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Al-Qaeda's Growing Online Offensive
andy1307 brings us a story from the Washington Post about al-Qaeda's technological capabilities and the methods they use to protect themselves and their networks from opposing military forces. Quoting:
"US and European intelligence officials attribute the al-Qaeda propaganda boom in part to the network's ability to establish a secure base in the ungoverned tribal areas of western Pakistan. Analysts said that as-Sahab (AQ's propaganda network) is outfitted with some of the best technology available. Editors and producers use ultralight Sony Vaio laptops and top-end video cameras. Files are protected using PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, a virtually unbreakable form of encryption software that is also used by intelligence agencies around the world. [Al-Fajr, a propaganda distribution network] is heavily decentralized, with its webmasters generally unaware of one another's true identities for security reasons, intelligence analysts said. It also has separate 'brigades' devoted to hacking, multimedia, cybersecurity and distribution."
Yawn. Proof please. Next.
I'm an al-Qaeda bomber! How dare you insult us! For that I'm blowing up this thread!
Die infidel!
*BOOOOOOOOOOOM*
Why *wouldn't* AQ have all this stuff? We pay $$$$$ to the house of sa'ud, some of that money makes it to Pakistan. We outsource and train people in that region of the world and expose them to the best tech we have here. Why wouldn't *some* of them have a hobby? The next thing the Washington Post fearmonkeys will tell us is they use PEX bittorrent, SSH, and twofish crypto. And they embed marching orders in Flash and Postscript files. [yawn] Next!!
--- See you at the Tannhäuser Gate.
Al-Quaeda exists besides government reports carefully filled with the right amount of scare and FUD ?
I know for sure Osama Bin Laden as a single person with a single role does not exist - this is virtual personage. (Why I'm so sure is entirely different matter, but I trust this source) .
I can't imagine that it's THAT hard to create a fairly distributed network of "propaganda" outlets with most of the key people using encryption, small laptops, mobile communications....you know, stuff that most folks on this site do every day. And most of us aren't internationally wanted fugitives.
This is just more made-up generalized bullshit to get the easily-influenced people to go with more government spending on counteracting the nonexistent problem of terrorism. When was the last time terrorism was in your back yard? When did it affect you personally? How often is it happening?
And.. if it did affect you, chances are that your back yard is in Iraq..
The government keeps pushing 'Our enemy is huge, organized, centralized, and powerful' but we are seeing more and more than 'Our enemy is a disorganized populace tired of what the US is doing.'
It's like we're building a tank to try to destroy a wasp.. while the wasp keeps stinging everyone because we're sitting by its nest.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Now I realise it's the government's role to instill fear, uncertainty and doubt in the population but, if that's all they've got then I reckon we're all pretty safe.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The tech is interesting but besides the bigger point:
He's winning because censorship always backfires. The censored party, no matter how wrong, gains an air of truth. The technology used to carry the message does not matter. Attacks on Al-Jazeera and websites were a terrible mistakes almost as bad as invading Iraq, torturing captives and legal immunity for contractors. We have acted as badly as our supposed Islamo-Fascist enemy and our talk about democracy, freedom of press and human dignity rings hollow.
So we are fairly certain there exists such a thing as an Al-Qaeda network?
Or are they just ideas? So what this is saying is that people with certain ideas have access to all the stuff that people with opposing ideas have.
Moral uncertainty sure is scary!
The more I see this stuff the more I remember a philosophical point my history teacher told me once. In the revolutionary period, the "news papers" were far more attacking and had far more offensive rumors and accusations.
Now we see freedom being abused to spread "their" propaganda better than "our" propaganda. Whether or not we have the monopoly of truth is debatable. However, we are in a fight here and the *only* way to win a war of ideas is the freedom of expression of these ideas and hope that your ideas win.
As an american, I'm not sure our ideals, as currently practiced, will win. We have to do a better job of things. Al Qaeda is only winning the war of ideals because we, the western world, have turned its back on democracy and society in favor of raw and savage unregulated capitalism which is destroying our economies and an aggressive preemptive war strategy designed to suppress any dissent in foreign nations which is emptying our treasury.
Suppressing information is not a way to win the hearts and minds of people, especially while we are doing such a bad job living up to our ideals.
Blowback.
HAIL RED ARMY IN AFGHANISTAN! Extend the gains of the October socialist revolution to the peoples of Afghanistan!
The Trotskyists were right.
