Telcoms Security
A very good four–part series: “Risk and Security in the Telecommunications Industry.”
Entries Tagged "bombs"
Page 8 of 22
How Smart are Islamic Terrorists?
Organizational Learning and Islamic Militancy (May 2009) was written by Michael Kenney for the U.S. Department of Justice. It’s long: 146 pages. From the executive summary:
Organizational Learning and Islamic Militancy contains significant findings for counter-terrorism research and policy. Unlike existing studies, this report suggests that the relevant distinction in knowledge learned by terrorists is not between tacit and explicit knowledge, but metis and techne. Focusing on the latter sheds new insight into how terrorists acquire the experiential “know how” they need to perform their activities as opposed to abstract “know what” contained in technical bomb-making preparations. Drawing on interviews with bomb-making experts and government intelligence officials, the PI illustrates the critical difference between learning terrorism skills such as bomb-making and weapons firing by abstraction rather than by doing. Only the latter provides militants with the experiential, intuitive knowledge, in other words the metis, they need to actually build bombs, fire weapons, survey potential targets, and perform other terrorism-related activities. In making this case, the PI debunks current misconceptions regarding the Internet’s perceived role as a source of terrorism knowledge.
Another major research finding of this study is that while some Islamic militants learn, they do not learn particularly well. Much terrorism learning involves fairly routine adaptations in communications practices and targeting tactics, what organization theorists call single-loop learning or adaptation. Less common among militants are consequential changes in beliefs and values that underlie collection action or even changes in organizational goals and strategies. Even when it comes to single-loop learning, Islamic militants face significant impediments. Many terrorist conspiracies are compartmented, which makes learning difficult by impeding the free flow of information between different parts of the enterprise. Other, non-compartmented conspiracies are hindered from learning because the same people that survey targets and build bombs also carry out the attacks. Still other operations, including relatively successful ones like the Madrid bombings in 2004, are characterized by such sloppy tradecraft that investigators piece together the conspiracy quickly, preventing additional attacks and limiting militants’ ability to learn from experience.
Indeed, one of the most significant findings to emerge from this research regards the poor tradecraft and operational mistakes repeatedly committed by Islamic terrorists. Even the most “successful” operations in recent years—9/11, 3/11, and 7/7—contained basic errors in tradecraft and execution. The perpetrators that carried out these attacks were determined, adaptable (if only in a limited, tactical sense)—and surprisingly careless. The PI extracts insights from his informants that help account for terrorists’ poor tradecraft: metis in guerrilla warfare that does not translate well to urban terrorism, the difficulty of acquiring mission-critical experience when the attack or counter-terrorism response kills the perpetrators, a hostile counter-terrorism environment that makes it hard to plan and coordinate attacks or develop adequate training facilities, and perpetrators’ conviction that they don’t need to be too careful when carrying out attacks because their fate has been predetermined by Allah. The PI concludes this report by discussing some of the policy implications of these findings, suggesting that the real threat from Islamic militancy comes less from hyper-sophisticated “super terrorists” than from steadfast militants whose own dedication to the cause may undermine the cunning intelligence and fluid adaptability they need to survive.
John Mueller on Zazi
I have refrained from commenting on the case against Najibullah Zazi, simply because it’s so often the case that the details reported in the press have very little do with reality. My suspicion was, that as in in so many other cases, he was an idiot who couldn’t do any real harm and was turned into a bogeyman for political purposes.
However, John Mueller—who I’ve written about before—has done the research:
Recalls his step-uncle affectionately, Zazi is “a dumb kid, believe me.” A high school dropout, Zazi mostly worked as doughnut peddler in Lower Manhattan, barely making a living. Somewhere along the line, it is alleged, he took it into his head to set off a bomb and traveled to Pakistan where he received explosives training from al-Qaeda and copied nine pages of chemical bombmaking instructions onto his laptop. FBI Director Robert Mueller asserted in testimony on September 30 that this training gave Zazi the “capability” to set off a bomb.
That, however, seems to be a substantial overstatement—not unlike the Director’s 2003 testimony assuring us that, although his agency had yet to identify an al-Qaeda cell in the U.S., such unidentified entities nonetheless presented “the greatest threat,” had “developed a support infrastructure” in the country, and were able and intended to inflict “significant casualties in the US with little warning.”
An overstatement because, upon returning to the United States, Zazi allegedly spent the better part of a year trying to concoct the bomb he had supposedly learned how to make. In the process, he, or some confederates, purchased bomb materials using stolen credit cards, a bone-headed maneuver guaranteeing that red flags would go up about the sale and that surveillance videos in the stores would be maintained rather than routinely erased.
However, even with the material at hand, Zazi still apparently couldn’t figure it out, and he frantically contacted an unidentified person for help several times. Each of these communications was “more urgent in tone than the last,” according to court documents.
Clearly, if Zazi was able eventually to bring his alleged aspirations to fruition, he could have done some damage, though, given his capacities, the person most in existential danger was surely the lapsed doughnut peddler himself.
As I said in 2007:
Terrorism is a real threat, and one that needs to be addressed by appropriate means. But allowing ourselves to be terrorized by wannabe terrorists and unrealistic plots—and worse, allowing our essential freedoms to be lost by using them as an excuse—is wrong.
[…]
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have all the facts in any of these cases. None of us do. So let’s have some healthy skepticism. Skepticism when we read about these terrorist masterminds who were poised to kill thousands of people and do incalculable damage. Skepticism when we’re told that their arrest proves that we need to give away our own freedoms and liberties. And skepticism that those arrested are even guilty in the first place.
The problem with these arrests is that the crimes have not happened yet. So these cases involve trying to divine what people will do in the future. They involve trying to guess as to people’s motives and abilities. They often involve informants with questionable integrity, and my worry is that in our zeal to prevent terrorism, we create terrorists where there weren’t any to begin with.
Mueller writes:
It follows that any terrorism problem within the United States principally derives from homegrown people like Zazi, often isolated from each other, who fantasize about performing dire deeds. Penn State’s Michael Kenney has interviewed dozens of officials and intelligence agents and analyzed court documents, and finds homegrown Islamic militants to be operationally unsophisticated, short on know-how, prone to make mistakes, poor at planning, and severely hampered by a limited capacity to learn. Another study documents the difficulties of network coordination that continually threaten operational unity, trust, cohesion, and the ability to act collectively. And the popular notion these characters have the capacity to steal or put together an atomic bomb seems, to put it mildly, as fanciful as some of the terrorists’ schemes.
By contrast, the image projected by the Department of Homeland Security continues to be of an enemy that is “relentless, patient, opportunistic, and flexible,” shows “an understanding of the potential consequence of carefully planned attacks on economic transportation, and symbolic targets,” seriously threatens “national security,” and could inflict “mass casualties, weaken the economy, and damage public morale and confidence.” That description may fit some terrorists—the 9/11 hijackers among them. But not the vast majority, including the hapless Zazi.
EDITED TO ADD (11/9): This is the Michael Kenney paper that Mueller cites.
The Doghouse: ADE 651
A divining rod to find explosives in Iraq:
ATSC’s promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high. The device works on “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction,” ATSC says.
To detect materials, the operator puts an array of plastic-coated cardboard cards with bar codes into a holder connected to the wand by a cable. “It would be laughable,” Colonel Bidlack said, “except someone down the street from you is counting on this to keep bombs off the streets.”
Proponents of the wand often argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device.
Then the operator must walk in place a few moments to “charge” the device, since it has no battery or other power source, and walk with the wand at right angles to the body. If there are explosives or drugs to the operator’s left, the wand is supposed to swivel to the operator’s left and point at them.
If, as often happens, no explosives or weapons are found, the police may blame a false positive on other things found in the car, like perfume, air fresheners or gold fillings in the driver’s teeth.
Complete quackery, sold by Cumberland Industries:
Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.
James Randi says:
This Foundation will give you our million-dollar prize upon the successful testing of the ADE651® device. Such test can be performed by anyone, anywhere, under your conditions, by you or by any appointed person or persons, in direct satisfaction of any or all of the provisions laid out above by you.
No one will respond to this, because the ADE651® is a useless, quack, device which cannot perform any other function than separating naïve persons from their money. It’s a fake, a scam, a swindle, and a blatant fraud. The manufacturers, distributors, vendors, advertisers, and retailers of the ADE651® device are criminals, liars, and thieves who will ignore this challenge because they know the device, the theory, the described principles of operation, and the technical descriptions given, are nonsense, lies, and fraudulent.
And he quotes from the Cumberland Industries literature (not online, unfortunately):
Ignores All Known Concealment Methods. By programming the detection cards to specifically target a particular substance, (through the proprietary process of electro-static matching of the ionic charge and structure of the substance), the ADE651® will “by-pass” all known attempts to conceal the target substance. It has been shown to penetrate Lead, other metals, concrete, and other matter (including hiding in the body) used in attempts to block the attraction.
No Consumables nor Maintenance Contracts Required. Unlike Trace Detectors that require the supply of sample traps, the ADE651® does not utilize any consumables (exceptions include: cotton-gloves and cleanser) thereby reducing the operational costs of the equipment. The equipment is Operator maintained and requires no ongoing maintenance service contracts. It comes with a hardware three year warranty. Since the equipment is powered electro statically, there are no batteries or conventional power supplies to change or maintain.
One interesting point is that the effectiveness of this device depends strongly on what the bad guys think about its effectiveness. If the bad guys think it works, they have to find someone who is 1) willing to kill himself, and 2) rational enough to keep his cool while being tested by one of these things. I’ll bet that the ADE651 makes it harder to recruit suicide bombers.
But what happened to the days when you could buy a divining rod for $100?
EDITED TO ADD (11/11): In case the company pulls the spec sheet, it’s archived here.
Nice Use of Diversion During a Robbery
During a daring bank robbery in Sweden that involved a helicopter, the criminals disabled a police helicopter by placing a package with the word “bomb” near the helicopter hangar, thus engaging the full caution/evacuation procedure while they escaped.
I wrote about this exact sort of thing in Beyond Fear.
EDITED TO ADD (10/13): The attack was successfully carried off even though the Swedish police had been warned.
Ass Bomber
Nobody tell the TSA, but last month someone tried to assassinate a Saudi prince by exploding a bomb stuffed in his rectum. He pretended to be a repentant militant, when in fact he was a Trojan horse:
The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince—the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.
Other news articles are here, and here are two blog posts.
For years, I have made the joke about Richard Reid: “Just be glad that he wasn’t the underwear bomber.” Now, sadly, we have an example of one.
Lewis Page, an “improvised-device disposal operator tasked in support of the UK mainland police from 2001-2004,” pointed out that this isn’t much of a threat for three reasons: 1) you can’t stuff a lot of explosives into a body cavity, 2) detonation is, um, problematic, and 3) the human body can stifle an explosion pretty effectively (think of someone throwing himself on a grenade to save his friends).
But who ever accused the TSA of being rational?
Demonstration of a Liquid Explosive
The BBC has a video demonstration of a 16-ounce bottle of liquid blowing a hole in the side of a plane.
I know no more details other than what’s in the video.
NSA Intercepts Used to Convict Liquid Bombers
Three of the UK liquid bombers were convicted Monday. NSA-intercepted e-mail was introduced as evidence in the trial:
The e-mails, several of which have been reprinted by the BBC and other publications, contained coded messages, according to prosecutors. They were intercepted by the NSA in 2006 but were not included in evidence introduced in a first trial against the three last year.
That trial resulted in the men being convicted of conspiracy to commit murder; but a jury was not convinced that they had planned to use soft drink bottles filled with liquid explosives to blow up seven trans-Atlantic planes—the charge for which they were convicted this week in a second trial.
According to Channel 4, the NSA had previously shown the e-mails to their British counterparts, but refused to let prosecutors use the evidence in the first trial, because the agency didn’t want to tip off an alleged accomplice in Pakistan named Rashid Rauf that his e-mail was being monitored. U.S. intelligence agents said Rauf was al Qaeda’s director of European operations at the time and that the bomb plot was being directed by Rauf and others in Pakistan.
The NSA later changed its mind and allowed the evidence to be introduced in the second trial, which was crucial to getting the jury conviction. Channel 4 suggests the NSA’s change of mind occurred after Rauf, a Briton born of Pakistani parents, was reportedly killed last year by a U.S. drone missile that struck a house where he was staying in northern Pakistan.
Although British prosecutors were eager to use the e-mails in their second trial against the three plotters, British courts prohibit the use of evidence obtained through interception. So last January, a U.S. court issued warrants directly to Yahoo to hand over the same correspondence.
It’s unclear if the NSA intercepted the messages as they passed through internet nodes based in the U.S. or intercepted them overseas.
EDITED TO ADD (9/9): Just to be sure, this has nothing to do with any illegal warrantless wiretapping the NSA has done over the years; the wiretap used to intercept these e-mails was obtained with a FISA warrant.
Marine Worms with Glowing Bombs
More security stories from the natural world:
During chase scenes, movie protagonists often make their getaway by releasing some sort of decoy to cover their escape or distract their pursuer. But this tactic isn’t reserved for action heroes—some deep-sea animals also evade their predators by releasing decoys—glowing ones.
Karen Osborn from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography has discovered seven new species of closely related marine worms (annelids) that use this trick. Each species pack up to four pairs of “bombs” near their heads—simple, fluid-filled globes that the worms can detach at will. When released, the “bombs” give off an intense light that lasts for several seconds.
Movie-Plot Threat Alert: Robot Suicide Bombers
Let’s all be afraid:
But it adds: “Robots that effectively mimic human appearance and movements may be used as human proxies.”
It raised the prospects of terrorists using robots to plant and detonate bombs or even replacing human suicide bombers.
A Home Office spokeswoman said: “This strategy looks at how technology might develop in future.
“Clearly it is important that we understand how those wishing us harm might use such technology in future so we can stay one step ahead.”
The document also warns that nanotechnology will help accelerate development of materials for future explosives while advances in fabrics will “significantly” improve camouflage and protection.
I’m sure I’ve seen this stuff in movies.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.