Osama Bin Laden Didn't Encrypt His Files

An anonymous reader writes "If you're running a terrorist organization, it might make sense to encrypt your files. Clearly Osama Bin Laden didn't realize that — as some of the documents seized during the raid on his hideout in Pakistan have been made public for the first time. 17 electronic documents, which were found on USB sticks, memory cards and computer hard drives after US Navy Seals killed the terrorist chief in the May 2011 raid, are being released in their original Arabic alongside English translations by the Combating Terrorism Center, reports Sophos."

Comments

Security through obscurity

[GodfatherofSoul]

Worked pretty well for the 10 or so years it took to *find* his files!

Re:Security through obscurity

[Anonymous Coward]

All interested groups--those who would benefit from him being alive and those who would benefit from him being dead--agree that he's dead. His family members, including his wives, agree that he's dead. The Pakistani government, angry that the US violated their sovereignty, and embarrassed that OBL was in an area known to senior members of their intelligence apparatus (IE they were caught with their pants down), agree that he's dead. The consequences of claiming he's dead when he's not would be disastrous. A non-trivial number of people (between those in the situation room, including a photographer, those on the SEAL team, those on the ship that the SEAL team flew to) would be able to blow the whistle on the conspiracy.

This isn't about legal standard of proof--if it was ever legally required the government would show the court some of the DNA, dental, photographic, and video evidence they have--it's about simple common sense.

If you believe Osama bin Laden is not dead, say so. If you believe these documents are not legitimate, say so. This kind of wishy-washy devil's advocate crap where people claim that there are "unanswered questions" but lack the intellectual honesty to actually stand behind the only possible conclusion that could be drawn by the answers they're implying is so stupid.

Re:Security through obscurity

[Black Parrot]

Is this FreeRepublic.com now?

~S

Yes, but we're still arguing over whether it's Free Beer Republic or Free Speech Republic.

Re:Security through obscurity

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have no idea ..."

You could have stopped right there.

Re:Security through obscurity

[tnk1]

Jumping too soon on a story (ie. Chavez Out of Power, Dewey Defeats Truman), is hardly the same thing as just about every one else telling you that OBL is dead. The fact of Chavez being in and out of power is a much more fluid situation than Osama bin Laden with two holes in his chest and having been dumped in the Indian Ocean off the deck of a warship. With Chavez, they were simply wrong, with bin Laden, they'd have to be outright lying.

Fact is, you don't really get to keep nasty secrets like this for long. Just about everything the US government or its agents have ever done which is nasty or illicit has come out long before any sort of National Archives release date. Even Nixon couldn't cover his shit up. If OBL was not dead or it was a fake, it would come out. It might be for honesty, it might be for a huge payday, or it might just be for ego.

Documentation is fine, but it can be faked. In the end, you don't trust in documents, you trust in the preponderance of evidence that you get from a variety of diverse sources, including those who have no stake in telling lies. As someone pointed out, both the US government and AQ admitted OBL is dead. I don't see any reason to disbelieve them. It's not like it changed anything at all. No wars will end, no wars will start. Hell, it was even too soon to allow Obama to get an Election year bump in the polls.

Re:Security through obscurity

[MightyYar]

This place has always attracted the conspiracy-minded. I think that there are more high-IQ people here than average, and high-IQ people like to find patterns. There is also a high correlation between paranoid schizophrenia and IQ. Conspiracy theories are really just grand pattern-finding exercises.

Of course, no one espousing these theories can explain to me how the government manages to keep a secret.

Re:Security through obscurity

[plover]

Because if Emmanuel Goldstein hadn't existed, it would have been necessary to invent him.

(Apologies to Orwell and Voltaire.)

Re:Security through obscurity

[flyingsquid]

This place has always attracted the conspiracy-minded. I think that there are more high-IQ people here than average, and high-IQ people like to find patterns. There is also a high correlation between paranoid schizophrenia and IQ. Conspiracy theories are really just grand pattern-finding exercises.

So you're saying that this forum naturally attracts conspiracy theorists and gives them a place to vent their conspiracies. That would be awfully convenient if there was an organization working in the shadows that needed to monitor people's communications to make sure that none of the conspiracy theorists had accidentally stumbled onto the truth. All they'd have to do is monitor this forum and then disappear anybody who got too close. Awfully convenient indeed....

Perfectly hypothetical, of course. Anyway, I'd write more but I have to go, it's 2:00 AM and for some reason somebody is banging on my door and I better see who it is.

Re:Security through obscurity

[Compaqt]

You forgot the #!#NO CARRIER

Re:Security through obscurity

[JustOK]

Forgot the what???? OMG, they got Compaqt !

really?

[SailorOrion]

Normally, you would encrypt data for transmission via an unsecure network (read: internet) or to protect it from unauthorized physical access. It's not like OBL's biggest worries were the contents of his USB sticks should hostile individuals be present in his home. History certainly supports that theory ...

Why bother with the inconvenience?

[dccase]

He correctly understood that they wouldn't be used against him as evidence in a court of law.

No real need for him to encrpyt

[Nidi62]

Why would he need to encrypt files he was storing with him? He was living covertly, so did not have to worry about surveillance. And these documents were essentially for internal (read: his own and his few insiders) use. Any distribution of those documents from his location was handled by courier, and AQ uses encryption and steganography when distributing their documents as recent news has shown, logically the same measures were probably undertaken whenever these documents left the compound. As high a profile target as he is, he really didn't have to worry about anyone snooping on him, it would be much more profitable to capture or kill him if his location were known than it would be to sit on him and investigate traffic. And odds are the NSA and other intelligence agencies would brute force and eventually crack any encryption regardless. At best, all the encryption would do is buy time for AQ to bug out/scrap plans/accelerate operations. In all likelihood they probably had a contingency plan for bin Laden's eventual capture/death(whether natural or by bullet/missile) which involved changes in methods, distribution networks, or locations, causing any intelligence gained to lead to mostly ghosts and cold trails.

Think of this another way: do you encrypt your USB drives if you are just transferring your files from one computer to another in your house? Even if the files are sensitive, it's a waste of time, because the drive isn't intended to be removed from your house.