Protect us Obi-Wan Ka Bushie!
So, rumors flying about a dirty bomb in the Boston area. Of course yesterday I was going on about how Bush was talking about needing more human intelligence (the jokes write themselves folks!) yet actual referred to signal intelligence when he was talking about it. Here is most of my post at Atrios where I yet again thank the unknown folks who don't care that we have an a president who doesn't know the difference between HUMINT and SIGINT.
Felix Deutsch Wow, good catch. That kind of intelligence is SIGINT. That's the kind the NSA normally captures. The kind that they are right now scanning the internet and filtering your calls for. We aren't supposed to know it. We are supposed to think that there is "too much information" and they can't scan it all from all the various sources. Bullshit.
You think those billions goes into making toaster ovens? You know what Google does for the Internet, right? How you can find all sorts of stuff that you couldn't before? The NSA can do that for your phone conversations.
Do you think that Google has a lock on all the good Computer Scientists and Math geeks? NSA employs more Ph.D. in math than any other organization in the world.
Working with Cisco and with the major telcos they can easily route data, filter, sort and analyse voice data from all over the US and most of the Europe. Getting into Iraq allowed us to tap into the Middle East networks that we didn't already have from Israel. One of the reasons that we haven't been attacked in the US isn't because of color coded alerts or stupid frisking on planes,it is because the NSA unleashed a few sound dogs on the lines of suspected terrorists.
These computer Geeks and Math geeks are mothers and fathers with family in New York and Virginia and D.C. They are protecting their family.
I tip my hat to them (this conversation will be read by their computer but ignored as non-important.)
What pisses a bunch of them off is that the "chatter" that they find is used by HLS for fake alerts. The real "chatter" they find goes to pick people up, not to make some political point. The low hanging fruit has been snagged, the problem is that the smarter terrorists have figured out that the phones, and computers are all bugged. Contact is now handed off, in person, whispered to each other in saunas in various locations. If you are smart you can avoid some, but not all, detection. The other thing they do is to talk in code. They will never say, "We are going to attack a chemical plant near a major city or blow up a dirty bomb using hospitial low-level radioactive waste. Once you have established code words like "the birthday cake", it will all seem like they are getting ready for a party.
Of course our stupid president is right about getting more human intelligence, but having pissed off millions in the Muslim world (see how it would have paid off if we were nice occassionally?) there aren't a lot of people who are ready, willing and able to go underground. But they are trying it, they have a few in place, brave people. I consider them truer Americans that a bunch of right wing nutball radio announcers who sit on their ass and say, "Support the troops!". They might end up as a star on a wall somewhere with out a name, but I thank them for trying to keep me safe.
Ironically the intelligent agencies (and there are a bunch of them) can get some people in the the cells by telling the terrorists, "I hate the President!" and the terrorists will believe them!
spocko | Email | Homepage | 01.19.05 - 12:01 am | #
Felix Deutsch Wow, good catch. That kind of intelligence is SIGINT. That's the kind the NSA normally captures. The kind that they are right now scanning the internet and filtering your calls for. We aren't supposed to know it. We are supposed to think that there is "too much information" and they can't scan it all from all the various sources. Bullshit.
You think those billions goes into making toaster ovens? You know what Google does for the Internet, right? How you can find all sorts of stuff that you couldn't before? The NSA can do that for your phone conversations.
Do you think that Google has a lock on all the good Computer Scientists and Math geeks? NSA employs more Ph.D. in math than any other organization in the world.
Working with Cisco and with the major telcos they can easily route data, filter, sort and analyse voice data from all over the US and most of the Europe. Getting into Iraq allowed us to tap into the Middle East networks that we didn't already have from Israel. One of the reasons that we haven't been attacked in the US isn't because of color coded alerts or stupid frisking on planes,it is because the NSA unleashed a few sound dogs on the lines of suspected terrorists.
These computer Geeks and Math geeks are mothers and fathers with family in New York and Virginia and D.C. They are protecting their family.
I tip my hat to them (this conversation will be read by their computer but ignored as non-important.)
What pisses a bunch of them off is that the "chatter" that they find is used by HLS for fake alerts. The real "chatter" they find goes to pick people up, not to make some political point. The low hanging fruit has been snagged, the problem is that the smarter terrorists have figured out that the phones, and computers are all bugged. Contact is now handed off, in person, whispered to each other in saunas in various locations. If you are smart you can avoid some, but not all, detection. The other thing they do is to talk in code. They will never say, "We are going to attack a chemical plant near a major city or blow up a dirty bomb using hospitial low-level radioactive waste. Once you have established code words like "the birthday cake", it will all seem like they are getting ready for a party.
Of course our stupid president is right about getting more human intelligence, but having pissed off millions in the Muslim world (see how it would have paid off if we were nice occassionally?) there aren't a lot of people who are ready, willing and able to go underground. But they are trying it, they have a few in place, brave people. I consider them truer Americans that a bunch of right wing nutball radio announcers who sit on their ass and say, "Support the troops!". They might end up as a star on a wall somewhere with out a name, but I thank them for trying to keep me safe.
Ironically the intelligent agencies (and there are a bunch of them) can get some people in the the cells by telling the terrorists, "I hate the President!" and the terrorists will believe them!
spocko | Email | Homepage | 01.19.05 - 12:01 am | #
2 Comments:
Thanks. Well said. Have sent this article on.
Thanks for posting Ellroon! I'm always happy to see your name on a post. I just came across a list of Homeland Security Briefs that detailed various events that were catagorized as possible threats to national security. What is interesting is how easy it is to abuse American's fear of terrorists. If you have a person you don't like simply report them taking photos of a national monument or bridge and they will be picked up. Of course this list wasn't exaustive, but you wonder if the alerts from some yahoos in Illnois shooting a gun at a power plant plus the complains of swarthy looking people taking photos of a bridge were what happened that lead to an elevated alert status. It would make the whole Orange alert threats clearly political. But of course these were simply the ones that someone wrote down that leaked I'm sure the really dangerous stuff never made it into any report because, you know it's just too dangerous!
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