Posted on 12/21/2005 8:54:24 PM PST by doug from upland
Fear of Phoning / communicating - al Qaeda
strategypage ^ | Dec 19th, 2005
Posted on 12/21/2005 8:01:19 PM PST by DevSix
Fear of Phoning
December 19, 2005: Fear of Western technological espionage capabilities appears to have caused al Qaeda serious communications problems. Apparently some personnel and operations have been compromised because of hi-tech monitoring of telephone (both wire and cell), radio, and internet communications, even when relatively complex encryption techniques have been used. As a result, al Qaeda appears to have fallen on less sophisticated means of keeping in touch, such as couriers.
This has slowed al Qaeda activities considerably, since couriers may take months to move from place to place, particularly if they are traveling from some wild remote area, such as from the Northwest Frontier region of Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding, or trying to enter or leave a war zone.
Although al Qaeda is a “flat” organization, with its tentacles largely autonomous, the central leadership plays an important role in providing guidance, funding, and coordination.
Osama bin Laden’s apparent inability to curb some of the anti-Moslem violence perpetrated by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq, is perhaps partially attributable to the organization’s increasing communications difficulties. Even the couriers are not safe, and there has been a considerable effort to track down and capture them. Some have apparently been caught, which results in a valuable trove of intel information.
That was great. The NYT would probably done the dirty on the Code Talkers if they knew. Just as they have done everything in their power to try and make the War in Iraq just like Nam.
Home » blogs » Noel Sheppard's blog
NY Times’ James Risen Not As Concerned With NSA Eavesdropping Under Clinton
Posted by Noel Sheppard on December 21, 2005 - 13:44.
The New York Times reporter whose National Security Agency eavesdropping article last Friday started a national debate about this issue didn’t appear as concerned with such espionage tactics when Bill Clinton was in the White House.
As reported by NewsBusters on Monday, an intricate international communications espionage network, codenamed Echelon, has been in existence for many years. Yet, a LexisNexis search of the word “Echelon” and the name “James Risen” produced only one result. The article, entitled “The Nation: Don’t Read This; If You Do, They May Have to Kill You” appeared in the Times on December 5, 1999. By contrast to last Friday’s article condemning NSA eavesdropping, this 1999 one by Risen almost praised it:
“No government organization has been better insulated from public scrutiny than the National Security Agency. Its very existence as America's premier eavesdropper and code-breaker was classified for decades, and the N.S.A. -- also known as "No Such Agency" -- has been able to keep the press and Congress largely at bay even as the Central Intelligence Agency has come under increased scrutiny in the wake of its cold war excesses and failures.”
Risen then addressed technological problems impeding the NSA’s ability to effectively eavesdrop: “At the same time, sophisticated, commercially available encryption technology is making it much tougher for the agency to sift through that mountain of intercepted communications and decipher the few messages that are actually important to the nation's security.”
Then, Risen addressed Echelon:
“But the N.S.A. has also been attacked for accumulating far more power than it needs. Its huge international communications collection and monitoring operation, called Echelon, which is conducted jointly with the agency's counterparts in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is criticized both in this country and overseas as an excessive intrusion into the private communications of Americans and their allies. As James Bamford, the author of the classic study of the agency, ‘The Puzzle Palace’ (Houghton Mifflin, 1982), recently noted in The Washington Post, the Echelon system relies on satellites and ground stations to intercept and then sort global communications, searching for specific names, words or phrases. The N.S.A.'s computers can then sort out intercepted communications that include names of drug dealers or political leaders or references to espionage or terrorist actions. The agency is prohibited from intercepting strictly domestic communications unless it gets a special court order.”
That last sentence is quite fascinating, and implies that the NSA at the time didn’t need a “special court order” to intercept non-domestic communications, a claim that the Bush administration is making today.
From what is available through LexisNexis, this is the only time Risen wrote about Echelon, including after CBS’ February 27, 2000 installment of “60 Minutes” dealing with this issue. This makes one wonder why Risen is so much more concerned about similar espionage activities being waged by the Bush administration in a post-9/11 world.
Below is the entire December 5, 1999 Risen article in question:
December 5, 1999, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 4; Page 5; Column 1; Week in Review Desk
LENGTH: 859 words
HEADLINE: The Nation: Don't Read This;
If You Do, They May Have to Kill You
BYLINE: By JAMES RISEN
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
NO government organization has been better insulated from public scrutiny than the National Security Agency. Its very existence as America's premier eavesdropper and code-breaker was classified for decades, and the N.S.A. -- also known as "No Such Agency" -- has been able to keep the press and Congress largely at bay even as the Central Intelligence Agency has come under increased scrutiny in the wake of its cold war excesses and failures.
But the N.S.A.'s isolation may be finally coming to an end. Critics on one side are now complaining that the N.S.A. has become obsolete in the Internet age, while critics on the other flank are attacking the agency for emerging from the cold war as a Big Brother without a cause, listening to everything around the globe for no good reason.
"N.S.A.'s problems are people and management problems," said one agency consultant. "They just haven't been willing to change the way they have always done things."
Some of its failings were on display last week, when the government announced that a Navy code expert had been charged with passing secrets to Russia five years ago while working at the N.S.A.
But N.S.A.'s problems go far deeper. In effect, the agency is under attack today both for incompetence and omnipotence. Its predicament suggests that its own obsession with secrecy has left it prey to conspiracy theorists, while at the same time making it difficult for the agency to seek the help it needs to fix its real problems.
Some current and former American intelligence officials argue that the agency has become overly bureaucratic and outdated, a cold war relic that is no longer able to lure the best young computer wizards to its headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. They warn that the N.S.A. is struggling to keep up in an era in which the daily volume of e-mail messages and cell phone calls threatens to overwhelm it.
At the same time, sophisticated, commercially available encryption technology is making it much tougher for the agency to sift through that mountain of intercepted communications and decipher the few messages that are actually important to the nation's security.
Still other critics complain that a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall the agency is still vacuuming telephone, fax, e-mail and other Internet traffic as if the Soviet Union had never collapsed. To them, the agency is not a cold war relic but a cold war beast in need of taming.
Created in 1952 to consolidate the nation's far-flung communications intelligence and code-breaking operations into one agency within the Defense Department, the N.S.A. quickly became the crown jewel of the intelligence community. Its code breakers enabled American presidents to regularly read the mail of America's enemies -- and its friends. The agency's high-tech collection efforts were so highly prized that it grew into the country's biggest intelligence agency.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Congress and the White House have reduced the N.S.A.'s budget. But those cutbacks have come just as the Internet has exploded, revolutionizing communications technology. The use of telephone and computer encryption is also certain to expand sharply over the coming years, as Washington moves to open up the export of advanced encryption software.
As Seymour M. Hersh wrote in the Dec. 6 New Yorker, the spread of such technology has already crippled the agency's collection efforts. In a speech last year, John Millis, the staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, warned that while the N.S.A. had traditionally been at the cutting edge of technology, "in the last four or five years technology has moved from being the friend to being the enemy" of the agency.
But the N.S.A. has also been attacked for accumulating far more power than it needs. Its huge international communications collection and monitoring operation, called Echelon, which is conducted jointly with the agency's counterparts in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is criticized both in this country and overseas as an excessive intrusion into the private communications of Americans and their allies. As James Bamford, the author of the classic study of the agency, "The Puzzle Palace" (Houghton Mifflin, 1982), recently noted in The Washington Post, the Echelon system relies on satellites and ground stations to intercept and then sort global communications, searching for specific names, words or phrases. The N.S.A.'s computers can then sort out intercepted communications that include names of drug dealers or political leaders or references to espionage or terrorist actions. The agency is prohibited from intercepting strictly domestic communications unless it gets a special court order.
The N.S.A., in a prepared statement, said that its new director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, is trying to address the technological and management problems facing the agency by launching a restructuring program this winter that he calls "100 days of change." The program is designed to "provide the momentum for the workforce to shape the agency, so that it can thrive in the years to come."
/sarcasm
I wonder what FDR would have done with this nauseating and disgusting puke of a woman if she were around in the 1940s ---
Babs Boxer petition-Stop Bush's illegal wiretaps-postpone Alito hearings
e-mail | Boxer Shorts
Posted on 12/21/2005 7:13:08 PM PST by hipaatwo
----- Original Message ----- From: Barbara Boxer To: xxxx Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 4:15 PM Subject: Stop Bush's illegal wiretaps -- act now!
Dear xxxx,
It's now been 5 days since President Bush admitted to authorizing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without court order -- a system he reauthorized as many as 3 dozen times since 2001. Yet despite the outcry from millions of Americans -- both Democrats and Republicans alike -- President Bush has stubbornly promised to continue this illegal and unconstitutional activity.
How can the President of the United States -- the highest elected official in our land, a leader who swore an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" -- so egregiously and repeatedly violate our most basic civil liberties?
It's time for Congress to act -- to thoroughly investigate the President's actions now.
Urge Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter to hold hearings into the President's conduct, before beginning Supreme Court nomination hearings for Judge Alito -- sign my petition today!
Clearly, protecting Americans from terrorism here at home must be the top priority of any Administration. But we certainly can do that without trampling on the Constitution in the process. Defending America means protecting our homeland as well as preserving our rights and freedoms as citizens.
Through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), enacted by Congress in 1978, the Bush Administration already has the tools it needs to obtain court orders for domestic wiretaps within minutes -- even retroactively, in urgent circumstances.
Why did President Bush consciously choose to violate federal law, and disregard a system that is already in place to deal with the very national security threats that the President is talking about, even though the Act clearly states that FISA "shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance...and the interception of domestic wire and oral communications may be conducted"?
This is just one of the many questions we need answered. That's why Congress must act now. We can't afford to wait when such critical civil liberties hang in the balance.
Urge Senator Arlen Specter to hold hearings now, before dealing with the Alito nomination -- sign my petition today!
This egregious and repeated violation of American civil liberties by President Bush and his Administration requires a thorough investigation.
That's why I urge Chairman Specter to hold hearings before the Senate takes up Judge Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. Sandra Day O'Connor has agreed to stay on the bench as long as necessary, so there's no urgency on that front.
So again, join me in calling on Chairman Specter to schedule thorough public hearings into President Bush's actions as a first order of business for the Senate Judiciary Committee in the New Year -- sign my petition today!
Thank you so much for your support on this critical issue.
In Friendship,
Barbara Boxer
P.S. I'll be presenting our petition demanding thorough hearings to Senator Specter, so please add your name today! And then invite everyone you know to join us.
Sign the Petition Today!
Paid for by PAC for a Change, www.barbaraboxer.com, Treasurer Sim Farar, FEC#C00342048. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee
Very Funny!
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Actually that isn't it. Following operation Barbarrossa, the Comintern issued to its agent's and fellow travelers to support their respective country's war efforts. It was only after the war the Comintern issued the "Peace at all costs" the fellow travels turned against America.
Following the abolishment of the Comintern, they took orders straight from the KGB. Since the fall of the KGB it's a mystery where exactly their getting their orders from.
I bet James Risen might like to see it.
yeah, so he can collect backpay!
I made it a Jonathon Risen. Perhaps a grandfather.
It was. It brought me to tears.
We do owe them. A great deal. If you can pick up their book, I strongly recommend it.
Why in the world are you still awake on the East Coast?
f-t-d, that was a stupid and insulting comment, that denigrates the intelligence of the men who risked their lives, and of those who died, for this country.
That wasn't a comment, that was a question, thus the curly line with the dot below it...
Furthermore, it is a damn good question. I suspect that there has been more than one person who has been told expressly that he is NOT to be taken captive whatever the cost. Why not ask if anyone has any personal knowledge of any such order? <<<---- Note the question mark.
Thanks. Great point. The Code talkers were highly regarded for their service to this country.
Sadly, we have had our share of miltary spies like the Walkers in the Navy. I believe the elder Walker caused the death of some our our men.
Why is the NYT not calling for an investigation of their source?
Kosovo ended up helping the Islamofascists, so that one gets a pass from the Dims.
duh! I didn't notice the first name. You thought of everything! Great piece, btw.
Vey scary alternate history. Great work, DFU.
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