The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group’s communications network.
“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said Rita Katz, the firm’s 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE’s methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.
The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz’s version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government’s ability to anticipate attacks.
While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. “We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies,” said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
But privately, some intelligence officials called the incident regrettable, and one official said SITE had been “tremendously helpful” in ferreting out al-Qaeda secrets over time.
Our Man in Pyongyang (or rather, Hackensack)
Both Vanity Fair and The New Yorker have astonishing profiles of Bobby Egan, a “freelance diplomat” to the DPRK who otherwise runs a BBQ joint in Hackensack, NJ.
Egan, who has run Cubby’s for twenty-five years, is well known in Hackensack, though not solely for the quality of his ribs. For nearly fifteen years, he has served as a kind of unofficial ambassador—a go-between and a gofer—for the government of North Korea. He is, as he puts it, “Kim Jong Il’s guy in New Jersey.” Dozens of photographs on his restaurant walls offer testimony to Egan’s improbable involvement in international diplomacy. Among the pictures of friendly Giants and Yankees are several images of besuited, slightly ill-at-ease-looking Asian men posing at Cubby’s. “That’s Minister Han, before he became Ambassador here,” Egan said to me, pointing to a youthful, bespectacled man in a blue suit. (Han Song Ryol, who joined North Korea’s U.N. delegation in 1993, ended his tenure as Ambassador last year and returned to Pyongyang.) “And that’s Ambassador Ho Jong.” (Ho left his post in 1994.) In another photograph, a gentleman with the same black hair and grin as Egan stands with a beaming young female athlete, Kye Sun Hui. “That’s my dad at the Atlanta Olympics, in ’96,” Egan said. “She won the judo title when she was just sixteen. She’s a hero in North Korea. She still asks about me.”
In one corner of the restaurant is a photograph showing a dreary skyline, shot from what looks like a viewing platform. “That’s Pyongyang,” Egan said. “That’s when they gave me my pin.” The pin to which he refers bears an image of Kim Il Sung, the father of North Korea’s Stalinist state, who died in 1994, and whose son is Kim Jong Il, its current leader. North Koreans wear similar pins as a sign of respect for their head of state. Egan keeps his pin in a small, cluttered back office at Cubby’s. “I’m told there are only two Westerners that have pins—me and some guy from Romania,” Egan said. “I got the pin at the end of my first trip. They inducted me into their family. They said, ‘You are part of us.’ I thought, When in Rome, I’m Roman.”
Photo via Vanity Fair: Bobby Egan outside Cubby’s with his North Korean friends, including Minister Kim Myong Gil (to Egan’s right) and Han Song Ryol, the former deputy ambassador to the U.N. (with water bottle). Photograph by Michael Bronner.
Estonia urges UN Member States to cooperate against cyber crimes
UN:
25 September 2007 – The international community should step up its efforts to defeat cyber crime, starting by acceding to an international convention on the issue and eventually building to the development of a globally negotiated and comprehensive law of cyberspace, Estonia’s President Toomas Hendrik Ilves told the General Assembly tonight.
Mr. Ilves said his country’s experience in April and May this year in coping with an extensive cyber attack highlighted both the dangers faced and the value of cooperation.
“Cyber attacks are a clear example of contemporary asymmetrical threats to security,” he said at the annual high-level debate. “They make it possible to paralyze a society, with limited means, and at a distance. In the future, cyber attacks may in the hands of criminals or terrorists become a considerably more widespread and dangerous weapon than they are at present.”
The President said the threat posed by cyber attacks was often underestimated because they have so far not resulted in the loss of any lives and many attacks are not publicized for security reasons.
He called for cyber crimes to be defined internationally and generally condemned in the way that terrorism or human trafficking is denounced.
“Fighting against cyber warfare is in the interests of us all without exception,” Mr. Ilves said, calling on all countries to accede to the Convention on Cyber Crime of the Council of Europe. The pact is also open for accession to non-members of the Council of Europe.
The President welcomed the launch of the Global Cybersecurity Agenda of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and said the UN should serve as the “neutral and legitimate forum” for the eventual creation of a globally negotiated and comprehensive law of cyberspace.
What I’m reading
Universities Install Footbaths to Benefit Muslims, and Not Everyone Is Pleased
The New York Times
August 7, 2007
But as a legal and political matter, that solution has not been quite so simple. When word of the plan got out this spring, it created instant controversy, with bloggers going on about the Islamification of the university, students divided on the use of their building-maintenance fees, and tricky legal questions about whether the plan is a legitimate accommodation of students’ right to practice their religion — or unconstitutional government support for that religion.
All the News That Seemed Unfit to Print
The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 7, 2007; C01
Now, with circulation plunging below 90,000, American Media, which owns WWN, has pulled the plug. The Aug. 27 issue will be the last. After that, the Weekly World News will be as dead as Elvis, maybe deader.
As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates
The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 7, 2007; A01
As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down.
Touring Israel’s Barrier With Its Main Designer
The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 7, 2007; A01
Tirza, a Jewish settler who believes Israel has a historic right to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, drew the barrier along a route that effectively annexes 10 percent of the West Bank. In the absence of a peace agreement, the course cements the territorial claims of tens of thousands of Jewish settlers, including Tirza’s.
Google Maps redraw the realm of privacy
Los Angeles Times
August 7, 2007
The Internet company late Monday began incorporating street-level photos from Los Angeles, San Diego and some Orange County cities into its Google Maps program. The additions expanded an online service that thrilled some digital-map buffs and freaked out privacy advocates when it launched in May in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and three other cities.
TimesSelect Content Freed
New York Post
August 7, 2007
After much internal debate, Times executives – including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. – made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.
Daddy Dearest: Rudy Giuliani’s daughter is supporting Barack Obama.
Slate
August 6, 2007
There’s one vote that Rudy Giuliani definitely can’t count on in his 2008 presidential bid: his own daughter’s. According to the 17-year-old Caroline Giuliani’s Facebook profile, she’s supporting Barack Obama.
Brutality by the Bay
Why did the Oakland police do so little about Your Black Muslim Bakery’s thuggery?
Slate
August 6, 2007
Here is the situation regarding the enterprise known as Your Black Muslim Bakery, located on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, Calif. Its founder, a man named Yusuf Bey, was arrested in 2002 and charged with forcing an underage girl to have sex.
The Black Sites
A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program.
The New Yorker
August 13, 2007
Mohammed’s interrogation was part of a secret C.I.A. program, initiated after September 11th, in which terrorist suspects such as Mohammed were detained in “black sites”—secret prisons outside the United States—and subjected to unusually harsh treatment. The program was effectively suspended last fall, when President Bush announced that he was emptying the C.I.A.’s prisons and transferring the detainees to military custody in Guantánamo. This move followed a Supreme Court ruling, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that all detainees—including those held by the C.I.A.—had to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions.
The cunning use of flags
Or, The Izzard Doctrine shows how history repeats itself.
LA Times:
The flag-planting ritual and the thinking behind the Russians’ audacious territorial claims have their roots in the development and use of the Doctrine of Discovery by European and American explorers from the 15th through the 20th centuries. Starting with Pope Nicholas V in 1455, the Europeans conveniently declared their divine right to empty land or to land occupied by “pagans and enemies of Christ.” The main requirement was just first-come, first-served discovery.
What I’m Reading
Canoe.ca
New Pornographers battle Internet leaks on their own terms
July 30 2007
“Personally, I don’t have a huge problem with leaks, I’m of the belief that if people get your record for free but they come to your show and buy a T-shirt or whatever, well, it’s the same difference. You’re not really losing much money. It’s better than them not taking the record for free and not coming to your show,” [New Pornographers singer/guitarist/songwriter Carl] Newman says during a two-day stop in Toronto to promote the new disc.
“But at the same time, people not buying music totally hurts the labels and you need the labels. There’s a symbiotic relationship there and because of that we have to be against leaking.”
The Economist
Into Africa
July 29 2007
African markets are so undeveloped that the opportunity there is still quite small. According to Stanlib, a South African asset-management group, the market capitalisation of the whole continent is just $800 billion, of which South Africa itself makes up $600 billion. The rest of the continent’s markets, in other words, are worth a good deal less than Exxon Mobil. Put another way, China could buy every African quoted company with its foreign-exchange reserves.
Bruce Schneier
Conversation with Kip Hawley, TSA Administrator
July 30 2007
In April, Kip Hawley, the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), invited me to Washington for a meeting. Despite some serious trepidation, I accepted. And it was a good meeting. Most of it was off the record, but he asked me how the TSA could overcome its negative image. I told him to be more transparent, and stop ducking the hard questions. He said that he wanted to do that. He did enjoy writing a guest blog post for Aviation Daily, but having a blog himself didn’t work within the bureaucracy. What else could he do?
Los Angeles Times
The U.S. sends the antiwar L.A. band on a diplomatic mission to the heart of the Arab world.
August 1 2007
“These things cost a little bit of money, but compare it to the cost of not having the standing we had in the past, when people thought they knew us and what we stood for,” said U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Francis Ricciardone, who addressed the crowd wearing a black Ozomatli T-shirt. “People talk about it as soft power. But it’s real power.”
A U.S. Embassy official in Nepal heard about Ozomatli on a radio show while visiting Washington last year and approached band manager Amy Blackman-Romero. U.S. officials are eager to present an image of America and Americans different from the footage of soldiers fighting insurgents in Iraq broadcast on Arab news channels.
Months of haggling ensued. “We wanted them to know the band plays a lot of antiwar rallies,” said Blackman-Romero, who joined the group on the tour. “They told us they were completely comfortable with who the band is. But when they’re out here, it’s about the music, not the politics.’ “
Barack Obama
August 1 2007
I will also launch a program of public diplomacy that is a coordinated effort across my Administration, not a small group of political officials at the State Department explaining a misguided war. We will open “America Houses” in cities across the Islamic world, with Internet, libraries, English lessons, stories of America’s Muslims and the strength they add to our country, and vocational programs. Through a new “ America’s Voice Corps” we will recruit, train, and send out into the field talented young Americans who can speak with – and listen to – the people who today hear about us only from our enemies.
‘Why Do They Hate Us?’
Mohsin Hamid, The Washington Post, July 22 2007:
The residue of U.S. foreign policy coats much of the world. It is the other part of the answer to the question, “Why do they hate us?” Simply because America has — often for what seemed good reasons at the time — intervened to shape the destinies of other countries and then, as a nation, walked away.
There is so much about the United States that I admire. So when I speak of that time now, and encounter the pose of wounded innocence that is the most common American response, I am annoyed and disappointed. It is as though the notion of U.S. responsibility applies only within the 50 states, and I have no right to invoke it.
How then does someone like me reconcile his affection and frustration? Partly by offering a passionate critique. And partly by hoping for change — by appealing, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did, to what is most attractive about the United States, to what it claims to stand for, to what is best in its nature.
Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite’s sense of realpolitik but also with the American public’s own sense of American values.
DoD has more musicians than Dept. of State has diplomats. Um, what?
FP Passport, via David J. Kilcullen, a senior advisor to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq:
“At present, the U.S. defense budget accounts for approximately half of total global defense spending, while the U.S. armed forces employ about 1.68 million uniformed members. By comparison, the State Department employs about 6,000 foreign service officers, while the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has about 2,000. In other words, the Department of Defense is about 210 times larger than USAID and State combined—there are substantially more people employed as musicians in Defense bands than in the entire foreign service.”
Estonia Fun Facts
CIA:
Population of Estonia: 1,315,912
Mobile Telephones in Estonia: 1,445,000
Industries: engineering, electronics, wood and wood products, textile; information technology, telecommunications
Or, as my friend, the astute Aaron Azlant quipped in an IM conversation: “haha one of these things is not like the other. specialties: web 2.0, cell tech, cedar”
“Thank you so much for comfortable stay. Fight Terrorism!”
So here I am, minding my own business, reading The New York Times online, when I come across this article about Bush’s upcoming dinner with the Queen of England. The article mentions that it’s a “white tie” dinner, and not knowing what that is, I go look it up.
Then I continue reading the article, and come across this line:
Even so, as it does for every official state visit, the White House has been consulting with the State Department chief of protocol.
What in the heck is that? Sure enough, there’s someone who’s job it is to do various things, like:
1. Plan and execute detailed programs for foreign leaders visiting the President and accompany them during their official travel in the United States, including their visit with the President at the White House.
10. Organize treaty-signing ceremonies.
15. Manage the Blair House, the President’s Guest House for foreign leaders.
Huh, ok — the Blair House, that sounds neat. So I click there and then click on the Guestbook page. And here, I find what may be the most unintentionally hilarious internationally geeky page on the Internets.
These are scans of entries from the Blair House guestbook, ranging from the historic (Charles de Gaulle), to the printed-like-a-third grader (Hamid Karzai), to the simple (Carlos Salinas de Gortari, President of the United Mexican States), and finally to the screaming: Junichiro Koizumi, Prime Minister of Japan (pictured at right).
And that, my friends, is how one gets distracted by the Internet.
