Posted on 01/10/2007 8:44:36 PM PST by Valin
AMERICAN efforts last month to issue a travel ban on 12 Iranians suspected of supporting that nation's nuclear program wasn't big news at first.
Shortly after, it was revealed the analysis supporting the ban was provided not by the CIA but by a single junior analyst using Google searches. The lesson? Advanced technology and Web-savvy citizenry now make it possible for open-source information gathering to rival, if not surpass, the clandestine intelligence produced by government agencies.
Indeed, open-source methods have already proved their worth in counter-terrorism. Shortly after September 11, 2001, Valdis Krebs, a security expert, re-created the structure and identities of the core Al-Qaeda network using publicly available information accessed using the internet.
He started with two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, who were identified from a photograph taken while they attended a meeting with known terrorists in Malaysia in 2000. By scanning public sources for information linking these suspects to others, he re-created the social network identifying all 19 hijackers and described their relationships to their co-conspirators, including the identification of Mohamed Atta as the ringleader.
A US-based research centre, the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Institute, monitors the public communications of terrorist and extremist websites and has successfully penetrated password-protected Al-Qaeda-linked sites. SITE has successfully accessed terrorists' propaganda, training manuals and communications, offering insight into their activities that is difficult to obtain elsewhere.
According to a US Marine colleague who recently returned from Iraq, information on the SITE website was used within hours of posting to prevent a terrorist attack in Iraq, demonstrating that third-party analysis has become a key component of intelligence.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Loose lips sink ships.
Bookmark for tomorrow.
Bookmarking for the morning
Yes, and to think Clinton and his "brainless trust" refused to let FBI/CIA agents use the Internet to gather intelligence. Amazing isn't it?
Are we headed back to those bad old days? I guess its for our new Dim "keepers" to decide.
'third-party analysis'
talk about barking right up FR's tree, the place is loaded with folks ready to slice, dice and dissect 'the skinny' 24 by 7.
YUP!
For more on Krebs' mapping of 9/11 gang:
http://www.orgnet.com/tnet.html
NormsRevenge: you mean like this? :-)
bizzyguy: Good job. You have been bizzy
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