Slashdot Mirror
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."
Was the large collection of J-Lo pictures. Osama loves da booty.
"All your base are belong to us"
Forget the underware thing, just make sure you erase the bloody hard drive before selling your laptop off...
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
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 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.
LMAO!!!11 I iz da best at t3rr0r !!11
-- Hax0r B1n L4den.
Reading some of the letters, I kinda feel that the tone and language used seems very similar to those nigerian scam e-mails.
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!
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.
From: Osama Bin Laden
Date: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 12:53 PM
Subject: TRANSFER
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am fine today and how are you? I hope this letter will find you in the best of health. I am Osama Bin Laden, the Chairman of the "Down with the West Committee", of "Al Qaeda (AQ)", a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabian sanctioned Groups (SASG).
Al Qaeda (AQ) was set up by the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha who died on 18th June 1998, to manage the excess revenue accruing from the sales of Opium and its allied products as a domestic increase in the piate products to develop the communities in the Afghani poppy producing areas. The estimated annual revenue for 1999 was $45 Billion US Dollars Ref. FMF A26 Unit 3B Paragraph "D" of the Auditor General of the Muslim Republic of Afghanistan Report of Nov. 1999 on estimated revenue.
I am the Chairman of the Contract Award Committee, and my committee is solely responsible for awaiting and paying of contracts on behalf of the Talibani Government. My Committee Awarded Contracts to foreign contractors for Irrigation and Ecological Matters in the poppy producing areas of Afghanistan. We overshot the contract sum by US$25,000,000.00. We have paid the contractors and withholding the balance of US$25,000, 000.00. But, because of the existence of some of the domestic laws forbidding civil servants in Afghanistan from opening, operating and maintaining foreign accounts, we do not have the expertise to transfer this balance of fund to a foreign account.
However, this balance of US$25,000, 000.00 has been secured in form of Credit/Payment to a foreign contractor, hence we wish to transfer into your bank account as the beneficiary of the fund. We have also arrived at a conclusion that you will be given 20% of the total sum transferred as our foreign partner, while 5% will be reserved for incidental expenses that both parties will incur in the course of actualizing this transaction, and the balance of 75% will be kept for the committee members.
If you know that you will be capable of helping us actualize this transaction, you should send to me immediately the details of your bank particulars or open a new bank account where we can transfer the money US$25,000, 000.00, which you will be holding in trust for us until we come to your country for our share. Your nature of business does not matter in this transaction. The required details includes your company's name, address, your private personal telephone/fax numbers, your full name and address, including your complete bank details where the transferred fund will be routed by the Apex Bank.
Note that this transaction is expected to be actualized within 21 working days from the day the required details are forwarded to the Federal Ministry of Finance who will approve the needed foreign exchange control allocation for the release of this money to your account. Please, treat this as top secret. You should contact me urgently.
Thanks for your cooperation.
Yours faithfully,
Osama Bin Laden.
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
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.
hELLO,
This may come as a surprise to you, since we have never done business before. I am the son of a wealthy Saudi family who due to an invading army, need help accessing OVER 40 BILLION DOLLARS US.
For your kind assistance in helping me recover my families money, I am wiling to off4er you %10 of the total funds. Doens' t that sound nice? PleaSe respond as soon as possable with a phone number and a email address that we can correspond with to get you your money. To begin this process, I will only require a sum of $4000 to release my funds from the Government of Afganistan.
Best wishes!
Osama bin Laden Mobutu
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
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)
...
- - - - - - -
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.
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
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.
Probably Windows to run FlightSim.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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.
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.
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.
Of course, Linux:
Or perhaps a derivative, named Quaedux.
Now imagine Darl going after Al Quaeda for copyright infrigements in Quaedux...!
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
FROM: Ali '1st Thief" Baba
TO : Osama 'Yo Mama' bin Laden
Subject: Training
Oh! Supreme one! We are in the midst of training our latest round of recruits to service in the holy Jihad against the Infidels! We are proud to announce that shortly we shall have the capacity to completely undermine the ability of the Infidel Armies to wage war effectively:
1) It has come to our attention that many of the Infidels train for war electronically, using common-off-the-shelf games that we can obtain in various Indonesian markets for less than $1 per computer. These games are extremely popular within the Infidel youth community. "Operation Wall-Hack" is my proposal to train our operatives to use techniques frowned up by their youth community, although they are the same to create these tools, to produce a formidable, unbeatable force of Counter Strike experts. God willing, we will demoralize the youth of the Infidels, and they shall throw themselves in front of their parent's Four Wheeled Drive vehicles. Praise Allah!
2) Our operatives have discovered that Email is the #1 method of communication within the Infidel community. Our operatives have discovered on a secret, underground website called "Slashdot" that "Spam" is a growing problem that cripples the Infidel's ability to successfully utilize this medium. Through divine inspiration from Allah, I have come up with "Operation SPAM", where we will open up full time spam mailing facilities in the countries that still welcome us and we will flood the mail servers of the world with useless junk! Infidel Economies will grind to a standstill! Office workers will gnash their teeth, System Administrators will pull their hair from the roots and staple their eyes shut from the flood of junk email! I propose that we invest $499 for a server from the Infidel company Dell to begin investigating this immediately.
3. The Infidels have concocted a curious form of support for their technology. They utilize large numbers of people to man telephone stations that attempt to answer technical questions that customers of these technology companies may have in the repair, maintainence, and usage of their machines. I propose "Operation OutSource" to your holiness, to aid in our fight against the Infidels! We shall open up telephone support centers in our friendly nations and underbid the Indians to gain the business of giant Infidel corporations and provide substandard support to the Infidel industry! The Infidel productivity levels will grind to nothing! And they will PAY us for the privilege! If you are concerned that our lack of technology infrastructure and education will prevent us from providing adequate levels of support for these companies, do not fear. The current support providers don't know anything about computers, either! The hapless users will throw themselves off of their Infidel skyscrapers in madness, Allah Willing! Praise Allah!
4) We have learned a new codespeak for our communications. It is called "L33t Sp34k" and is considered to be one of the strongest encryption codes ever produced when combined with GNUPG (I am sorry to hear of your confusion regarding this product, did you read the man pages?). I highly recommend that we teach this method to all of our agents in the field.
As you can see, your Supremacy, we have the potential to completely revolutionize the way "The War" is fought. Allah willing, we shall overcome the Infidels and regain control of Palestine! Praise Allah!
-Ali Baba
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
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 was the man who that December would take $1,100 from me in exchange for two of al-Qaeda's most valuable computers--a 40-gigabyte IBM desktop and a Compaq laptop. He had stolen them from al-Qaeda's central office in Kabul on November 12, the night before the city fell to the Northern Alliance. He wanted the money, he said, so that he could travel to the United States and meet some American girls." :D
The dude has his priorities straight, that's for sure.
> 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)
about "Danni's Hard Drive", the porno site where the chick is always on the Howard Stern show?
I had this image of naked Afghanis in veils...
Who did what now?
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.
>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.
***
Can I recommend holding the little platters to a bench grinder until they are nothing but dust?
Cost: $60
Time: 20 minutes.
As far as recovery, I would imagine that you just record the analog signal from the (so called) digital drive and apply an algorith slightly simular to reading '2in5' or other multiwidth barcode signals. Look for step changes at certain amplitudes during the rise from 0 to 1 and so on. Sounds like a fun project for the do-it-yourselfer.
Another thing. Only two important scenarios should be noted:
1) When the time comes (knock knock, open up its the [FBI!][Al Quada!][policio!]), you do not have time to write random data 20 times. You better have a very well encrpyted partition that does not automount, forget having a swap file/partition, a password for the PC is not enough :).
Alternatly , you could use a USB flash drive and a method to physically destroy the chip in five seconds. The drive should be sitting in an arbor press vertically while your using it
2) If you ever find yourself having the time and need to destroy your data, go with the bench grinder.
I would imagine that the biggest secret is that anytime the police report that they recovered the data from tha laptop, It was because the crook was careless, not because the cops have skills. They never mention breaking AES256 or anything. They just don't bother to tell you that the data was wide open. I think its called a mindfuck in some circles.
Cheers
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
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.
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
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.
Dear fellow terrorist,
MY NAME IS OSAMA bin LADIn. MY FATHER WAS AN OIL PRINCE in the Saudi Empire and managed to stash $30 Million US in a securities bank. I am writing to you because I need a foreign terrorist to helP me GET THE Money out of the country......
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.
To: Al-Qaeda IT group
/. guys and tell them all of this stuff, may be they will have some advice ( I hear the talk all day and night long and do nothing). /. about migrating to Linux and if there is any reliable FLight Simulator available (hijacking scenarios and low altitude urban flight paths training missions required).
From: Osama bin Ladin
Subject: Upgrades?
Dear brother,
We are having some serious problems with our training in camps. The Windows XP systems are constatnly becoming pain the the ***. You see, the thing is that we upgraded from Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. After the upgrade, our local administrators applied a IE patch, and now whenever the computers start up, a blue screen appears. And nothing happens. I hope you can fathom the loss of time and training we are experiencing over this. Our to-be-suicide-pilots cannot get the required training now.
We tried uninstalling MFS 2004 version and re-installing MFS2000 version, but tha MFS 2000 fails to install citing some DirectX compatibility problems. All this is seriously affecting our future planning.
I want you, my dear brother, to find this Bill Gates guy and find out how to fix this thing. But remember, do not harm in in any way, I hear he is releasing something called XP SP 2 which is going to let hell lose all over the place.
If he fails to fix our ptoblem, kindly contact the
Also seek advice from the
May you rest in peace.
Osama
[File Attachment]: Win32.Sasser.worm
p.s. what is this Win32.Sasser.worm, kindly brief our local IT staff about this, it appears to be with every mail we receive or send out there. I hope this is not some CIA trick to track our emals.
p.p.s. By second hand compaq laptops and IBM computers from Peshawer, install new hard disks, prepare fake email exhanges between the top 10 most wanted on FBI list and sell those computers to some infidel reporters for a profit. WIll use the profit to get you guys some GeForce 6800 cards, so you can practice some urban warfare with Doom3
Michael Moore for President
Is there a reasoned, sensible pro-Palestinian debate anywhere?
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
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.
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?
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.