Uhm... are we supposed to think that a dismissive wave of the hand "by fictionpuss (1136565)" is a valid critique?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
And there are a few million who die every year from cancer. The researchers have to beg for any money they can get, and yet, if you do something to fight the "War of Terrorism", you get a blank check.
As far as those few thousand people who died a few years ago, ten times that die every year on the roads and no one bats an eye or calls them heroes for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So much for living our lives "normally" - I can't because it's been legislated away by corrupt assholes in Washington - see warrantless wiretaps.
Rant continuing in my home.
It is surprising that the Washington Post would run editorial against free press as a news article.
This is flabbergasting. Does the US stand for democracy and freedom of speech or is it a place where you can't get Al-Jazeera on cable TV? When you step over the lines of disrupting military communications into full blown censorship, you become the oppressor.
The disproportionate use of force is obvious because it's aimed at you. Domestic spying aims at identifying and disrupting communications deemed unfavorable to US interests as defined by GWB and corporate interests. The idea is to keep any opposition disorganized, despised and ineffective. If you want to know how far it goes, have a look at Fox News "mistakes" about the democratic presidential candidate, Osama Barak.
In reality Ayman al-Zawahiri is a Mossad man, as is Abu Hamza, since the only source of information we have on these people is a bunch of people we know tell us lies.
The wording of this sentence PROVES this was NOT written by a "real" /. poster, but rather as a PSYOPS piece:
"Files are protected using PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, a virtually unbreakable form of encryption software that is also used by intelligence agencies around the world"
Now, WHO on /. has to be edumecated about what the acronym PGP stands for, or what it IS???
Stupid MOFOs don't even know how to write a decent FAKE /. post!
I seriously doubt they have brigades set aside for finding clever solutions to a non-obvious problem, Please, they are cracking, not hacking...
I'm confused. Is this new decentralised online digital five-nines 256-symmetric multimedia Al Qaeda the same bunch of guys who are starving, cut off from support, and cowering in fear for their lives in caves?
Just wondering.
So the obvious question is how long until possession of these tools is deemed suspicious?
Now that they've come up with a save the children/stop terrorist argument against PGP and distributed file sharing networks, it's likely too tempting for them not to use those reasons to "protect us".
Of course I could just be being paranoid, and the Washington Post isn't a conservative paper from my reading, but neither party has seemed exceptionally interested in preserving freedoms.
Republican: We can protect you by preserving freedoms
Dems: We aren't so sure.
Republican: You're a terrorist.
Public: Terrorism is new and bad. The media said so!
Dems: We can take away freedoms too! You'll be safe!
I suppose most of us get the democracy most of us deserve.
The OLPC project must be doing great, even cavemen are using them now!
Proof that it isn't partly an ad for PGP, when GPG is available.
Do people who don't agree with the policies of the U.S. government really buy their encryption software online, using their credit cards? From a company in Menlo Park, California?
Shouldn't all encryption software be open source? Otherwise, how do you know it is secure? Maybe an unhappy employee built in a back door.
Oh, and TrueCrypt encrypts entire hard drives, including the boot partition.
The mention of political enemies of the U.S. government using closed-source software from a U.S. company makes me wonder about the entire article. Quote from the article: "Files are protected using PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, a virtually unbreakable form of encryption software that is also used by intelligence agencies around the world."
I'm VERY doubtful about that. The U.S. government, under the present administration, has established that it can require companies to cooperate, and to keep the cooperation secret. That means that any U.S.-made product could be suspect. That's one of the unintended consequences of being sneaky.
Bearing in mind that Windoze scares 95% of the population, of *course* you need scary PR pieces like this from the hacks at the Washington Post.
We also need pieces like this to justify the 'security theater' that is the TSA [aka 'Thousands Standing Around'].. as well as the funding needed to train our shiny new USAF 'Cyberspace Force' that stands 'Over All'... *sigh*, well they had to do something with all those 'Missile Techs' now that they don't have any silos to man.
That's it. Teach'em DOS and VISTA.
Oh. One more thing. Make the TSA's job easy.
Fly naked.
Eat beans.
--- See you at the Tannhäuser Gate.
9/11 was 7 years, two clusterfuck wars, and $1trillion ago.. And it still was not in my back yard.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
A Sony Vaio is all of a sudden "the best technology available"?? I'm pretty sure they aren't using Red 4k cameras either.. Sounds more like a propaganda piece against P2P networks and open source encryption solutions. And please, replace Al-Qaeda with "Fundamentalist Group" like it should be. I'm still under the impression that Al-Qaeda is a CIA construct..
