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'Motherlode' of Data Seized At Bin Laden Compound
itwbennett writes "The raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan Sunday also turned up an 'intelligence harvest' of computer-based data that was described by an anonymous government source as 'the motherlode of intelligence.' The data is being sifted through at a secret site in Afghanistan. An unnamed official was quoted by Politico as saying: 'Hundreds of people are going through it now. It's going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable. They cleaned it out. Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?'"
Goat porn
Lots of snuff films
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Yeah, lots of pictures sexy...ankles!!
Nobody has a score that low on minesweeper...
Obama's real birth certificate?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Suicide bombers rarely make the same mistakes twice.
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I would imagine a big old truecrypt partition, though perhaps he didn't encrypt things for some reason?
Well I'm reading through the files from bin laden's drives that were posted on wikileaks an hour ago and it looks like they he used steganography based on goat porn.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Encryption only really works if you do it right, every time. Screw up only once, and you could leave enough crumbs to compromise it all.
He's been holed up in that place for 6 years now, with no one even coming close. Time for him to get comfortable and slipshod. The odds of him not slipping up at all during that time are slim.
Maybe it is all encrypted, or maybe there are enough clues left around to provide some real, useful information.
Besides, the real question isn't what is on there. It is who in the various governments and industry are quaking in their boots thinking THEY may be on a list identifying them as supporters.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
If I thought I'd appear in any of that data, I'd already have disappeared.
Hopefully (if it were encrypted and we cracked it), we would continue to put out statements in the media that we couldn't crack it...
(while we were kicking doors at his safehouses and rounding up the remainder of his minions around the world)
22 million email addresses in a file marked "sony.dat"
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Encryption only really works if you do it right, every time. Screw up only once, and you could leave enough crumbs to compromise it all.
We're talking about the NSA getting this drive. So by doing it right you mean everything's encrypted and in the event of a raid the drive is melted with thermite, mixed with neodymium magnet dust, placed in a 5T magnetic field, stepped on by five elephants, mixed into bird food and fed to a flock of >100 migratory birds.
This is, this is just the kind of ultra important stuff where some is _actually_ going to use obscene amounts of processing power and analysis if required to get access to the data.
Encryption is a deterant.. 99% of the time the effort required to break said encryption is out of imagination for the value of the data... in this rare case, all the resources of the US military and possibly even other governments are available for use. They'd analyse every IC in the machine and put entire server farms to work on it to get the key.. unless he was very good with his computing practices... they'd get their data.
If he's smart he would've not only encrypted everything but most of the information would be intentionally misleading or low-value, making whoever got it not only have to work to decrypt it but to have sort out what's real and useful and what's not.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And then the guys at the NSA say: hmm, interesting challenge!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Hopefully (if it were encrypted and we cracked it), we would continue to put out statements in the media that we couldn't crack it...
(while we were kicking doors at his safehouses and rounding up the remainder of his minions around the world)
Agreed! Didn't we learn anything from the whole "we tracked him by his cell phone" braggadocio fiasco? STFU about your intel sources. Sheesh....
I would imagine a big old truecrypt partition, though perhaps he didn't encrypt things for some reason?
The guy was 54 and the latter part of those years was spent in some pretty remote areas. I doubt he had much expertise in computer security. They probably relied much more on physical security, i.e. being to blow all their stuff up if the shit hit the fan (or their stuff going up in same bombing raid as them.)
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
A selfish man who had others die for him is not likely to be overmuch careful about protecting the people who remain alive after he is dead.
I bet he was really sloppy and undisciplined.
"Bin Laden" is "of the Laden family". The "bin" is akin to the Hebrew "ben", "son of" (e.g. "Yeshua ben Yosef", "Jesus son of Joseph".) The Arab equivalent to "of" (in this context) is "al", e.g. Saddam Hussein al Tikriti, Saddam Hussein from Tikrit.
As with other patronymics (e.g. the Scottish "Mac"), it's often used as a general family name, inherited for multiple generations. Osama bin Laden's father is Muhammad bin Laden. The original "Laden" is unknown, but goes back at least a century.
So it's perfectly reasonable to call him "bin Laden". It's his family name, at least a few generations back. Confusion arises only as with every other family name, in that there are a lot of bin Ladens out there, and you'd have to use his full name to be clear. But using just his first name would be equivalent to referring to the Chancellor of Germany as "Angela" or the Prime Minister of the UK as "Gordon": it's their personal name, and rarely used alone in public discourse.
You could use it that was as a deliberate insult of over familiarity. The New York Times took the unusual step of referring to him just as "bin Laden" rather than "Mr. bin Laden", which they reserve generally for the worst of the worst.
Do you know why there are so few competent suicide bombers?
Because only those who flunk their exams graduate from the training.
While I think the idea of the NSA putting a backdoor into an open source project is pure tin-foil hat territory
Let me get this straight: You think the idea that one of the nation's most secretive intelligence agencies would be doing something in secret that allows them to gain intelligence is "tin-foil hat territory"? How do you know which contributors to TrueCrypt are working for the NSA? How could you ever know?
Breakfast served all day!
Probably from TFA.
Title: "Reports: Computers seized at bin Laden compound"
Subtitle: "U.S. authorities removed hard drives, CDs, DVDs, USB sticks in what is described as a 'motherlode' of data"
I'm guessing that maybe the bin Laden compound had computers, hard drives, CDs, DVDs, and USB sticks, which U. S. authorities seized. But that's just my uninformed guess.
Governments don't actually face a choice between "share info and have leaks" or "don't share info and don't". That's a false dichotomy.
Leaks tend to happen when things are being covered up that should not be covered up. Leakers take huge risks, as the sad case of Mannings treatment shows. They don't tend to do it for shits and giggles, or because of some anarchic belief that all secrets are bad. In the case of the Manning dumps he did it because he thought there were a lot of scandals and other things being wrongly suppressed .... and he was right!
So we can see there's a third option, which is, don't cover up large numbers of scandals. Instead when you screw up, admit it, and ensure everyone can see the measures to take to prevent repeat incidents. There are plenty of organizations that do this. The US Govt is not one of them.
Either that, or it is a commentary on the value of a college degree.
Just sayin'.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba