QOTD: Michael Hayden
by digby
The former NSA and CIA Director:
“Let me get this right: I got a religious fanatic in the cave in the Hindu Kush, yet this is a front-page, above-the-fold story and he already knew this?” he asked rhetorically. “That does not make sense. It will teach guys to be far more cautious in the future.”
It must be a helluva wifi connection.
Or the Guardian has a helluva home delivery system.
WASHINGTON – Despite having no Internet access in his hideout, Osama bin Laden was a prolific email writer who built a painstaking system that kept him one step ahead of the U.S. government’s best eavesdroppers.
His methods, described in new detail to The Associated Press by a counterterrorism official and a second person briefed on the U.S. investigation, served him well for years and frustrated Western efforts to trace him through cyberspace. The arrangement allowed bin Laden to stay in touch worldwide without leaving any digital fingerprints behind.
The people spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive intelligence analysis.
Bin Laden’s system was built on discipline and trust. But it also left behind an extensive archive of email exchanges for the U.S. to scour. The trove of electronic records pulled out of his compound after he was killed last week is revealing thousands of messages and potentially hundreds of email addresses, the AP has learned.
How did bin Laden do it? Super computer? Satellites? Ray gun?
Well, no. It turns out bin Laden, Super Villain, typed up his messages and saved them on a thumb drive. His courier took the thumb drive to an Internet cafe and emailed the messages.
Spencer Ackerman asked at the time:
Wasn’t the NSA watching Pakistani internet cafes or monitoring suspicious IP addresses? Was no U.S. operative ready to send out a virus?
Apparently they were so busy collecting data from American citizens they just didn’t have time to monitor internet cafe computers in Pakistan. After all this agency is also monitoring narcotics trafficking around the world, sees part of its mission as offering “unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world,” and worries publicly about leaks putting “American companies at risk internationally for simply complying with our laws.” It’s got a lot on its plate.
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