Thursday, December 31, 2009

Here We Go Again-- Intel Agencies "Knew" of the Bombing Plot, But Failed to "Connect the Dots"

The National Security Agency four months ago intercepted conversations among leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen discussing a plot to use a Nigerian man for a coming terrorist attack, but American spy agencies later failed to combine the intercepts with other information that might have disrupted last week’s attempted airline bombing.

The electronic intercepts were translated and disseminated across classified computer networks, government officials said on Wednesday, but analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington did not synthesize the eavesdropping intelligence with information gathered in November when the father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, now accused of the attempted bombing, visited the United States Embassy in Nigeria to express concerns about his son’s radicalization.

The father, a wealthy Nigerian businessman named Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, had urgently sought help from American and Nigerian security officials when cellphone text messages from his son revealed that he was in Yemen and had become a fervent radical.

A family cousin quoted the father as warning officials from the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency in Nigeria: “Look at the texts he’s sending. He’s a security threat.”


The father of terrorism suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab talked about his son's extremist views with someone from the CIA and a report was prepared, but the report was not circulated outside the agency, a reliable source told CNN's Jeanne Meserve on Tuesday.
So-- HOW LONG ARE PEOPLE GOING TO PUT UP WITH THIS BULLSHIT AND NOT SEE WHAT IT GOING ON? AND REALLY, JUST *FUCK* THE IDIOTIC POLITICIANS, MAKING THIS A PARTISAN ISSUE WHEN IT IS SO MUCH DEEPER AND THEY SHOULD KNOW BETTER.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Tipping Off the Assets

A story from about a week ago, but still important:
WASHINGTON – Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have intercepted live video feeds from Predator drones, a key weapon in a Pentagon spy system that serves as the military's eyes in the sky for surveillance and intelligence collection. (snip) Obtaining the video feeds can provide insurgents with critical information about what the military may be targeting, including buildings, roads and other facilities. (snip) The interception, first done there at least a year ago, was possible because the remotely flown planes had unprotected communications links.

Within the last several months, the military has found evidence of at least one instance where insurgents in Afghanistan also monitored U.S. drone video, a second defense official said.
(snip) The Predator, also currently used in the hunt for al-Qaida and other militants in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere, can fly for hours remotely controlled by pilots thousands of miles away. It can fly armed or unarmed, and is part of a growing arsenal of such craft that includes the Reaper and Raven as well as a new, high-tech video sensor system called the Gorgon Stare, being installed on Reapers.

The military has known about the vulnerability for more than a decade, but assumed adversaries would not be able to exploit it.
Weren't these used to look for "al Qaeda" several years before 9/11? And how freaking hard is it to encrypt a video feed?

It seems the obvious conclusion is that someone in the military/CIA wanted the feeds to be hacked, in order to tip off the terrorist assets where the drones were.