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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."
Anything that would have been useful to CIA before wouldn't be know 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.
How hard do authorities actually go to get data off of hard drives? Could they really find/prove anything if the drive was zeroed, redhat installed, and the touch command used to change the date on all the files? Would they actually look at the disk bit for bit using an electron microscope? Would they check areas of the disk that the disk controller has assigned elsewhere?
That's either incredibly crazy, or scary, or both.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
The funny thing is the notes on the computer indicate they never even thought of using chemical weapons because they thought it would be too complicated. It wasn't until the American government began making public statements about how easy it would be for certain rouge nations to make simple but deadly chemical weapons, like mustard gas, they they started working on these projects!
There is always tracking irregularity to ensure that the traces of previous write cycles aren't completely lost. Reading a hard drive while subtracting the top level bit pattern from the signal will allow the previous signal to be retrieved, and this process can go several levels deep. An electron microscope is unnecessary and won't work (you are thinking of the visible bits on CDs, I guess.) This is why, if you really want to erase a hard drive, the best approach is to take the disks out and heat them to destruction or whack them with a mallet. You can overwrite many times with an alternating bit pattern, of course, but physical destruction is the fastest and surest way.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I would have thought that they, being so organised and all, would have used really strong encryption on their computers. Also, would they not see any conflict of interests in using US company computers and US software?
Some of this gives me the creeps knowing that I was living in Ottawa at the time. This underscores why the US embassy there resembles a fortress. Unfortunately, if they had decided to strike there, it would probably be the only thing left standing in a 2 block radius. Maybe the Israelis would be interesting in moving into the Diefenbunker. (The WW3 nuclear bomb shelter built just out of town by a former PM, since abanoned by the canadian gov't and turned into a museum)
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- - - - - - -
To: Real name unknown
From: Unknown
Folder: Hamza
Date: August 23, 2001
Special file for our brother Abu Bakr al-Albani ["the Albanian"] on the nature of his mission.
First, the mission: Gather information on:
1. Information on American soldiers who frequent nightclubs in the America-Canada border areas
2. The Israeli embassy, consulate, and cultural center in Canada
3. If it is possible to enter America and gather information on American soldier checkpoints, or on the American army in the border areas inside America
4. Information on the possibility of obtaining explosive devices inside Canada
I have given to our brother $1,500 for travel expenses in Canada and America, and also the cost of the ticket for the trip back to us after four months, God willing.
My rights don't need management.
I think you mean "All your Qaeda are belong to us" because Al Qaeda means "The Base" in their language. Isn't that fucking funny? All your Qaeda. ROFL.
While there may be some truth the the story of how Cullison acquired these computers, I highly doubt the CIA would simply let him publish the information the HDs contained.
They have special rooms in Cuba for people who disseminate this kind of material.
Which means that the stuff published was vetted (and probably carefully rewritten) by the CIA. To what end, I don't know. But rest assured, there is nothing in the article that you (or the bad guys) are not meant to see.
"Make no mistake about it. If we hadn't been supporting Israel for the last two generations the neighboring Muslims would have killed every single Jew there" If you hadn't supported Israel IT WOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED AT ALL, and noone would have been hurt.
After reading this article, it looks like Osama and his gang want GWBush to get re-elected. I mean, they're obviously his best election tactic. It looks like 100% of terrorists agree, anyone as long as it's Bush!
Bush couldn't ask for better re-election propaganda even if he had planted it himself. *cough*
Bin Ladin is succeeding in his propaganda war, in large part due to the actions of Bush. Their main aim is to draw the Islamic world and the West into a clash of civilisations. Invading Afghanistan was seen as reasonable by most of the Islamic world - thousands of innocent Americans had just died, there was enormous sympathy and the direct perpetrators were in Afghanistan - that and Afghanistan has no real special religious significance for Muslims, unlike Saudi Arabia or Iraq (The Shrine of Iman Ali, Najaf in general, Baghdad, former capital of the Islamic Caliphate).
By invading Iraq, Bush has done more to forward Osama bin Ladin's propaganda than any other action he could have taken. Osama bin Ladin said, that the US will invade your country, the US will take your oil, the US is ruled by Jews and is acting to protect Israel, the US talk about "freedom" but they will crush you under their boots, they will rape your women and torture your men, they will desecrate your holy shrines. So Bush goes and invades one of the most holy Islamic nations which is oil rich, guards the oil ministry while the rest of Baghdad descends into chaos, the neo-cons are well known to be behind the invasion and the original neo-cons were Jews (not the ones now - but they still have very strong ties with Israel's Likud party and Sharon), then there was the torture scandal with reports of rape and torture by American forces, they attack the shrine of Iman Ali and the one of the Sayyids (al Sadr) ie. descendants of The Prophet, which is something only Saddam Hussein and most importantly the caliph Yazid (the worse villain in Shi'ite history) did. Even better, before Iraq only Sunnis formed the Islamic terrorist groups directly attacking the US. Most of the Shi'ite population are as wary of bin Ladin as the US as he considers them heretics. Now by doing a Yazid and attacking the shrine of Iman Ali, all the Shi'ites in the world hate the US as well. For example recently, an elder in one of the Shi'ite strongholds in India warned Americans not to enter the area as he could not guarantee their safety. In Iraq we are seeing Sunni hardliners and Shi'ite hardliners unite for the first time since the war of independence against the British.
Honestly could Bush do anything more to *help* bin Ladin win his propaganda war? Oh, and also because all man-power has been diverted to Iraq, the hunt for bin Ladin has effectively been outsourced to Pakistan (divided loyalties, military dictatorship and all) and the N. Korean threat is being ignored as troops (and White House attention) is rushed from Korea to Iraq.
Personally I think history will see Bush's invasion of Iraq in the same way we currently see the actions taken immediately preceding WWI where a heinous (but not disastrous event like an invasion) led a huge superpower to try to crush a country related to but not directly involved in the event for pre-existing reasons not related to the heinous event in question which led to other countries intervening in a complex system of alliances and ethnic loyalties that cascaded out of control into a war to end all wars. Except this time, a war to end all wars is what bin Ladin actually wants.
This is something quite different and much deeper than the simple-minded rhetoric that President Bush and the rest of his administration chant again and again
True. True for every president thus far. How long has it been since the first WTC bombing, back in the early 90's? Have we YET to have a president who has named the enemy?
The enemy is militant Islam. The same way the enemy in WW II was Nazism and Japanese Imperialism. Note that our enemy in WW II was not a few kamikaze pilots and a handful of Germans that we referenced by first and last names. The enemy was a system of beliefs that stood for horrible things. The same is true now with militant Islam. The truth is out there but nobody will say it. Read about the Khalifa. A primary responsibility is to facilitate the spread of Islam throughout the world using force if necessary.
Nobody seems to get it. These people won't stop until everyone in the world is speaking Arabic and praying 5 times a day. They have a similar mentality as the Christians during the Crusades. One might call that "militant Christianity." This has very little to do with the fact that we sell Israel F-16's. We sell Taiwan lots of military gear too so they can defend their democracy against China if necessary, so why aren't they upset about this? Unless, of course- it is actually all about religion and the Khalifa's duties.
The day the U.S. abandons its friends around the world will be a sad day because I doubt anybody else would help. Who else would help stop an invasion of Kuwait, Israel or China or for that matter any other country? If you live in Great Britain or Australia (or Kuwait in 1990) and your country was invaded- who would you count on? The French army? Or, would you secretly hope the U.S. military would answer the call of duty, to spite the fact that you've protested their government and foreign policy your whole life?
Now fast forward to today: many Jews leave peacefully and happily in the United States, far more than live in Israel. So maybe Israel isn't necessary to fulfill it's original "Zionist mission". At least right now. Of course, with all of the nice educated folk here on Slashdot who subtly attack Israel and its right to exist, it's not hard to see why many American Jews might still be paranoid enough to continue supporting Zionist causes - we have learned our lessons from history. In any case, there is a reality on the ground, which is many Jews living in Israel and many Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israelis have won several wars over the last 50 years with their neighbors (who generally speaking attacked them trying to grab land), partially due to overt American support. Of course, that American support was no different from the American support given to other allied democratic governments during the Cold War. And now today, it's pretty tough to just abandon all those Israelis and let them be slaughtered by their unfriendly neighbors.
In any case, opinions on how to solve the disputes between the Israelis and Palestinians (and both sides certainly have legitimate grievances that need to be resolved), the assertion that if Israel didn't exist, nobody would have been hurt ignores basically all the events of the twentieth century and displays a complete ignorance of historical knowledge.
If that were true, would they need the incentive of 70 virgins?
That virgins in the afterlife for martyrs thing has been blown way out of proportion by the press (because its weird and weird news sells) and by those who have an interest in downplaying these people's real motivations -- sex-crazed nutjobs don't get any sympathy, but the public will have far more empathy for someone who lost their parents and little sister to a "police action."
If we actually started to gain some insight into what makes these people tick, we might have to address our own short-comings in our handling of the matter and if there is one thing a politician can't do, it is admit that he was wrong.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
From someone that has copied several drives, I how it works. I would like to ask how he managed to recover deleted e-mails if this was a copy of the original computer files? When you copy something, in general only files not marked with the 'deleted' or 'removed' tag are copied (To speed things up). So unless he used some kind of low level copying function and based on his technical know-how, I'm not sure that he did, it seems unlikely this could be done.
"If Western civil society had simply condemned the act, given the Taliban 30 days to deliver the criminals"
... Or by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, or by the Shia in Iraq, or...
Was a week not long enough? What about the requests for extradition for acts before September 2001, such as the bombing of the African embassies?
"And been very careful to not kill a single innocent civilian, Al Quaeda would have been ostracised by their own support base."
Why? Because we bent over backwards to suit their double standard? It is not enough to try our best to prevent those innocent deaths, even when compared to the al Qaeda tactics that deliberately target civillians? And this is before we get into the nasty details over disagreements over just who was a civillian and who was not (such as "devout worshippers" at a holy cite that were operating a piece of equipment that "just happened" to look and operate like an anti-aircraft battery...)
And what reason is there to believe that, even if we did meet that double standard, al Qaeda would loose support?
"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."
And what if Western inaction would have caused the deaths of many more? Which was worse for Afghanistan, outside military intervention in 2001, or a decade under the Taliban? Is it better that those people die by the hands of their countrymen, even if more people die and in far uglier ways?
"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."
So, instead of giving Timothy McVeigh a lethal injection we should simply have had a talk with him and then let him go about his business?
"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"
"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."
Even if those doing the manipulations are wrong? Is the majority always right?
Actually, I believe all the evidence suggests that OBL didn't actually think the towers would fall on 9/11. The attack was more symbolic than that, and while he certainly wasn't upset that they fell, the success of the mission exceeded his expectations.
The objective of terrorists is to cause terror, to obtain press, to communicate your views, and to bring about some kind of political change.
OBL screaming on a bullhorn in Afganistan doesn't make much of an impact on the world. OBL recruiting crews who fly planes into buildings does.
It really isn't the numbers that matter, it is the fact that you are on peoples' minds, and that you are causing those people to think about making changes in order to appease you.
Diplomacy, war, and terrorism are basically different ways of accomplishing the same goal - getting somebody else to do something that you want them to do, that they would otherwise rather not do. The first generally doesn't involve killing, the second generally tries to limit killing to military participants and the fewest number of noncombatants necessary to get them to fall into line, and the third generally has no set rules at all.
War will not be stopped by being nice to people. Neither will terrorism. Now, not being nice to people will promote both war and terrorism, but they will always exist as long as people hunger for power.
For some people it isn't enough to have a nice life - they need to be able to control other people to be happy. And so there will always be terrorists...
If you believe that all religions are the same, then you obviously have not studied religions very much, PARTICULARLY Christianity.
Your reaction to the book given to you show that you haven't read the New Testament in any comprehensive way. The campus group you refer to did not come up with the idea that religions are different. Jesus' own statements in the Bible rule out the notion that other religions provide a way to the New Testament heaven. Look at John 14:6, where Jesus says "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
From such statements as this, you can conclude, if you so choose, that Jesus was crazy and completely discount Christianity. But to do so, you must completely discount your arguement that all religions are the same.
See, a lot of times Christians get a bad rap from people like you, who have no idea what they are claiming, while at the same time imagining that they are some kind of mental and intellectual superior to Christians as a whole. Sorry, but if you don't have the facts straight about Christianity, everything you say about other religions becomes suspect in my mind.
Signed,
A Christian who can be considered both an intellectual and scientific
Is there a reasoned, sensible pro-Palestinian debate anywhere?
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
There are no objective truths.
Insight is only given to the seeker of insight, and you, Sir (or Madam), are a fuckwit.
My truth is that I do not believe in the existence of God (Allah/JHVH/etc), but I can not rule their existence out of the realm of the possible. Why not?
I have no way of proving nor disproving the existence of a being capable of creating a universe, and therefore control the rules governing this universe, and in the end, the means to control the evidence of existence/non-existence.
On the choice of a deity to not show itself:
Why should I care whether or not my code knows that I've created it, as long as it does what I've designed it to?