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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.
More and faster.
Geotags
America......fuck yeah!
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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US posts story about it so that this type of intel gathering will become less effective *FACEPALM*
To stop using Facebook and other "social" media...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Anybody using a selfie-stick should be bombed into oblivion.
Well done US military, in cleaning up that particular corner of the gene pool.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
And now, thanks to a General with loose lips, that's the last time such a lucky break will occur.
Isn't the air force doing the very same thing by bragging about their capabilities and ISIL's weaknesses in public? At least keep this quiet until you bomb a half dozen more of their bases.
Has anyone else considered the potential implications of "terrorist posts geostamped selfie, gets bombed"?
I predict we'll see "swatting" taken to a whole new level.
I hope it was EXIF data.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You'd figure terrorists would be more concerned with privacy than the average Joe.
Would this qualify for a Darwin Award?
Terrorist: "Ohh, my great mission accomplished moment!" (Snap) (Post)
(booom)
Well, the US military is often accused of being excellent at fighting the previous war. This one dragged out so long they've caught up in real time.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Was the guy in the selfie praying facing some direction that was revealing?
This story is from Yesterday
Slashdot used to be good.
But I really want to know what the insurgent's last tweet looked like.
So now you see why we need NSA snooping? If 2 airman just parusing online can get a target, imagine what automation can do!!
I wish I had called it, but I remember some other commenter making a remark on the eves dropping bills they recently "fixed". Something along the lines of "yea, just watch, a demonstration of how "vital" snooping around is will come up this week, mark my words".
well looks like that's what happened.
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.
"Sock it to me?!?!!?"
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
what if isis.. just takes selfie's around iraq mil sites and then uploads them or schools etc etc
Social media exposure is propaganda for ISIS. If they become scared of posting pictures, their recruitment numbers will drop.
Killing a few because of photos is less effective than preventing 200 potential recruits from joining.
Raqqa is hollywood for these guys, and the social media profiles are their movie stars.
for a Darwin award.
was the General bragging about it. If he hadn't blabbed then they could get others with this technique in the future, at least for a while. An opportunity lost.
4Chan and reddit seem to be pretty good at locating people from random photos. Perhaps the government can give them a job to help with this method.
And I'm not just talking about the one that took and posted the picture.
If you are exploiting an intelligence source the last thing you want to do is let on that you are doing so.
We get the oil anyway. It's about who gets to keep the money from all that oil. Wars aren't fought over hated, they're fought over money. People quickly forget when they've got a middle class life to live. Now, if we could get our govt to actually rebuild their country instead of lining rich schmucks pockets..
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"I tell you I didn't order these bombs!"
"Well that's just great. We built them. We delivered them. They worked just fine. *Somebody's* gotta pay for them!"
"It wasn't me!"
I'll take my +5 Insightful, thx
Terrorist posts PhotoShop'd selfie of himself standing in the Whitehouse...
Whitehouse bombs itself --- film at 11.
Morons are a problem for all. Russia — whose attitude towards accusations of being involved in Ukraine is "Our soldiers aren't there, but they will prevail" — is repeatedly embarrassed by the same kind of morons among her servicemen posting selfies and other photographs picturing them with well-recognizable landmarks and monuments inside Ukraine in the background.
Sigh, if only Ukraine had anywhere near the punch of America's air-force...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Says it all
Evidently, some IS people didn't study this particular example of basic security precaution...
I've been monitoring seismic activity in the North-Central Oklahoma region for about a year now. You might want to check . . . they didn't used to get multiple daily 3+ magnitude events there when I was young (admittedly, when dinosaurs roamed the earth).
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!
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a fun and cool thing to kill people in other countries. It's just something the U.S. gov does, and in the midst of getting used to this, the innocent people who are also getting killed by U.S. guns and bombs are conveniently forgotten, and no-one is ever held accountable.
That's called overreacting. Unless they did the duckface thing.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
the JDAMs were actually delivered through the interweb tubes directly to the command center
I imagine this could become a useful tool for them to take out their competors. Just take selfies at any target they want destroyed, and BOOM.
This could be an opportunity to take swatting to a whole new level. I can just imagine gamer kidies dressing up as ISIS and taking selfies in front of their opponents houses now.
We'll never know why they blew up this building or if there were terrorists in it. They are probably announcing it as an alibi for a crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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They must skip the lessons on communications discipline in the ISIS evil genius training course. Of course, it sounds like Gen. Hawk Carlisle was asleep that day as well.
On the other hand, knowing something of the Middle East, it's probably a triple head-fake of some sort. The selfie was probably taken in front of the house of a local CIA operative whose cover was blown, as an act of combat swatting by ISIS, the 22 hours was the time required for us to get him out of there to safety, and Gen. Carlisle is just spreading disinformation to hide that we figured it out.
The US government tells tales. I'm sure they are announcing this as the alibi for a crime. Just like Al-Shifa was supposedly making weapons, and they never really provided much evidence for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Things like this is why I usually post as AC.
I see no reason to believe the Air Force is telling the truth about this.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Interesting. It looks like the US military has not only invented, but also improved on the technology needed to stab someone in the face over the internet. This will be a boon for reasonable internet discussions everywhere!
http://bash.org/?4281
I've been monitoring seismic activity in the North-Central Oklahoma region for about a year now. You might want to check . . . they didn't used to get multiple daily 3+ magnitude events there when I was young (admittedly, when dinosaurs roamed the earth).
They're "3+" because we've gone to using the Moment Magnitude Scale in the 1970's, in place of the Richter Scale.
They wouldn't be anywhere near "3+" on the Richter Scale. For that matter, it's somewhat stupid to compare numbers in data before the 970's with data after the 1970's.
But hey, more jobs for geophysicists = a good thing!
Solar power is a fossil fuel: it's made from fossil sunlight, which is 9 minutes old.
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.
The original posting in this thread was rather badly put, but some interesting ideas have come up in the context of replies in the aftermath of that posting.
"Honor Violence"/"Honor Killings": thousands of women and young girls in the U.S. each year.
The immigrants tend to bring their culture with them, and since we've gone from the "melting pot" mentality to the "multicultural" mentality, with its enclaves, things have only gotten worse over recent years:
http://www.theahafoundation.or...
But, you know, feel free to believe it's an effect of radicalizing radiation that comes from a particular region, and that once people are removed from the region, it magically stops.
George Carlin weighed in on such issues, "I don't believe anything the government tells me." https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This is a really cute story about why they blew up some building in another country. Oh, and it's a completely unverifiable story, too. It's kind of like when Clinton blew up that pharmaceutical factory. There was never really any evidence it was producing chemical weapons. But it was a good story to tell. It sounds better than "we caused ten of thousands of Sudanese to die, in a terrorist retaliation for the embassy bombings." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
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But that may exactly be what US policies are targeted at. After all, an external enemy is incredibly useful to politicians that cannot solve the problems at home...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
George Carlin weighed in on such issues, "I don't believe anything the government tells me." https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I once saw a bumper sticker: "Don't believe anything until it has been officially denied".
That's not what you say it is.
If it's a declaration of war, it's one against the nation state of Tripoli.
What it really is doing is a blanket grant of letters of marque:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
" It's also possible that U.S. intelligence could have actively engaged with the original poster in order to draw out information."
Probably using the standard police technique of posing as a small boy.
this story is even real.
Well duh! One metric ton of explosives is all you need! Why do you like wasting taxpayer money?
... and decimated an entire country's agricultural industry, since it was the place that made all the veterinary medicine.
This disturbs me as it reminds me of Orwell's 1984.
The video screening of people being bombed, or shot, and the audience laughing.
That's the reaction they want, they want us to laugh at them killing other humans.
Don't, it's nothing to laugh at. You're only dehumanising yourself.
Why would an Air Force General ever reveal this information during the campaign? He is no better than Snowden /S
As most of the time those on the ground are always watching the sky. Not a good way to live ones life. Allah be praised, and make it painless..
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.
How do they know it was really the command center?
... how the government gets upset at Snowden and Wikileaks for giving away information that is supposed to be critical to our national security, and then goes and brags about the operational details of the Bin Ladin raid and their social networking surveillance based attacks.
Do as I say, not as I do?
They get the idea to repeat this, except next time, they intentionally mislead us into blowing up a building full of little kids or old people or something, à la Demolition Man.
If I thought of it, they probably already thought of it. This was a one trick pony, and the pony used up his trick.
It really does work! So, keep sending those selfie posts from ISIS Heaq Quarters!
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...