Entries Tagged "military"

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Iraqi Gunmen Dressing Up in American Military Uniforms

I’ve previously written about how official uniforms are inherent authentication tokens, even though they shouldn’t be (see also this and this for some less deadly anecdotes).

Now we see this tactic being used in Baghdad:

The armored sport utility vehicles whisked into a government compound in the city of Karbala with speed and urgency, the way most Americans and foreign dignitaries travel along Iraq’s treacherous roads these days.

Iraqi guards at checkpoints waved them through Saturday afternoon because the men wore what appeared to be legitimate U.S. military uniforms and badges, and drove cars commonly used by foreigners, the provincial governor said.

Once inside, however, the men unleashed one of the deadliest and most brazen ambushes of U.S. forces in a secure, official area. Five American service members were killed in a hail of grenades and gunfire in a breach of security that Iraqi officials called unprecedented.

Uniforms are no substitute for real authentication. They’re just too easy to steal or forge.

Posted on January 29, 2007 at 1:37 PM • View Comments

On the "War on Terror" Rhetoric

Echoing what I said in my previous post, Sir Ken Macdonald—the UK’s “director of public prosecutions”—has spoken out against the “war on terror”:

He said: “London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, ‘soldiers’. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a ‘war on terror’, just as there can be no such thing as a ‘war on drugs’.

“The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement.”

Sir Ken, head of the Crown Prosecution Service, told members of the Criminal Bar Association it should be an article of faith that crimes of terrorism are dealt with by criminal justice and that a “culture of legislative restraint in the area of terrorist crime is central to the existence of an efficient and human rights compatible process”.

He said: “We wouldn’t get far in promoting a civilising culture of respect for rights amongst and between citizens if we set about undermining fair trials in the simple pursuit of greater numbers of inevitably less safe convictions. On the contrary, it is obvious that the process of winning convictions ought to be in keeping with a consensual rule of law and not detached from it. Otherwise we sacrifice fundamental values critical to the maintenance of the rule of law – upon which everything else depends.”

Exactly. This is not a job for the military, it’s a job for the police.

Posted on January 26, 2007 at 6:56 AM • View Comments

SAS Troops Stationed in London

British special forces are now stationed in London:

An SAS unit is now for the first time permanently based in London on 24-hour standby for counter-terrorist operations, The Times has learnt.

The basing of a unit from the elite special forces regiment “in the metropolitan area” is intended to provide the police with a combat-proven ability to deal with armed terrorists in the capital.

The small unit also includes surveillance specialists and bomb-disposal experts.

Although the Metropolitan Police has its own substantial firearms capability, the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician who was mistakenly identified as a terrorist bomber on the run, has underlined the need to have military expertise on tap.

While I agree that the British police completely screwed up the Menezes shooting, I’m not at all convinced the SAS can do better. The police are trained to work within a lawful society; military units are primarily trained for military combat operations. Which group do you think will be more restrained?

This kind of thing is a result of the “war on terror” rhetoric. We don’t need military operations, we need police protection.

I think people have been watching too many seasons of 24.

Posted on January 25, 2007 at 3:34 PM • View Comments

RFID Tattoos

Great idea for livestock. Dumb idea for soldiers:

The ink also could be used to track and rescue soldiers, Pydynowski said.

“It could help identify friends or foes, prevent friendly fire, and help save soldiers’ lives,” he said. “It’s a very scary proposition when you’re dealing with humans, but with military personnel, we’re talking about saving soldiers’ lives and it may be something worthwhile.”

Posted on January 22, 2007 at 12:27 PM • View Comments

Cheyenne Mountain Retired

Cheyenne Mountain was the United States’ underground command post, designed to survive a direct hit from a nuclear warhead. It’s a Cold War relic—built in the 1960s—and retiring the site is probably a good idea. But this paragraph gives me pause:

Keating said the new control room, in contrast, could be damaged if a terrorist commandeered a jumbo jet and somehow knew exactly where to crash it. But “how unlikely is that? We think very,” Keating said.

I agree that this is an unlikely terrorist target, but still.

Posted on October 25, 2006 at 4:35 PM • View Comments

Did Hezbollah Crack Israeli Secure Radio?

According to Newsday:

Hezbollah guerrillas were able to hack into Israeli radio communications during last month’s battles in south Lebanon, an intelligence breakthrough that helped them thwart Israeli tank assaults, according to Hezbollah and Lebanese officials.

Using technology most likely supplied by Iran, special Hezbollah teams monitored the constantly changing radio frequencies of Israeli troops on the ground. That gave guerrillas a picture of Israeli movements, casualty reports and supply routes. It also allowed Hezbollah anti-tank units to more effectively target advancing Israeli armor, according to the officials.

Read the article. Basically, the problem is operational error:

With frequency-hopping and encryption, most radio communications become very difficult to hack. But troops in the battlefield sometimes make mistakes in following secure radio procedures and can give an enemy a way to break into the frequency-hopping patterns. That might have happened during some battles between Israel and Hezbollah, according to the Lebanese official. Hezbollah teams likely also had sophisticated reconnaissance devices that could intercept radio signals even while they were frequency-hopping.

I agree with this comment from The Register:

Claims that Hezbollah fighters were able to use this intelligence to get some intelligence on troop movement and supply routes are plausible, at least to the layman, but ought to be treated with an appropriate degree of caution as they are substantially corroborated by anonymous sources.

But I have even more skepticism. If indeed Hezbollah was able to do this, the last thing they want is for it to appear in the press. But if Hezbollah can’t do this, then a few good disinformation stories are a good thing.

Posted on September 20, 2006 at 2:35 PM • View Comments

Press Security Concerns in Lebanon

Problems of reporting from a war zone:

Among broadcasters there is a concern about how our small convoys of cars full of equipment and personnel look from the air. There is a risk Israelis (eyes in the sky: drones, satellites) could mistake them for a Hezbollah convoy headed closer to the border and within striking distance of Israel. So simply being on the road with several vehicles is a risk.

Plus, when we fire up our broadcast signals it is unclear what we look like to Israeli military monitoring stations. If there are a number of broadcasters firing up signals from the same remote place, the hope is that the Israelis would identify it as media signals, and not Hezbollah rocket electronics, and thus avoid being a target.

Posted on July 26, 2006 at 5:56 AM •

U.S. Navy Patents Firewall

At least, that’s what it sounds like to me:

In a communication system having a plurality of networks, a method of achieving network separation between first and second networks is described. First and second networks with respective first and second degrees of trust are defined, the first degree of trust being higher than the second degree of trust. Communication between the first and second networks is enabled via a network interface system having a protocol stack, the protocol stack implemented by the network interface system in an application layer. Data communication from the second network to the first network is enabled while data communication from the first network to the second network is minimized.

Posted on July 7, 2006 at 7:06 AM • View Comments

New Directions in Chemical Warfare

From New Scientist:

The Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal.

Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an “aphrodisiac” chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a “distasteful but completely non-lethal” blow to morale, the proposal says.

Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to develop a chemical that caused “severe and lasting halitosis”, making it easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was also the idea of making troops’ skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight.

Technology always gets better; it never gets worse. There will be a time, probably in our lifetimes, when weapons like these will be real.

Posted on June 9, 2006 at 1:33 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.