Hebrew people during the biblical times is as hard to answer as whether modern Palestinian Arabs correspond to biblical "Canaanites" and are really the original inhabitants of the land, simply a different Semitic tribe than the Hebrews (but all broadly of the Semitic "race", whatever that means), or more recent Arab transplants from other Arab regions (in some cases, this is certainly the case, some being very recent Arab transplants indeed).
Which is why when it comes down to it, what matters is that Palestinian Arabs consider themselves a unique national group within the broader Arab population (though how exactly you tell, say, a Jordanian Arab from a Palestinian Arab is not clear to me - is there truly any ethnic difference whatsoever?), and Jews consider themselves a distinct ethnic group as well.
I think a big part of the problem is that most Americans are Christians, and the American and Christian concept of religion is that it is something completely distinct from ethnicity, race and nationality. Historically, this is because Christianity is a religion of converts. Judaism is the traditional religion of a particular Semitic tribe, more like Hinduism, which is the collection of evolved tradition and mythology of the peoples of India. In that sense it is unlike its offshoots, Christianity and Islam, both of which grew to include many different racial and ethnic groups through conversion, both forced and voluntary (there are a few specific examples of large-scale conversion to Judaism, such as the Khazar people, and definitely many smaller scale examples, but this is the exception rather than the rule).
Nobody doubts that Jews can find other places to live right now. The problem was that in 1940 or thereabouts, many Jews couldn't find anywhere to live fast enough, and many died when they were unable to get out of Europe into a country that would take them. That's the justifiable paranoia that I mention that most Jews have ingrained as part of their psyche - it derives from centuries of getting kicked out of various countries or being persecuted or slaughtered by various host countries.
The concept of "genetic background" and "race" are basically problematic concepts to begin with. There are no clear cut races at all per se, there are cultural identities and groupings of genetic traits within particularly communities, and plenty of evidence points to the fact that Ashkenazi Jews have a whole bunch of distinct genetic characteristics (such as tendencies to suffer from particular genetic diseases, like Tay Sachs syndrome). In any case, there is a name for the Semitic tribe I referred to though, they called themselves the Hebrews. Ultimately the people who were the Hebrews were thrown out of the land of Israel, and they became the Ashkenazim (the Hebrews who migrated to Germany and Eastern Europe) and the Sephardim (the Hebrews who migrated to Spain, North Africa and the Arabic lands) in the diaspora, the two modern ethnic groupings of Jews, who also have slight variations in their pronunciation of the Hebrew language, and variations in their traditions and practices of the Jewish religion. Plenty of Americans of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage are not practicing Jews at all - and, many seem surprised to discover that the majority of Israeli Jews are ethnic Ashkenazim or Sephardim, but not practicing religious Jews at all.
As an odd aside, here in America, many Jews attend Reform or Conservative synagogues, but still drive on Saturdays and don't keep Kosher, and the Orthodox, or traditionally observant, Jews form a small minority. In Israel, on the other hand, things are far more extreme - people seem to mostly be either traditionally observant Jews or completely nonreligious.
As a long time slashdot reader I registered just to respond to this utter crap. The parent get a plus one for... what? Inane rhetoric?
"transhuman", Would you like to cite references for your baseless (in our collective reality) conspiracy, or just skip right to psychiatric help perhaps?
If you believe that many hundreds, even thousands of "inside" people could keep a "plot" like yours together for any extended period of time, you do not understand human nature.
But of course, citing you: "This is amateur night at its worst. It makes my bank robberies look high-tech." You know all about keeping big secrets... toad
Get on some meds, or call in to Coast-To-Coast AM for some real psuedo-intellectual laughs!
Ahh - Abu Ghraib. You might note that this has become a scandal and a severe embarassment for the US Military. There are no press statements from the President of the United States or Secretary of Defense calling Abu Ghraib a great victory guided by the hand of God.