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To Avoid Detection, Terrorists Made Messages Seem Like Spam
HughPickens.com writes: It's common knowledge the NSA collects plenty of data on suspected terrorists as well as ordinary citizens, but the agency also has algorithms in place to filter out information that doesn't need to be collected or stored for further analysis, such as spam emails. Now Alice Truong reports that during operations in Afghanistan after 9/11, the U.S. was able to analyze laptops formerly owned by Taliban members. According to NSA officer Michael Wertheimer, they discovered an email written in English found on the computers contained a purposely spammy subject line: "CONSOLIDATE YOUR DEBT."
According to Wertheimer, the email was sent to and from nondescript addresses that were later confirmed to belong to combatants. "It is surely the case that the sender and receiver attempted to avoid allied collection of this operational message by triggering presumed "spam" filters (PDF)." From a surveillance perspective, Wertheimer writes that this highlights the importance of filtering algorithms. Implementing them makes parsing huge amounts of data easier, but it also presents opportunities for someone with a secret to figure out what type of information is being tossed out and exploit the loophole.
According to Wertheimer, the email was sent to and from nondescript addresses that were later confirmed to belong to combatants. "It is surely the case that the sender and receiver attempted to avoid allied collection of this operational message by triggering presumed "spam" filters (PDF)." From a surveillance perspective, Wertheimer writes that this highlights the importance of filtering algorithms. Implementing them makes parsing huge amounts of data easier, but it also presents opportunities for someone with a secret to figure out what type of information is being tossed out and exploit the loophole.
Applying the Cameron Solution, all we need to do is ban spam... or email. I confess I'm not quite clear.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Prince of Nigeria is really funding terror cells to cure his erectile disfunction.
So does this mean the NSA will now filter my spam for me? Hooray!
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
More interestingly, I wonder how many perfectly good terrorist emails I've deleted from my spam folder.
Sure we will get some actual spammers in with that, but better safe than sorry.
You're supposed to say "Allah Akbar". Your keywords flag you as a paranoid schizophrenic or Slashdot aficionado. Either one mostly harmless to the Three Letter Agencies.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
More poignantly, does than mean we should be treating mass spammers like terrorist, oh my, I am torn between annoyance and justice, arghhh.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen