Tech in War on Terror
Published on 5 May 2005 at 7:09 am.
No omments.
Filed under Technology.
One
of the top stories yesterday was the Pakistani capture of Al-Qaeda’s
operations man, Abu Faraj Farj al-Libbi, the successor to Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, who had himself been captured in Pakistan in March 2003. This
morning, however, this key advance in the fight against the terrorists
is nowhere to be found on CNN’s home page or the Drudge Report.
Al-Libbi’s capture did bring to mind this post dealing with the inadvertent release of classified US Army checkpoint procedures in Iraq.
Then I found this Forbes article, entited “From the Laptops of Terrorists”. Key points:
If you can’t catch terrorists, then the next best thing seems to be snatching their laptop computers. And as luck would have it, they’re just as sloppy about protecting their sensitive personal information as the rest of us.
At least that appears to have been the case when U.S. military forces came surprisingly close to catching the terrorist mastermind of al Qaeda in Iraq, the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
On Feb. 20, the Pentagon says al-Zarqawi was in a truck heading from Fallujah to a meeting in Ramadi when U.S. forces pulled over one of the vehicles in his convoy. Another truck in the group turned around and sped away. When they finally caught up to that truck, Al-Zarqawi was gone, but he had left his laptop in the car. And what they found on it says some hopeful things about our chances of ultimately rooting out and capturing the bad guys.
It turns out that terrorists are just as lazy about protecting their data as your average PC owner. There were, according to news reports, recent digital pictures, apparently of al-Zarqawi, tucked away in the “My Pictures” folder common to PCs running Microsoft’s Windows.
Reports have varied about the information found on the computer. Reportedly, among the nuggets are names and addresses of friendly contacts, information about al-Zarqawi’s medical condition and, possibly, financial information. All of this is valuable, and reduces the number of rocks under which the lowlife can safely hide.
Al-Libbi was captured within 24 hours of this report’s publication- was it related to Al-Zarqawi’s laptop? Similar captures of Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Abu Zubaydah were technologically inspired.
If Al-Libbi was the other shoe to drop from Al-Zarqawi’s close shave in February, what will be the fallout of the Sgrena .pdf debacle?
Update:
Capture seen as path to Bin Laden from the Washington Times has more information:
Based on a tip from locals that foreigners were in the area, Pakistan nabbed the Libyan-born al-Libbi in a home near Mardan in northwestern Pakistan on Monday. The arrest was leaked to the press in Pakistan prematurely, local officials told Reuters news service.
…
Monday’s capture was part of a broader crackdown begun by Pakistan in July after an al Qaeda computer specialist, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, was arrested and his coded communications seized. Information on his computer led to the arrests of Islamic militants in London.
Muhammad Khan’s arrest is the gift that keeps on giving- nearly a year later. One can only hope al-Zarqawi’s laptop will provide such lasting dividends.
Tiger: New Cat in Town
Published on 4 May 2005 at 6:39 am.
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Filed under Technology.
I
admit it. I’m a Machead. Been that way since 1990. System 6.5.2 (IIRC)
on a Mac SE/30, B&W screen with a whopping 8 MB ram. Apple will
always tell you that its latest is the best OS since sliced bread met
peanut butter and jelly.
Anyway, I’ve had a full 24
hours of the Tiger life, and I won’t ever be going back. With the touch
of a button (F8 on my iBook), I pull up my Dashboard
and get today’s weather forecast. It also tracks flights, pulls up a
yellow pages, calendar, stock ticker, Google search, Wikipedia, and
lots more. The widgets that do all the work are small javascripts with
extremely polished graphics. Dashboard is truly slick.
The speed factor in Mac OS X.4 continues. Each version of OS X has been faster on the same hardware; and Tiger is no exception. From startup to launching applications to surfin’ Safari, everything is noticeably faster with much less ?beach ball’ time. If you have a Mac that’ll run Tiger, get it; if you don’t, get one that will. It flat-out stomps everything else into so much silicon paste. Even the AP writer agrees.
Life Imitates Humor
Published on 2 May 2005 at 6:57 am.
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Filed under Technology.
Remember this joke?
Bill Gates wanted to look good and impress everyone with his success. He decided to measure Microsoft accomplishments against General Motors. His comparison went like this:
1. If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V8.
2. It would have a top speed of 10,000 miles/hour.(160,000km/h)
3. Or you could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds (14 kilos) and gets a thousand miles to the gallon of gas. In either case, the sticker of the new car would be less than $50.00.
In response to all this goading, GM responded: “Yes, but would you really want to drive a car that crashes 4 times a day?”
GM also responded: “IF MICROSOFT BUILT CARS:”
1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you’d have to buy a new car.
2. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you’d have to restart it. For some strange reason, you’d just accept this and drive on.
3. Occasionally, your car would stop and fail to restart, and you’d have to reinstall the engine. For some strange reason, you’d just accept this too.
4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a Car95 or a CarNT. But then you’d have to buy more seats.
Gates is at it again!
Microsoft Corp. mogul Bill Gates and the leader of Ford Motor Co. outlined a future Friday in which software enables cars to fix themselves and avoid accidents.
Eventually, Gates said, there could be a car that wouldn’t let itself crash.
“That absolutely should be the goal,” Gates told several hundred participants of the Microsoft Global Automotive Summit at the automaker’s suburban Detroit campus.
This super car, the one that won’t let itself crash, will it put itself up on blocks and give away its tires & wheels, hood, hood ornament, and everything else that can be hauled away?
Because that’s exactly what spyware does to Windows XP without a lot of tinkering or purchasing third party software. It happens in only 20 minutes, Bill. Compared to Redmond, Detroit is a Mecca of consumer focused philanthropists who only want to make sure grandma can get to church on Sunday.
Sgrena Lied?
Published on 1 May 2005 at 8:22 am.
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Filed under Politics.
Via Mudville, a Reuters story summarizes the current Italian-American brouhaha:
A U.S. Army official earlier this week said Italy was disputing two factual issues in the report: the car’s speed as it approached the checkpoint and the nature of communications between the Italians and U.S. forces before the incident.
The Army official said one of the “trip wires” in the incident was that “there was, in fact, poor communications between the Italians and the Americans.”
Italy’s government has said the Italians had been driving slowly, received no warning and had advised U.S. authorities of their mission to evacuate Sgrena from Iraq.
The U.S. Army said the car was “speeding” toward the checkpoint, that U.S. soldiers tried to get it to stop by using hand and arm signals, flashing white lights and firing warning shots then shot into its engine block when it did not stop.
CBS news has reported that a U.S. satellite had filmed the shooting and that it had been established the car carrying Calipari was traveling at more than 60 mph per hour as it approached the U.S. checkpoint in Baghdad.
It’s just not a good idea to charge military checkpoints in a war zone. Sgrena is amazingly lucky to have survived in the first place. Some background may explain the baffling Italian decision not to coordinate a hostage rescue operation with the American military, but there has been no explanation as to how, if the U.S. Army soldiers manning the chcckpoint are firing so heavily, why the car sustained so little damage.
A soldier’s account of how suicide car bombs are handled in Iraq. Here’s a post clarifying Sgrena’s hostage status.
Clearly, technology is a major factor in our fight to complete the democratization of Iraq. Technology is a well-known force multiplier- and central to Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi’s strategy as seen in the beheading videos plastered to terror websites. I suppose it is too much to hope that all human conflicts take place in cyberspace, but that would be the ideal…
Update:
Michelle Malkin reports that a .pdf of the official findings retained supposedly redacted operational security information. Worse, it’s being reported worldwide from the Italian press and various left-wing blogs, including, sadly, Kevin Drum. So what’s the big deal? The security information reportedly reveals checkpoint procedures, the name of the soldier believed to have killed Nicola Calipari (the Italian secret agent), and analysis of ?Route Irish’, the road leading to the Baghdad airport.
Technology and will, not ideology alone will win the war on terror. Al-Qaeda has made numerous tech blunders in the past, leading to key advancements (rolling up the Pakistani computer network last year, for example). Now the idiocy is on the American side - and accountability must be enforced. An error of this magnitude is nearly as bad as having an Al-Qaeda spy in the DOD nets.
