CAN FRANCE’S FAILURE TO DISCOVER TERRORIST ACT BE TRACED TO SNOWDEN LEAKS?
Food for thought:
Jay Akbar, writing on the June 13, 2015 DailyMailOnline, notes that Security Services have reported ‘increasing difficulties’ in tracking terrorists and dangerous criminals via email, chat rooms, and social media — since he [Snowden] exposed Western intelligence gathering [sources and methods],” The London Sunday Times reported. Mr. Akbar adds that senior “aides to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s office confirmed [to the DailyMailOnline], “the Top Secret [encrypted] material is now in the hands of China and Russia.” “it has meant agents have had to be moved; and, that knowledge of how we operate has stopped us [from] getting vital information.” “A British intelligence source added……”Snowden has done incalculable damage. In some cases, agencies have been forced to intervene; and, lift their agents from operations to prevent them from being identified and killed. we know Russia and China have a access to Snowden’s material; and, will be going through it for years to come, searching for clues to identify potential targets.”
“Former GCHQ Director [NSA’s ‘sister’ agency in Britain], Sir David Omand, believes the leak represents a “huge strategic setback,” which is “harming Britain, America, and her NATO allies.” Sir David Omand added, “the leak could spark a ‘global intelligence arms race,’ adding: ‘I have no doubt whatever the programs are being launched; and, money is being spent to try and catch up. That’s probably not just true of China and Russia; but, a number of other nations who have seen some of this material to be published.”
“I am not at all surprised that people are being pulled back; and, operations where people [agents] are exposed….are having to be shut down, at least for the moment.” Robin Simcox, writing in the June 9, 2015 edition of Britain’s newspaper — The Independent, wrote “quantifying the damage has not always been easy.” “If a terrorist suspect dropped off the radar, post-June 23, 2013 [post-Snowden], “it could not always be proved,” that an individual went silent — as a result of what Edward Snowden had disclosed. “Regardless,” Mr. Simcox contends, “there are trends emerging.”
“First,’ Mr. Simcox writes, “a series of ongoing intelligence [collection] operations had to be abandoned. They [these operations] had been predicated on the pre-June 2013 assumption that they could take place….without fear of discovery, or attribution. Snowden removed that element of doubt, so the operations were (had to be) scrapped.”
“Second,” he notes, “there is the knowledge that state adversaries have gone to town on the methodologies [sources and methods of collection] that the Snowden files revealed. There is significant fear that China, and Russia, for example, have taken stock of Western intelligence agencies’ own cyber strategies; and, are now going to deploy them back against the United States and its allies.” Indeed, perhaps the recent massive breach of OPM’s IT enterprise, may well have been birthed — as a consequence of what China learned from these disclosures; or, from Mr. Snowden — when he was in Hong Kong; and, likely under the auspices of China’s State Security Service.
“When it comes to stopping terrorist attacks, groups that seek to harm the West also now have an advanced understanding about our capacity to stop them,” Mr. Simcox writes, something that I have been writing about for the past two years. He adds that “a jihadist video released in January (2015), onto an online jihadist platform, explained just some of what mujahideen fighters had taken from Snowden [the leaks]: “All mobile phone providers use the same software, your device continuously in contact with the nearest tower,” it says. “Your different coordinates are tracked and stored. All your calls, messages, and Internet history are stored in this same place. With his phone, tablet, or laptop, the enemy can listen/record all conversations and meetings.”
Read more: http://fortunascorner.com/2015/11/14/can-frances-failure-to-discover-the-terrorist-act-beforehand-be-traced-to-the-edward-snowden-leaks/
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rjsquirrel
(4,762 posts)and I've never heard of your source either
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)and under surveillance of some kind.
I'm pretty sure the NSA admitted they hadn't stopped any attacks using mass surveillance alone.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
The one terrorist who has been positively identified had been flagged as an Islamic extremist after he made a trip to Syria and back. French intelligence was doing its job. The attack was coordinated in Belgium and supplied by a scumbag arms smuggler in Germany who was arrested a week before the attack.
They're putting this together in record time, something that would not have happened had the Snowden leaks accomplished what the author said they did.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)Law enforcement at this level has become obsessed with gadgetry that people know how to avoid
Back in the 1970's, no one would make a long distance telephone call to organize something like this if they knew what they were doing, since no one actually trusted that someone wasn't listening in.
The fascination with technology has its place, but it's not as if "old school" intelligence has no value. There have been many plots of political violence that have been organized and executed long before everybody walked around with a surveillance device conveniently close to hand.
And I think that gets to the heart of the "what's new?" reaction to a lot of the Snowden stuff. Yes, you can say "We did not specifically know X, Y or Z," but anyone with a lick of sense wouldn't have trusted any of those methods of communication in the first place for anything that REALLY mattered.
RandySF
(59,212 posts)He is a credit to no one but the enemy and his ego.
This country makes its own enemies and has for a long time. Our own government is making us citizens their enemy.
Snowden exposed the crimes our own government was committing against its own citizens. Without Snowden, we would still be in the dark about how much our government was illegally spying and tracking us for no good reason. J. Edgar Hoover would be envious.
SoLeftIAmRight
(4,883 posts)more of the same
I want change
TM99
(8,352 posts)WE HAVE OTHER REPORTS THAT IRAQI INTELLIGENCE SOURCES TRIED TO WARN FRANCE AND OTHER COUNTRIES THAT AN ATTACK WAS IMMINENT.
cheapdate
(3,811 posts)impacted the Paris attacks, it would be foolish, I think, to assume that Snowden's actions came with no cost. Security vs. Freedom/Transparency is a classic trade-off situation. It's called a "trade-off" for a reason.
he made a decision on behalf of all Americans for better or worse. The release of domestic spying matters is one thing but the international classified materials is something else all together. That was just stupid.
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)DU can be s fountain of fuckwittery at times.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Whistleblowers are always accused of helping America’s enemies (top Nixon aides accused Daniel Ellsberg of being a Soviet spy and causing the deaths of Americans with his leak); it’s just the tactical playbook that’s automatically used. So it’s of course unsurprising that ever since Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing enabled newspapers around the world to report on secretly implemented programs of mass surveillance, he has been accused by “officials” and their various media allies of Helping The Terrorists™.
Still, I was a bit surprised just by how quickly and blatantly — how shamelessly — some of them jumped to exploit the emotions prompted by the carnage in France to blame Snowden: doing so literally as the bodies still lay on the streets of Paris. At first, the tawdry exploiters were the likes of crazed ex-intelligence officials (former CIA chief James Woolsey, who once said Snowden “should be hanged by his neck until he is dead” and now has deep ties to private NSA contractors, along with Iran–obsessed Robert Baer); former Bush/Cheney apparatchiks (ex-White House spokesperson and current Fox personality Dana Perino); right-wing polemicists fired from BuzzFeed for plagiarism; and obscure Fox News comedians (Perino’s co-host). So it was worth ignoring save for the occasional Twitter retort.
But now we’ve entered the inevitable “U.S. Officials Say” stage of the “reporting” on the Paris attack – i.e. journalists mindlessly and uncritically repeat whatever U.S. officials whisper in their ear about what happened. So now credible news sites are regurgitating the claim that the Paris Terrorists were enabled by Snowden leaks — based on no evidence or specific proof of any kind, needless to say, but just the unverified, obviously self-serving assertions of government officials. But much of the U.S. media loves to repeat rather than scrutinize what government officials tell them to say. So now this accusation has become widespread and is thus worth examining with just some of the actual evidence.
One key premise here seems to be that prior to the Snowden reporting, The Terrorists helpfully and stupidly used telephones and unencrypted emails to plot, so western governments were able to track their plotting and disrupt at least large-scale attacks. That would come as a massive surprise to the victims of the attacks of 2002 in Bali, 2004 in Madrid, 2005 in London, 2008 in Mumbai, and April, 2013 at the Boston Marathon. How did the multiple perpetrators of those well-coordinated attacks — all of which were carried out prior to Snowden’s June, 2013 revelations — hide their communications from detection?
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/15/exploiting-emotions-about-paris-to-blame-snowden-distract-from-actual-culprits-who-empowered-isis/
uhnope
(6,419 posts)who should STFU forever
marmar
(77,090 posts)
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)hasn't tweeted anything since Thursday..
What a fucking coward...
