JINSA Report #570 Data Mining and the War

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May 12, 2006

JINSA Report #570

Data Mining and the War

We tried to get upset about the news that our government has collected
and mined telephone routing information – not names, addresses or
personal information – which the Supreme Court has already ruled is not
the property of the caller. It isn't clear to us what the value of
mining such stupendous amounts of data would be, but another story this
week makes us hope that a) they already got something useful, because
they won't be getting any more of it, and b) they don't stop trying to
figure out how terrorists talk to one another.

According The New York Times, the perpetrators of the Madrid bombings
had a computer version of a letter drop. Using shared e-mail accounts,
one would write an e-mail and save it in the "Draft" folder; the others
would access the account, go to the "Drafts," read and respond the same
way. Accounts are accessible from anywhere, but by not actually sending
the e-mails, there was less of an electronic trail.

Javier Jordan, director of the Center for Security Studies and Analysis
at the University of Granada, was quoted in the story saying, "This is
probably a common method of communication among jihadists in Europe."
But, according to The Times, "Mr. Jordan said he was skeptical that the
authorities were as unable as they claimed to track unsent messages.
'There is still communication between the computer and the server,' he
said. 'I wouldn't be surprised if the intelligence services have a way
of monitoring that.'"

We wouldn't either, but we certainly wouldn't want to read about it in
The Times because if we do, they do!

If our government could, in fact, divine information from "Draft"
folders, and was in fact doing so knowing it was a "common method of
communication among jihadists," why tell the jihadists that we could?
Wouldn't you want them to think what they were doing was secure?
Wouldn't you want them to keep doing it? Wouldn't you want us to keep
mining it? Maybe we learned something from the Madrid bombing
investigation that can be used by other agencies in other countries.
Maybe we could improve our surveillance techniques and catch them BEFORE
the next Madrid-type or London-type bombing. But once a program is
exposed, you can be sure the bad guys won't do it again.

And this goes to the larger issue.

In this war between terrorists and the forces of civilization, the
forces of civilization are always playing defense, meaning "catch-up."
Every time journalists and their CIA leak sources give away details of
the defense strategy, the terrorists change tactics and make the forces
of civilization start over again. Guess which is harder?

There are those who believe that President Bush is waging a war that
impinges on the civil liberties of Americans. They need to remember
that it is the terrorists who are waging war -- not against the
President or against Republicans – but against America, our friends and
our civilization.

To view this JINSA Report online click on the link below.
http://www.jinsa.org/JINSAReports/3403

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