How bin Laden thwarted US electronic surveillance Osama bin Laden didn't have a phone or internet connection, but for years he was a prolific user of email who frustrated Western efforts to track him by saving messages to a thumb drive and having them sent from a distant internet cafe, the Associated Press reports. The process was so tedious that even veteran intelligence …
(Rant on)
Let's have an authoritative step-by-step guide published by the press based on Intelligence Service sources on "How to avoid detection as a Terrorist" and post it for the world to see.
Then tomorrow when we cannot catch the next bad guy those same people will be complaining how we cannot catch them. Well, DUH.
The reason BL was safe in that compound for so long is the press announced they were tracking his radio and cell use at Tora Bora in December 2001. Guess what happened? Yes, he stopped using them. Same with Internet, email and the rest. And then years later the press took the same intelligence services to task for not being able to find him. Who is to blame? The press and blabby mouth intel types.
Throughout the last twenty years intelligence methods have been broadcast to the world by the press citing anonymous intelligence sources almost the day after they happen. These puffed up "experts" adopt an "Oh look how smart we are" attitude and spill the beans on how they did what they did.
Enigma allowed the allies to spy on portions of German cipher traffic in WW2, shortening the war by literally years. That secret was finally outed in 1975. Keeping intel secret saves lives. Period, full stop.
Stop declaring intelligence methods publicly, stop leaking info with a wink and a nod and start using the Espionage Statutes for those who do. Its all fun and games until someones kids are blown up by a car bomb.
(Rant off)
There is of course the possibility that the SS provide such information to the press intentionally as it's utter codswallop. You honestly think that if there was such a problem with the press publishing top secret and above information that it wouldn't be fixed within days?
Disseminating false info is an age old SS tactic. You let it be known that you are tracking OBL in the Tora Bora caves (when you know full well he's nowhere near there), he thinks "lolz - stupid Westerners are looking in totally the wrong area!" giving you more time to narrow down your search. Even if he figures out your ruse, if something real is ever leaked, how can he know with any certainty that it isn't just fake info?
Staying hidden is surpisingly easy if you are willing to live the life of a camel herder in some p*** poor region. The world is a pretty huge place when you're looking for one man without a credit card, mobile phone, inet conn, etc.
I'm not really sure about the link between SS methods and children being rent assunder by car bombs tbh. If someone really wants to blow up your car they shouldn't really struggle regardless of their knowledge of SS methods (unless you are the PM or somesuch, in which case your car tends to get checked for such issues - I personally just turn the key whilst wincing a little and hope fir the best. Worked perfectly so far!)
Indeed, very well put.
Reminds me of when one of the prince’s was out in Afghanistan. He'd been there some time and a newspaper, American I think, was about to publish a 'scoop' on him being there and where he was. Most reporters knew he was there and understood the consequences of publishing.
Disinformation is a lot harder these days with the global press and Internet. There are always 'whistle blowers' who think it's really cool to have a scoop, not considering the wider consequences.
Download the mail to Eudora before leaving work, read and reply to messages while on the train, send messages when I got home. It worked really well until they decided email was too archaic and they needed a web message board. Yes visiting a different internet cafe for each transaction adds a level of annoyance, but not difficult. Even if you include time for configuring a client for the USB drive, I don't think it would be much more than 15 minutes to configure, upload/download, disconnect, and wipe the configuration at the cafe. Plenty of time to get back out before a tail is dispatched to catch you.
They used our own technological cavalier attitude against us!
Meanwhile, I am taking my shoes off at the airport, getting X-rayed naked in the body scanner, having all my internet traffic vacuumed up and sent through a Narus box directly to the NSA. We have tracking devices that don't fall under the 4th Amendment stuck to our cars, our banking activities are all reported...
So, who has really cost us our freedom? Our own Government or the Terrorists?
At least the protesters after Vietnam did something.
There was a publication in the 60's, I think, which explained the purpose of terrorism, which was to cause the opposing government to introduce measures which would alienate their own citizens. Being arrested at an airport for possession of a nail file seems to be a good example of a success for the terrorists.
>Anyone in the USA that can speak Arabic has already been locked up as a "terrorist
Not so far from the truth - back in the day MI5 screened BBC recruits for security risks.
One of the factors for potential enemies of the state was studying an enemy language (or given that this is England - possibly any foreign language). It all came out when they listed an historian as having possible links to communism because they had a PhD in medieval Chinese.
You're telling me that in 5 years when OBL lived in that shithole, NO ONE in the American Intelligence community never intercepted a single courier or tapped the Internet Cafe's access lines in Pakistan?
Yup, that's what I'm paying my tax dollars for. Ineptitude on the scale that only the U.S. HomeyLanz Zecurity Agenzy (DHS) could perpetrate.
I'm embarrassed, but no surprised, at all.
I marvel at the fact that WE "marvel" at such a simple process....and one that was so easily detected.
1) Courier Arrives at a compound....
2) Courier Leaves Compound
3) Courier arrives at an internet cafe
4) Email from bin Laden sent
5) Courier leaves internet cafe
Rinse and REPEAT....over and over and over.....
How often did this happen? Maybe a "couple" of times....
Why are some people so surprised about sending emails via removable media? When I was at Sunderland Uni in the late Nineties this was exactly what I had to do because my digs didn't even have a phone line. I used to transfer my email from my PC to the Internet and back via dedicated floppy disks for each account and Netscape 3. The only challenging aspect was finding a server where the IT department hadn't disabled SMTP for no obvious reason - as part of that I out found that the servers' names were intriguingly themed along the names of Blake's 7 characters or assorted pantheons of gods.
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