No doubt they do have some IT and media-literate people, but so what? That's not an "online offensive" except in the metaphorical sense of "offensive" that Pepsi would use about their forthcoming marketing campaign. (campaign, another military word coopted by marketing types.)
Nothing to see here etc etc.
Sorry but I don't trust any Foundation created to prevent terrorism that appear to be manufactured propaganda groups. So a story from Munir Ladaa who reports from them, is not a trusted source and I'm reduced to checking my own internal bullshitomitter.
How many people in tribal areas of Pakistan use the internet to get their news, and how many of those would know about this guys blog? None.
How would this Egyptian wannabe terrywrist know that this blog exists, that the answers truely respresent that mans opinion and that by visiting that blog he isn't giving his identity away? None.
Ergo my bullshitomitter tells me I am being fed a line.
I say our government isn't doing enough to stop terrorism! Where's our nuclear arsenal when we need it, huh?
To fight the Qaeda we must suspend the Constitution, take off our shoes and surrender our toothpaste getting on airplanes, invade Iraq (but not Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, but maybe Iran), pay $5 a gallon for gas. Rich people must pay no taxes, but everyone else must maximize oilcorp, pharmaco, telco, and bank profits, and hand Social Security and Medicare over to Wall Street. Free 12MPG Hummers for everyone with a credit rating, and subprime mortgages for everyone without one! Because that's the American Way that the terrorists hate us for.
I feel safer already.
--
make install -not war
> And most of us aren't internationally wanted fugitives.
Speak for yourself.
Is totally outgunned.. :)
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Just get yourself a good t6 prot warrior and a couple healers, some 0/21/40 warlocks, arcane mages, and rogues, and go rip AQ apart..
oh wait..
Uh oh. PGP is a terrorist tool. We better outlaw it!!! Or at least investigate anyone who uses it.
Distributed content networks are a terrorist tool. We better spend money counteracting such activity!!!
Looks like someone's been paying attention.
You are an IDIOT. Had to be said.
Isn't it funny how TFA mentions that "producers use ultralight Sony Vaio laptops and top-end video cameras"? I wonder why the make and model of the cameras aren't mentioned. They got close enough to know which laptops those guys use, but have no idea of where they are hiding...
.. how come all those prisoner-killing videos and other videoblogs they sent out are with such a crappy quality?
Analysts said that as-Sahab(AQ's propaganda network) is outfitted with some of the best technology available. Editors and producers use ultralight Sony Vaio laptops
Typical newspaper tech reporting. I wonder if any of these "analysts" has ever used a Sony laptop.
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Karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
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What irks me about this article is not the technical content itself, it's the power of association that has been at the heart of this conflict from the very beginning.
Planes were crashed, and someone with weakly-diversified chromosomes indicated the Iraqi terrorists hated us, so we blamed them.
We were "at war" with "Iraq", so anyone who might look even a tiny bit middle-eastern was assumed to be a terrorist, and that was dumb.
Now we believe they use common network failover tactics and widely-used encryption software to protect their network, things that several thousand North American network engineers do on a daily basis, but the laypeople will think these are "terrorist tools".
Be warned, I'm biased here, and I'm personally concerned about the use of such finger-pointing tactics against The Pirate Bay, who are well known for employing the same techniques to ensure their uptime and continue to deliver their anti-copyright message, which the right-wingers consider a threat - to the common pureblood, that makes copyright offenders strangely similar to Iraqi terrorists. I'm talking about the same people who coined the term "freedom fries".
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The Saudis do indeed deserve to fall, as do the Turkish generals ruling their country. But I see all the heads of Muslim states dining with the Saudis, so the rest of the Muslim govts seem to all be pigging out at the trough. They're all gladly taking aid money from the Saudis, like the prostitutes they are. So let's not just confine this to the Saudis, but recognize that all the govts of the Muslim world are in on it. And you can't seriously tell me that the US is appointing every last govt in the Muslim world. Nope, sorry, but the blame for that falls squarely on the Muslims themselves, who love to dodge blame at every opportunity.
NEW YORK - A public school teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator.
At a morning press conference, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.
"Al-gebra is a problem for us," Gonzalez said. "They desire solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns,' but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'There are 3 sides to every triangle.'
'When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better Weapons of Math Instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes." White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more profound statement ever made by the president.
it's faceless monster created to give us a common enemy.
it doesn't exist.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I wipe my ass with the fucking Qu'ran, okay?
> We, the people, have to pay over $1trillion for the 'war on terrorism' using the 9/11 excuse.. Yet, there's little to no progress made for combating illegal immigration - while illegal immigrants are killing more Americans than died on 9/11 every year..
Those are drug runners, not immigrants. Yes, they're here illegally, but not for the same reason.
ROFL!!
Dear modder:
Whoosh!
And if they had F16 and F18s they would use them too, what else is new?
So where is Bin Laden? Where was Olmert on 911?
Isn't it nice that the enemy has invested in electronics. One good ebomb and everything electronic will come to a screeching, permanent halt. Let's all hope that they invest their last penny in electronics. There is no easier military target. Ebombs won't kill people and will not hurt buildings and the like.
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And to borrow a mentality from recent American foreign policy - if a few innocent articles get in the way, then that's acceptable collateral damage.
When we live in an age where fear of terrorism is not used to push forward political agenda, then maybe yes, we will be able to have a 'sensible' conversation about Al-Qaeda without doubting the motives of the stakeholders.
"U.S. and European intelligence officials attribute the al-Qaeda propaganda boom in part to the network's ability to establish a secure base in the ungoverned tribal areas of western Pakistan."
Or maybe their "propaganda boom" can be attributed to all of the press coverage of terrorists who kill relatively fewer westerners every year than the annual flu virus does. Then again, WTF do I know....
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
Sounds like another lie, this one for illuminati to take away our internet freedom. You folks are handing over your liberties like they are worth no more than the money in your bank, which is worthless these days because the illegal Federal Reserve private cartel is bankrupting this nation on purpose, while you fools talk about alqaida (however you want to spell it).
Jeez friggin cries, wake the fudge up.
Terrorism, as defined in all the old dictionaries prior to 1960's, is "governance by the use of force, intimidation, and fear."
Besides that, it has been proven that coporation from District of Columbia called "CENTRAL INTELIGENCE AGENCY" was doing business to create "al-Qaeda"; CIA trained and equipped them. This isn't to say they are to blame, but their training wasn't to help defend a foreign country from invasion by another country: CIA tried to give al-Qaeda an advantage to invade and commit espionage against its target.
When will the CIA train Coloradoans, Utah'ns, and Nevadans to counter-act the influx of illegal immigration crimes and tresspass passing through the alien-buffer states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas?
Why are they leaving the mainland weaker than the foreign countries they commit to protect? Are we not paying PROTECTION MONEY?
WOW or BFD China, Microsoft, Russia, Dell, Iran, SCO ... are always doing the same shit to US, EU ....
Presently the US, EU ... corporatist are techno-failures on infrastructure/Internet security, sub-cult propaganda, web-world attacks ....
Presently internal US, EU ... corporatist propaganda falls into two dysfunctional categories (1) Supporting for profit, not patriotism, the largely proprietary military industrial complex (Halliburton, General Dynamics, Boeing ...) justifies all cost with perhaps performance surprises, and (2) when in doubt frequently shout it out (Puppet OTUS Bush, Witless Whip Cheney, and Candy Rice).
Maybe the CIA, FBI, corporatist, plutocrats ... should hire some G-Qaeda geeks for classes on techno-propaganda and how to fight and win global asymmetric propaganda-war. They already hired some as field/finance agents a few years ago ...; HOLDIT, that may of been the KGB with Chechen agents ... DAMN, I am never sure any more. Life and world affairs were so much better and simpler with the cold-war and the single threat of global nuclear annihilation ...: HOLDIT, I think, that was Mutually Assured Destruction MAD, but now MAD is Moms Against Drunks in the USA and Moms' Adulterous Drunks in Russia ... DAMN, I could be wrong again ....
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Here's more evidence against the "Muslims burned the library of Alexandria" myth.
Some analysts, such as Noam Chomsky, posit that a state of perpetual war is an aid to (and is promoted by) the powerful members of dominant political and economic classes, helping maintain their positions of economic and political superiority.
Some have also suggested that entering a state of perpetual war becomes progressively easier in a modern democratic republic such as the United States due to the continuing development of interlocking relationships between those who benefit directly from war and the large and powerful companies that indirectly benefit and shape the presentation of the effects and consequences of war (i.e., the formation of a military-industrial complex).
There has been some criticism from anti-war activists and Bush critics, for example, that the Bush administration's ties to Halliburton influenced the decision to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. These claims have been pointedly denied by the George W. Bush White House.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
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OMG. Terrorists do not use Apple Air laptops. They use Sony Vaios. Are they even humans? Do they even use iPods or are those godless bastards using Creative ZEN:s? How unpatriotic of them. Haven't they seen the you tube clip where a guy cuts a cake with Apple Air laptop. Clearly they can be used in planes instead banned of box cutt.... eh never mind.
OMG. Terrorists have access to the same unbreakable encryption system used by intelligence agencies and secretive teenagers around the world. What next? Are they going to start using Google to look for bomb making instructions?
Yes.
I was against the Iraq War from day one because it was not a war where we could win AND be the good guys.
Here's the thing about war:
It's not like in the movies. It's not a heroic clash of noble men. It is crawling in the bloody filth and tearing each other's eyes out. That's war.
How do you win a war?
Kill. Kill and kill and kill and kill and kill. Kill until there is no more fight left in the enemy. Kill until their sense of community is destroyed. Kill until they have no reason to go on. Kill until they break.
How do you wage a war on a country, while trying to save the country? In order to win a war, you have to kill a lot of people. But what if those are the people you are (ostensibly) trying to save? Even if they want to be saved, they aren't going to take kindly to being killed, and the people you are trying to save will become the people you are fighting.
Since we weren't interested in a war with the Iraqi people, it was an impossible war. If we really had wanted to defeat Iraq, you're right, we had to be a lot more aggressive. We needed a lot more people. We needed to have 2 GIs on every street corner of every burg in the nation, just making sure nothing happens.
Japan (where I live) is better off now than it was living under the Emperor cult. Germany is better off now than it was under Hitler. But in both of these cases, we had to wage war on the people. No government can stand without the people. If you have a problem with a government, you have a problem with the people. And the way to solve people problems, when push comes to shove, is to get rid of the people (i.e. Stalin was right). If you can't or don't want to do that, you shouldn't go to war. You will never win.
This is what happened in Vietnam; this is what has happened in Iraq.
A lot of Japanese people were sick of the war. A lot of people knew the government was off its rocker. A lot of the people in the government tried to stop the military (and found themselves dead). But no one greeted the Yanks as liberators after they melted two cities of civilians. They just realized that it was surrender or lose their homeland forever.
There's another huge difference between Germany/Japan and Iraq, though: Germany and Japan were civilized countries with a sense of national identity. After the war, no one had to convince them that they were all Germans or all Japanese. Not true in Iraq. They have no national identity; they have religious identity. Sunni, Shi'ite, or Christian. That's their identity. And they don't like living together.
So when you take the psychotic tyrant out of the picture, you find that he was the only thing holding the country together. And pretty soon, you have to become the psychotic tyrant, or these people will kill each other and you. But to do so is to violate everything you stand for and does irreparable damage to your reputation and your soul. So what do you do? It's too late to go back.
I suggest you just let them kill each other. Let them kill and kill and kill. Kill each other until a "winner" emerges. Then maybe they can get along with each other.
Terrorism is the weapon of an enemy who can't kill and kill and kill, so they look for other ways of breaking the enemy. I submit to you that 9/11 broke us. 3000 people and the USA and Britain imploded. Confused as to whom to fight, they have decided to fight their own people. We lost.
The Israelis deal with terrorism properly: They go on with their lives. They rebuild; they go back to work. They don't torture. They don't let go of their ideals. As you say, the body count isn't what a terrorist goes for. It's the demoralization. But the weakness of that kind of attack is that you have the ability to control your own demoralization.
The correct response to 9/11 (after the utter destruction of the Bin Laden training camps no later than 9/12--why did we wait months?), I think, was voiced by Jer
Without any insult or anger to you, just want to clarify a short summary on my studies concering McVeigh;
There is an accounted 70 unusual men loitering about the premise, having descent that of Saudi. Timothy McVeigh was recorded as being honorably discharged in 1992 from the U.S. Army Secretary, yet a film producer serveying a fiction film sight on Camp Pendleton/San Diego CALIFORNIA in ~1995 directed his video camera to some assorted broken and captured Iraqi tanks being offloaded from railcar straight from the first Gulf War under George Bush senior; when greeting the crew of one tank, they caught on film that Timothy McVeigh was identifying himself a "parts clerk" on the premise, yet correspondence with the Department of the Army confirm that they didn't know why he was there. More study revealed from Timothy McVeigh's sister a series of letters where Timothy was contacted by Department of Defense/Pentagon staff to conduct inland "secret missions" said some of the papers. Just look it up. The P. Murrah Federal building was an in-side job, that resulted in legislation and misdirected blame. The direction of the explosion even suggested it wasn't the Ryder truck that destroyed the side, because there were non-exploded barrels of chemicals found in certain areas that had been documented by security camers to be put there by what appeared to be men of Saudi Arabia descent; the same with the September-11 BOMBINGS where a PLANE full of Saudi Arabians portrayed a hijacking with crash into a steel re-inforced skyscraper to warrant invasion of Afghanistan to Iraq and soon to
Even look up the Columbine incident in Littleton COLORADO. there were over 125 explosives found on the premise of those schoolhouses, over a third weighing over 60 pounds each and would've need over 2 FUCKING HOURS to place around the premises. Also, count over 50 men dressed in black suits having no function to the faculty of that school. It's an inside job. The terrorists put the legislation there, the terrorists gave you the tools to catch the terrorists, why aren't you catching the terrorists yet?
without prejudice
This has been the best story on /. in ages. It does not seem that everyone is standing shoulder to shoulder on the al-qaeda story - do al-qaeda exist or don't they exist?
With a real enemy it is possible to verify if the propaganda is genuine. Some simple questions just need to be asked:
1. When was the source, written or unwritten, produced (date)?
2. Where was it produced (localization)?
3. By whom was it produced (authorship)?
4. From what pre-existing material was it produced (analysis)?
5. In what original form was it produced (integrity)?
6. What is the evidential value of its contents (credibility)?
To date most if not all al-qaeda videos get dropped off in London, into the hands of the journalist Yosri Fouda. He does not work in the al-jazeera London studio, he has his own seperate office in the Westminster area, a short walk from the MI5/MI6 offices. Yosri Fouda never says where he gets his tapes from, claiming the usual journalist privelige to hide sources. If the UK/USA alliance really wanted to catch the bogeyman then they would just have to watch back the CCTV pictures and track the guy that hands in the tapes.
During the presentation that Colin Powell made to the U.N. he claimed that there was a new UBL tape at al-jazeera. The only problem was that al-jazeera had not received the tape yet. I guess that Yosri Fouda must have been off that day.
To my knowledge all of the post 9/11 al-qaeda nonsense has came from this one source. This is the normal chain of custody - IntelCenter -> Yosri Fouda -> al-jazeera -> MSM -> ./(!)
Infer this: if there was no Yosri Fouda there would be no UBL videos, therefore no al-qaeda.
My offer, open to anyone on /. is to provide al-qaeda material that is the real stuff, not made up rubbish. I am genuinely interested in that, hence the reward. Clearly I could just say 'that's made up mate' and not pay up, but that's not the way we do things on /. - we are gentlemen here, right?
Now, as for the original article, I see problems on the first line. Abu Hamza. Is he al-qaeda? I don't think so, however, that is implied as he would have to know the secret URL for 'As-Sahab Media'. Let's Google 'Abu Hamza' with the 'I'm feeling lucky!' button. The article returned is from the BBC, let's see if he is merely a hater or the real deal:
"According to Abu Hamza himself, MI5 first contacted him in 1997 shortly after extremists massacred 68 tourists at Luxor, Egypt.
These meetings continued for some years, he told the Old Bailey, and included a warning that he was "walking a tightrope".
---
On 20 January 2003, police raided the building as part of a major investigation into an alleged plot to produce ricin poison. They sealed the mosque and handed it back to the trustees.
Abu Hamza himself was not arrested in connection with that probe. But despite being denied a base, he preached outside its gates every Friday.
This bizarre stand-off between Abu Hamza and the authorities continued into 2004. Then, Washington named Abu Hamza as a "terrorist facilitator with a global reach" and he was arrested pending extradition."
Well, the ricin plot never was. The UK security services were sent on that wild goose chase by former Home Office head 'Blunkett'. Hamza exists (he spent the time whilst locked out of his mosque feeding the ducks in Finsbury Park) yet at the same time the security services see him as "terrorist facilitator with a global reach".
