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US Bombs ISIS Command Center After Terrorist Posts Selfie Online
HughPickens.com writes: Brian Everstine writes at Air Force Times that U.S. intelligence officers were able to locate and bomb an Islamic State command center based on a photo and comments in social media. "The [airmen are] combing through social media and they see some moron standing at this command," said Gen. Hawk Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command. "And in some social media, open forum, bragging about command and control capabilities for Da'esh, ISIL, And these guys go 'ah, we got an in.' So they do some work, long story short, about 22 hours later through that very building, three JDAMS take that entire building out. Through social media. It was a post on social media. Bombs on target in 22 hours."
Carlisle was careful to not go into great detail about the how the information was gathered and what additional effort went into targeting those bombs. It's easy to imagine that in addition to the information gleaned from the initial post that the Air Force used satellite and drone reconnaissance data. It's also possible that U.S. intelligence could have actively engaged with the original poster in order to draw out information. Attackers and researchers have shown time and time again that simply asking a target for information—either by posing as a trusted individual or using carefully created phishing attacks—works even better than fancy information-stealing digital attacks.
Carlisle was careful to not go into great detail about the how the information was gathered and what additional effort went into targeting those bombs. It's easy to imagine that in addition to the information gleaned from the initial post that the Air Force used satellite and drone reconnaissance data. It's also possible that U.S. intelligence could have actively engaged with the original poster in order to draw out information. Attackers and researchers have shown time and time again that simply asking a target for information—either by posing as a trusted individual or using carefully created phishing attacks—works even better than fancy information-stealing digital attacks.
Would this qualify for a Darwin Award?
Here I am standing in front of our TERRORIST HEADQUARTERS on a great sunny day! My fav pic this week hope u like it!
I hope they spent at least a few of those 22 hours verifying that the place they were going to bomb was in fact the TERRORIST HEADQUARTERS.
I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a school, hospital, or frozen yogurt shop.
Assuming the story is true. It could be a good cover story for some other type of intelligence gathering. Plus if you can get Daesh to stop using social media, it could be a good thing.
What's the intelligence agencies objective in releasing this story to the press? That's what needs to be examined. Is it meant as a message to ISIS "We got you and we'll get you again because your people are stupid"? Or was it meant to convey to us, the American People: "This is what our metadata surveillance can accomplish if you'd just let us use it"?
My first thoughts are
1. Secondary story to cover a primary tool being used, which they do not want to expose. Kinda like 'giving carrots to pilots' was a cover for development of radar
2. Striking fear into an enemy, which prevents them from using a primary recruiting tool
3. Wanting to trumpet successes while programs are facing restrictive laws in Congress, the Courts and public opinion
Wherever You Go, There You Are
If this was exif tags from the selfie, then that would be data, not metadata.
I am really, really surprised that they chose to tell us any of this honestly, unless they announced this to try to stem the flow of marketing from ISIS toward young impressionable Muslims by making the social media aspect seem particularly dangerous. If the rank-and-file can't publish their experiences without being blown up, the rank-and-file might stop trying to encourage others to join. That leaves the older people at the top to try to make such decisions, and they might not be as good at convincing the young to join them.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Does ISIS have its own version of the Pentagon? Is this a building with eagles on it with a big ISIS flag waving over it? Do they have to worry about cutbacks and base closures?
My impression of ISIS is a crowd-sourced and funded guerilla organization. Said "ISIS Command Center" was probably Seldom Bin Leyd's garage where he kept his beater Toyota pickup with the stack of 20+ year old RPGs in the bed. Seldom Bin Leyd naturally was spouting off online during his WOW session (erm, "training") about his "command center", and essentially got swatted with a few JDAMs.
I think we just happened to catch one of the stupid ones. The competent guys in ISIS probably are glad this guy got wasted.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Good: More and faster.
Bad: Mouthing off about how we did it, so ISIS won't make the same mistake again.
One refers to a people, the other refers to a place. Immigrants to the West from the middle east don't kill each other very often based on their ancestor's tribal conflicts.
Children who are raised inside all that BS and never make it out... well.. a few of them will eventually act on it. And.. it doesn't take many to ruin a neighborhood.
If this was exif tags from the selfie, then that would be data, not metadata.
We may be arguing semantics here, but the wikipedia page about exif uses the word "metadata" 29 times, with statements like:
The metadata tags defined in the Exif standard cover a broad spectrum
and a specific section about geolocation.
From a linguistic/philosophical point of view, an image file contains image data. Additional information about that image data ("metadata"), would include information about the time/date/location that the picture was taken, etc.
tl;dr: It's metadata.
Describing the current an past state of affairs isn't the same thing as taking a position on what those populations are capable of. It's really just stating the current state of affairs. I personally think that they're just as capable of democracy as anybody else, but I don't really take issue with the GP's description.
The fact is, democracy is hard. We seem to make the mistake of assuming that freedom and democracy are the natural state of things and if we just bang on something with a stick hard enough, it will settle into that natural state. In reality, democracy usually requires the guy with the most guns to say, "I could be a dictator, enjoy absolute power, and take vengeance on all of the other populations who ever did me and mine wrong, but I won't. You guys go ahead and decide who will run things and I'll go with it." That's not an easy outcome. It takes a pretty difficult alignment of circumstances to get it started. Tribal war over whose turn it is to hold the whip is the natural state of things, and we're naive to think otherwise.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Uh, no.
The person wasn't the target, the building was. If the individual was bragging he was at a military / terrorist C&C location, then the building and everyone else in it were legitimate targets. If the moron was there then it was just gravy.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
racist
I'm a cultural imperialist. I really don't *care* what race the person is who is following Islam.
And no, I'm not apologetic about it, because I don't see it as a bad thing.
While there may be some good in a culture that practices female genital mutilation, gives 100 lashes -- followed by stoning to death -- women for having been raped (zina), assigns the death penalty for people who convert from Islam to another religion (apostasy), cuts off hands and/or feet for theft (a hudud crime in sharia), believe in "an eye for an eye" (Qisas) or a bribe (Diyya) in the event of property damage, injury, or murder... I'm of the opinion that the bad outweighs the good.
And yes, I believe women should be allowed to learn to read.
Heck, the Sunni's can't even *agree* on all aspect of Sharia -- there are four major schools: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali, and a bunch of minor ones) -- and just try to get them to agree with the Shia -- major branch is Jafari, but also a lot of minor ones.
Getting rid of most of this crap is just good sense.
P.S.: I'm pretty sure I'm more knowledgeable on this topic than you are, with your one word response ad hominem attack on me to try to damage the credibility of what I said in my previous posting.
P.P.S.: In case you do not know Latin, which you probably don't, that means "to the person", and it's a logical fallacy, so your attack is pretty meaningless, even if I just proved you're an idiot who can't tell a racist from a cultural imperialist.