Posted on 06/19/2013 11:30:20 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In November 2008, Abid Naseer, a Pakistani student living in Manchester, England, began to e-mail a Yahoo account that was ultimately traced back to his home country. The young man’s e-mails appeared to be about young women — Nadia, Huma, Gulnaz and Fozia — and which of them would make a “faithful and loving wife.”
British investigators later determined that the four names were code for different types of explosives and that a final April 2009 e-mail announcing a “marriage to Nadia” between the 15th and the 20th was a signal that a terrorist attack in England was imminent, according to British court documents.
It is unclear exactly how British intelligence services linked the Pakistani e-mail address, sana_pakhtana@yahoo.com, to a senior al-Qaeda operative who communicated in a kind of pigeon code to his distant allies. But the intelligence helped stop the plot in England, and the address somehow made its way to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Md.
A few months later, the NSA was monitoring the Yahoo user in Pakistan when a peculiar message arrived from a man named Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan American living in Aurora, Colo. He asked about “mixing of [flavor and ghee oil] and I do not know the amount, plz right away.”
A short time later, on Sept. 9, 2009, a second message arrived that echoed the code used in the British plot: “The marriage is ready,” Zazi wrote.
The e-mails led the NSA to alert the FBI, which obtained a court order to place Zazi under more extensive surveillance. Officials learned that he had visited Pakistan in 2008, the same time as one of the British plotters.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
So we should allow spying on innocent Americans to prevent a possible attack in the UK? That is what they are saying, isn’t it?
What’s not being said here is that someone, somewhere, told the NSA where to look. There’s no way they knew what this ‘code’ meant absent someone telling them about it.
In short, they made the case to surveil this email account, but they still have not made a case for spying on EVERY email account.
(And everyone be polite and wave at our guests from the Federal Government who are monitoring FR today!)
Retroactive justification for stealing the 4th Amendment from us.
Profiling is a good tool. Use it.
And the subtle message is that spying on our email is okay.
They throw out these cases which have nothing to do with the question at hand - why are they spying on Americans?
They keep trotting out this one plot arguably foiled by DESTROYING THE BILL OF RIGHTS FOR 300,000,000 AMERCANS.
A$$****s.
Where is the SECOND conviction?
The whole purpose behind the immigration act of 1965 was to fill this country with people who would destroy it. Justifying a police state to monitor them all.
Like Tito and Yugoslavia.
Tito was a lot better than this guy.
Next time they may raid a wedding in Peshawar...
The interesting takeaway I have from this is that these guys obviously never assumed that their email exchanges were safe... everything was in code.
HUMA! Where have I heard that name before?
This is more shiny objects and squirrel pointing.
No sale.
You know what they say; if it saves the life of only one child, we have to take away your rights.
The NSA was listening to OBL’s HQ phone calls for three years before 9/11. They tracked two hijackers to the U.S.
The Boston bombers were warned about twice and had FBI surveillance.
Why do have to believe they need a police state to do a good job?
Have they disrupted any plots at all that did not include a government informant or an outside tip ?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.