Call me naive but the alleged enemy should have a website for their 'As-Sahab Media', complete with the 1888 questions posed by journalists and 'jihadists'. Where is it, or did I miss something?
For reasons beyond the scope of this comment I believe that 'The War Against Terrorism' (T.W.A.T. - let's stick to the correct acronyms) is running a lot hotter than anyone on /. are capable of imagining. We are relatively close to the seventh anniversary and the propaganda offensive ('W's) is being ratcheted up. There is the dreaded building seven report coming out very soon and 'W' wants to nab UBL before leaving office.
... guess the "terrorists" must've won...
here's a quick fact check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Destruction_of_the_Library
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
AQ is brighter than that. I only wished that the average American. What is being missed in this article is that real data is carried by carriers, but it is several at a time. They are using steganography to hide any real data.
Insightful? Insightful into what? How much of a jackass brxndxn is? The apparent fact that he didn't live next to the World Trade Center on 9/11/01? WTF?
The reason is that the Saudi's have befriended China. The chinese gov. is more than happy to support any gov that helps them (though many could argue that is what we are doing). For example, China was all to happy to send arms to Mugabe in Zimbabwae. Fortunately, that was stopped by South Africa, once it was exposed.
Within 5 years, our imports from OPEC is going to drop dramatically. This will be due to both Algae oil/gasoline( of which several companies are moving into small scale production) as well as our moving to electrical transportation (in particular, if EESTOR is for real). At that time, China MAY step in and support the house.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Read the Koran to understand what people who have belief in its message say they believe. It's written in that book. And some are only practicing what is written. And don't respond with, "well that statement is nullified by this later statement". Go tell that to _______ (fill in the blank).
The question I have is: are they running Linux ? If yes : Why ? Is Win XP or Vista not good enough for them ? If no : What does it mean? Do 'we' need to begin controlling Linux technology ASAP, or can 'we' afford to wait for a security incident to occur ?
This moderation system is imperfect - I just wish I could moderate this higher than 5. : ) : ) ; )
It's from a reputable source. Besides, there's nothing really strange about this. The idea of using PGP and decentralized servers makes perfect sense. The dubious bit is that warning lights go off in my head every time someone mentions Al-Qaeda because usually it's someone trying to scare me for political reasons.
I'm sure Al Qaeda are running Microsoft Windows.
I don't see why we don't just break in through the back door and spy on them.
Am I supposed to believe that some guys living in caves somewhere in the middle east are more tech saavy than the average college educated American?
And how tech saavy can they be to be using Sony laptops?! If they knew their shit they'd have used Macs with Linux, or IBM, but SONY?
And so what? they use PGP? sure it's impossible for civilians to crack PGP,maybe even difficult or impossible for the NSA, but you don't have to crack PGP to deal with Al Qaeda, all we have to do is wait for them to connect to the internet and drop the bomb on them while they are uploading their Bin Laden video.
What happened to tempest? UAV's? I'm skeptical. I think this is just being used for political reasons as a way to crack down further on internet freedom in the same way kiddie porn is used.
If we want to catch Al Qaeda, hire some hackers to hack their computers, this is slashdot, some of the people here would gladly hack into their Sony computers, for a fee of course.
It's not that Bin Laden is kicking our ass,we are kicking our own ass with our ridiculous laws.
While we are buying wiretapping ourselves, the terrorists roam free and get on the internet without any wiretap whatsoever.
While we are busy attacking our own people, the terrorists are attacking us. It's ridiculous.
All the US government has to do is set a billion dollars aside,and them maybe give slashdot 50 million dollars to distribute to people who can hack into the Al Qaeda Sony laptop systems.
Within a few months most of them will be hacked into.
You can only win a war on terrorism by disabling terrorist cells and changing the behavior and thinking patterns of the individuals in leadership positions.
I don't buy the idea that terrorists are the best hackers in the world.They probably do use PGP, they probably do know about computers, but chances are they run Windows, and run commercial closed source software with backdoors in it.
Even if they run Linux it doesn't mean their passwords can't be cracked to their webservers.
I hope when we have a new President that our foreign policy and the way we fight wars changes so that victory is the goal and not just killing as many of the enemy as possible.
How can we win a war on terror abroad if we have no security or privacy at home?
Some of our policies don't make any sense at all.
I don't see how we can be safe from terrorists when terrorists can have access to all our medical records, our financial history, our identity, and basically track our every move.
Yeah we are supposed to win a war against terrorists who have more privacy and security than we do?
PGP is good. Privacy is good. The reason PGP and privacy is good is because you can't have security without privacy, and without security you can't have liberty, and without liberty then the terrorists win, because what else is worth fighting for besides freedom?
You can't put all your faith in the police.The terrorists can become police officers and then access satelite data, and listen to your cellphone calls, even have you put on some watch list.
Somehow people think that terrorists who were smart enough to learn how to fly planes,wont be smart enough to go through the police academy, get a gun license, and then become police chiefs and from that position ask for your file.
They aren't stupid. And because they aren't stupid, I don't feel safer than before 911, I feel less safe. I don't feel safer with all this wiretapping,I feel less safe,because I don't know who the wiretappers are or what their agendas are, we don't get a list of names of who they are but they know who we are.
I mean honestly it doesn't make any sense how anyone could be against encryption yet expect to win any kinda war.
Encryption is essential to fighting the war on terror.How can you build an anonymous tip line so people can report on the terrorists if you have no encryption?
No encryption means no one would come forward. And if no one can come forward then you have no way to track Bin Laden down.
If the USA is losing the info wars it's not the fault of the terrorists. We didn't have to wage the war in this manner.
We broke international law. We broke treaties. We did not have to do any of that, and we set up those prison camps, and we authorized torture.
The US government should spend some money building up encryption software.There is no way the US can defend critical networks if the passwords are in plaintext.
The way the article makes it seem, it's as if the only people who want to use PGP or TrueCrypt or have security and privacy are the terrorists and thats completely backwards.
If the goal is to protect the American citizen from the terrorist then the American citizen should be using PGP and Truecrypt and the government should be telling citizens to use encryption.
Now,as far as corporations cooperating, that always happens and thats not really the problem.
The problem is that governments expect citizens to support them in a war, but then the government wants to outlaw everything the citizen would need to feel safe. Citizens are scared of terrorists so they try to buy a gun, but guns are banned.
The citizen is afraid of hacker terrorists so they try to get PGP and the government bans encryption?!
The terrorists are going to win because the average citizen does not give a damn about security.
"They got close enough to know which laptops those guys use..."
Something like, "I live in Virginia and I don't speak Arabic, but I hang around with top terrorists all the time, heh, heh."
so wut? does that mean the war will be fought on some WoW server?
how about call of duty 4?
and we have always been at war with Eurasia
As a Indian[Hindu], i can tell American govt give more unnecessary attention to Muslim's world. There are 150 million muslims living India, and most of the muslim connected to ARAB countries and pakistan from their relatives and other business way. its virtually impossible for any country to keep watch activity of all this people, and after all all people are not bad, there is always 10000 : 1 ratio for bad people. American is fearing more from Pakistan and middle east Muslim's activities. why don't they just think like they are common people like American and Indian, they have their own way of communication and own methodologies,it doesn't matter what technology they are using and how. people who think that all Muslim's are bed, then it never lived in a true metro culture environment like in India, where u can find Temple,Mosque and church in just one km square area and all type of people living peacefully. People should think in a positive way..
How do you wage a war on a country, while trying to save the country?
That's the problem in Iraq (as with Vietnam). Using the Army as nation-builders is flawed. The Army exists to kill people and blow stuff up.
Definitely a grease spot in a cave somewhere.
Seems like with all of the brain power on this damned site, we could just put these propaganda sites out of commission pretty simply.
Files are protected using PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, a virtually unbreakable form of encryption software
Please, please, please, please keep telling yourselves that...
I'm sorry I don't have any insightful mod points to give you. This is an excellent piece, and I couldn't agree more with you.
I believe that your conclusion is correct, but for entirely the wrong reason.
These "analysts" believe that they are smarter than the majority of the population, which is why their opinions (a.k.a. "analyses") are valuable and they are paid to provide them.
Since they are (supposedly) so smart, they should know what is best.
I strongly suspect, in contradiction to your implication, that they all use Sony Vaios. Since they're so smart, they obviously picked the best technology, and if they use Sony Vaios, then anyone else using a Sony Vaio is clearly using the "best technology available".
So, I suspect it would be clear to the Slashdot crowd that these "analysts" know very little about technology, but for the opposite reason that you have cited.
Careful, they might use that as proof that it's 'working'. Gotta find out who 'they' are...
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx