
Sorry, NSA, Terrorists Don't Use Verizon. Or Skype. Or Gmail - Libertatea
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/hey-nsa-terrorists-dont-use-verizon-or-skype-or-gmail
======
Arnor
It's depressing that this article is so high on HN right now. It's another
example of a poor report trivializing an important debate. Meanwhile, many of
the comments here are snarky and sardonic which further degrades the dialog.
This is a serious subject and should be treated as such.

It's easy to shout hurray for your side. It's easy to demonize your enemy.
According to the government, Snowden is a traitor. According to many frequent
HN readers, the government is completely out of the control. Neither of these
claims is true, but they are difficult to get past.

Although Snowden is certainly not a traitor, the accusation is serious. His
life and freedom hang in the balance. Politicians and political pundits are
looking for an easy solution when they demonize Snowden. Making him out to be
the enemy makes it easier to keep the country calm about the issues he
unveiled.

While Snowden isn't a monster, the surveillance programs are not evil either.
They are shocking. They evoke emotional response. They can be frightening --
especially since we don't know how much deeper the programs go. Still, they
are the largely the result of people trying to defend the country from
terrorism. Regardless of the cynicism you bring to the topic, the primary goal
of these programs is to save lives. Accept that, take a breath, then
reevaluate your grievances.

I'm not suggesting that there's nothing to be angry or worried about. I'm
certainly not saying that the programs are right or benevolent. I'm saying
that this is important and meaningful and needs to be treated as such rather
than another opportunity to win points in some silly political game.

~~~
carlob
Just how many lives has terrorism claimed in the past decade?

Smoking has probably claimed more lives just today than terrorist attacks on
US soil in the past decade. So I don't think it warrants any action at all.

Let's face it the aim of terrorism is to scare people and if we are so scared
that we're giving away basic human rights (and correspondence secrecy is a
basic human right) then the terrorist won.

~~~
jsz0
_Just how many lives has terrorism claimed in the past decade?_

It's easy to answer that question now. No one knew the answer to that a decade
ago. No one knows how many lives terrorism will claim in the next decade. The
government does have to plan for the worst case scenario.

~~~
mikeash
Replace "terrorism" with "killer robots" or "sharks" or "bedbugs". Your
statement remains as valid as ever, but somehow the government is only
spending billions (or trillions) on _one_ of them. Why?

~~~
jsz0
The NSA does a lot more than just fight terrorism and of course the US invests
a huge amount of money in mitigating the impact of other risks like natural
disasters. They have to look at all these different threats and divvy up the
money accordingly.

~~~
mikeash
Conversely, a lot of US government organizations are involved in fighting
terrorism besides the NSA.

None of this answers my question: of all these possibilities, why does the
government only go after one?

~~~
mpyne
You speak as if the government _doesn 't_ have programs that track sharks or
bedbugs.

~~~
dwallin
Sure, but there's a point where the government could go too far. For example,
if the government starting having random mattress inspections inside peoples
homes that would be way too intrusive despite any reductions in bedbugs that
might result.

------
InclinedPlane
Even with the panic that has happened regarding the revelations of mass-
surveillance I don't think the public at large truly realizes how screwed up
this situation is.

The common defense of sweeping surveillance is that it serves an important
purpose, finding terrorists, and it has succeeded in that purpose.

Ignoring the very serious problems with framing the debate in such a way it's
also fundamentally misleading. There have been many cases of "terrorist plots"
within the US having been foiled over the last few years, but many if not most
of these are not as serious as most would believe. A stereotypical "foiled
terrorist plot" begins with a radicalized individual who somehow comes to the
attention of the authorities. Then the FBI spins up an elaborate sting to
essentially entrap the radicalized individual into committing to some sort of
attack, often providing fake bombs in the process. And just before they go
through with their planned "attack" the FBI arrests them.

Examples:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine_El_Khalifi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine_El_Khalifi)
and
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Osman_Mohamud](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Osman_Mohamud)
and
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooque_Ahmed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooque_Ahmed)
and
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Osmakac](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Osmakac)

Meanwhile, the FBI, NSA, TSA, et al have failed to foil many much more serious
attacks, such as the Boston bombings, the Fort Hood shooting, the "underwear
bomber", the failed 2010 Times Square bombing attempt, etc.

~~~
stewbrew
This sort of "entrapment" is legal in the US? But maybe they wouldn't care.
Anyway, wouldn't it be more useful to invest the time, money and energy in
facilitating social integration of these individuals. Just asking.

~~~
InclinedPlane
First off, the vast majority of folks snatched up in these stings end up
pleading guilty. It's simple logic, a certainty of spending 20 years in prison
is vastly better than the chance of serving a life sentence or being executed.

However, from the strictest legal perspective it's questionable how much the
entrapment defense could be used in these cases. From a practical perspective
much of this is clearcut entrapment. However, from a legal perspective you
have folks who very clearly make strong statements saying they are willing to
commit acts of terror and then when presented with the opportunity (in an
elaborate masquerade put on by federal agents) they follow through. I can't
imagine many lawyers salivating at the prospect of defending that.

------
kghose
Actually, they used to. Then they wised up and started using couriers. Both
worked to the disadvantage of Al Quaida. When they stopped using electronic
communications their organization suffered. Then, it was the movements of a
courier that gave away Bin Laden.

So, regardless of whether you think it's OK for the NSA to spy on everyone,
this push did break down Al Quaida's organization.

Whether it affects cell oriented terrorism (or 'lone wolf' terrorism) is
another matter. For example, for the Boston bombers one of them did mention
something about terrorism and came on the radar, but the FBI misjudged the
threat.

~~~
betterunix
"So, regardless of whether you think it's OK for the NSA to spy on everyone,
this push did break down Al Quaida's organization."

OK, so why are we continuing it? We broke Al Qaeda, we killed their leaders.
We got revenge for the September 11th attacks.

To put it another way, who is our enemy now?

~~~
kghose
To prevent further attacks. The situation re: radicalization has not changed,
and will not change until the economic and social situation in Arab countries
improves and/or Saudi influence changes/decreases.

Radical Islam is still around, as you can see by their infiltration of various
populist movements in the Arab countries.

Monitoring of social media (as someone mentioned elsewhere here) is probably a
very cost effective way of keeping tabs of the flow of money and influence of
radical groups.

~~~
betterunix
Except that terrorist attacks on the US were rare _before_ this program,
_before_ its predecessors, and _before_ the Internet. "Radical Islam" is not a
specific threat by any stretch of the imagination. Most Islamic terrorists are
fighting _in the Middle East_ , not in America.

Further, this program is _not_ focused on Islamic groups. It is broad,
wholesale surveillance. _Everyone_ is being monitored.

Sorry, but the "we are doing this to keep you safe" line is getting pretty
old.

~~~
kghose
Re: Terrorism. Yes, most of the death count is at the homes of terrorism
(which perversely gives the greatest hope that it will stop). However, radical
Islamic terrorism is exported all over the world.

Re: Why have espionage agencies, and what should be their scope. Yes, this is
a good debate but along the lines of "How big should our military be?" I
believe the answer is very complex. As a citizen of a country I would hope my
country has a military and an intelligence agency. I would hope both are
independent of political influence, yet are under the leash of civilian
government.

What should the scope of a spy agency be? By the very nature of the business
it needs to be secret from the general public (i.e. other nations). Countries
have spied on each other through out history because you really want to know
what the other fellow is up to, especially if you can do something about it.

Snowden's statements re: spying on China/Russia whatever are not surprising.
If you are a US citizen I would hope that you hope your intelligence agencies
are keeping an eye on China/Russia, just as a Chinese citizen you would hope
the Chinese government is trying to get information about the US.

It's a delicate game that all countries play to varying degrees of success.

Where Snowden has crossed the line is that he was working for the government
and then decided to embarrass it re: other countries.

If Snowden had said, look China spies on the US, Russia spies on China, and
the US spies on both. I think this is illegal, he would have been an
interesting person to follow though a little naive.

From what he has done, I would think, there is a pretty high chance he is on
some payroll, probably Chinese. Again, as others have mentioned, his timing
and his statements are not that of a person trying to correct a wrong. It
really sounds like some one who's a pawn in a diplomatic game.

~~~
meric
Why should embarrassing one's government be 'crossing a line'?

In the emperor's with no clothes story would you suggest the boy should be
hanged?

------
ryguytilidie
Article seems to kind of miss the point. While the NSA's STATED reasons for
these programs is to "fight terror" that doesn't necessarily mean it is their
actual reason. If they want to spy on activists and everyday citizens this
seems like a pretty solid strategy.

~~~
pjnewton
Agreed, however, what is the value in spying on activists (assuming you mean
the non-extremist type)and everyday citizens?

~~~
cookiecaper
One man's "activist" is another man's terrorist, basically. Activists are
liable to convert to extremism with the right set of triggers. This can
therefore qualify as "counterterrorism", because if they access all your
communications they may be able to flag you as a potential clinic bomber, etc.

Also, I seriously doubt the assertion in the headline that terrorists simply
don't use common online services, and even if this were true, the ripples that
can be correlated from their associates who _do_ use these services would
still be of interest to law enforcement.

~~~
pjnewton
Yup, I agree with you here... I was wondering if the person who made the
comment had any educated reason for doing so...

------
Kylekramer
There seems to be two NSAs in the media right now: the extremely competent one
that can access your email from a desktop without any oversight or trouble and
the bumbling idiots who don't know more about terrorists than reporters.

It doesn't mesh.

~~~
krapp
Both are portrayals meant to advance a particular agenda. Split the
difference, you'll probably find the truth somewhere in the middle.

~~~
chez17
What does that even mean? People usually say this when they want to sound wise
but to me it sounds like nonsense cowardly pseudo-intellectualism. So you've
determined the truth is "somewhere in the middle" of two vast extremes. How
does that contribute to the conversation? It's like playing the "guess what
number I'm thinking of" game and the options are between 1 and 1,000,000 and
you guess "somewhere in the middle" and proudly walk away. More importantly,
it adds to the idea that there is one truth, that the whole thing can be
boiled down to any easy and simple truth. This isn't the case, reality is far
more complicated than that.

~~~
krapp
Wow, people are reading so much more into that than I intended.

I only _meant_ that portrayals of the government, particularly on HN lately,
sometimes seem to assume that it's some kind of ultimately corrupt, death-
dealing junta that will put you on a blacklist for just thinking about them,
or a useless bureaucratic morass. I wasn't intending to make a value judgement
on anything. I probably shouldn't have used the word 'truth.'

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
So, if you're a death-dealing junta, you can always soften criticism by
advancing a completely contrary lie? Or alternatively, if you want to attack a
group of Girl Scouts, make up and tell terrible lies about them.

>seem to assume that it's some kind of ultimately corrupt, death-dealing junta
that will put you on a blacklist for just thinking about them

I haven't seen anyone call them a junta, otherwise, it's not without
precedent, you know. Hell, the FBI's headquarters still proudly bears the name
of its most disgraceful former director (37 years!), who directed every kind
of activity we find antithetical to liberty and justice.

see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO)

and especially, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Post-
COINTELPRO_ope...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Post-
COINTELPRO_operations)

~~~
krapp
_So, if you 're a death-dealing junta, you can always soften criticism by
advancing a completely contrary lie?_

Actually, probably yes. Almost always.

But again, Kylekramer was suggesting it seemed odd for these two contradictory
portrayals of the NSA to exist. I was just suggesting that there was no real
contradiction, because people can tend to resort to extremes to advance their
point.

------
blumentopf
Is the rationale behind PRISM really terrorism?

Here in Germany there's a lot of talk that PRISM is ultimately a tool for
industry espionage. The Boundless Informant world map shows Germany in bright
orange. People are wondering: Is Germany breeding terrorists or is NSA simply
interested in trade secrets?

Going by that logic, terrorism is a red herring. By making details about PRISM
and NSA's hacking activities public, Snowden is undermining the US's ability
to covertly vacuum up trade secrets, thus weakening the US industry. _That_ 's
why the US government is freaking out. You can bet that German companies are
now reconsidering using cloud services hosted in the US, or cloud services at
all, or American (closed source / potentially backdoored) software at all.

~~~
krapp
Don't be offended by this, please, but what could Germany in particular
possibly be doing that's so awesome and advanced that the United States would
have to resort to theft to replicate it?

If it were the case, I would expect companies to be involved in corporate
espionage, not the government.

~~~
L4mppu
Smart and innovative people live outside of us too. As for the theft, it could
be as simple as stealing a patent idea and patenting it in us so no matter
what the original inventor does some of his money wil go to us government.

~~~
krapp
Sure, but even so I would expect a competing American company to be concerned
about that... there's no reason for the NSA to care, since it probably doesn't
affect national security.

~~~
visarga
NSA has it now. Who knows what other organisation is collecting data, going to
inherit data collected by other organisations or just leasing access on a "per
case" basis.

Once collected and analysed, this data is going to be like a kind of "credit
rating". It will show who is a social influencer and what are his/her
political leanings and their social network. Even if they are clean, a
motivated party could blackmail them if anyone in their immediate circle has
done anything illegal.

Imagine if mafia got a copy of this. What could they do with a blackmail
database?

~~~
krapp
_Once collected and analysed, this data is going to be like a kind of "credit
rating". It will show who is a social influencer and what are his/her
political leanings and their social network._

Not that i'm putting on my tinfoil hat or anything, but from what I
understand, Obama essentially did that (assigned something like a 'voter'
rating) during the last election. Not through any illegal means, mind you
(that i'm aware of), but still he was able to win the election handily through
efficient social engineering and voter targeting. So there does appear to be a
use case for this being effective.

That does actually raise an interesting question -- assuming this network
still exists in ten years time, what happens to it? Does it get folded into
the tax bureaucracy, healthcare, do lawyers get to access it?

 _Imagine if mafia got a copy of this. What could they do with a blackmail
database?_

Strictly speaking, not much more than they could do now, just hacking people's
likely easily bruteforced email and social media accounts. They'd be more
interested in a credit card number/SSN database anyway I think.

------
nslocum
The NSA isn't focused exclusively on terrorism. It has ~40k employees who work
on a wide range of areas, drug cartels, human trafficking, money laundering,
counter intelligence, espionage, and hundreds of others. It's mighty
presumptuous for people not "in the know" to speak on what is and isn't
valuable to the NSA's missions.

As for terrorists, if someone were a skilled terrorist their entire life, they
probably wouldn't live digital traces within the US. But this isn't the case;
people become terrorists, and some of those become skilled terrorists. There
is immense value in having intelligence on people before they become a
terrorist and needless to say, before they hone their tradecraft and drop from
the grid.

~~~
mikegioia
Yea, I think what some people are worried about though, are the (a)
possibility of many false positives and (b) the collateral damage with "common
crimes". In the latter I mean: how far into the realm of everyday rule-
breaking will these agencies go? Will you get a ticket mailed to you because
you rolled through a stop sign and your license plate was captured? Will you
get police officer (with warrant) at your door to search your premises because
you purchased a book about marijuana growing?

------
bazillion
Well, I'll have to disagree in full with the points the author is trying to
make.

"A recent Bloomberg piece points to a 2012 report on terrorism which found
that most serious terrorists steer clear of the most obvious platforms—major
cell networks, Google, Skype, Facebook, etc."

The 2012 report cited wasn't some senate oversight committee, a DIRNSA
(director NSA) report, or a truly credible intelligence source. It was from
the Dutch Intelligence agency, an agency focused on leftist activity vs.
right-wing Islamic terrorism.

"In 2010, Google estimated that it had indexed just 0.004% of the
internet—meaning the vast majority of the web is open for surreptitious
message-sending business. Terrorists simply aren't dumb enough to discuss
their secret plans over Skype or to email each other confidential information
on Gmail."

Do you think that it's feasible for terrorists to use couriers/tradecraft to
transmit all messages to their group members around the world? If I told you
right now to get a message to your cousin in Connecticut within an hour
without using Skype/email/phone or anything of the other means listed, could
you do it? Let's say you answer that you'll just use steganography
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography))
to hide the message. How are you going to communicate to your cousin where to
look for the message and how to break it down?

Armchair intelligence analysis is the same as armchair anything -- you have no
basis for what you're talking about except a bunch of redacted reports, news
articles, and spy movies. Intelligence analysis is a very straightforward
thing, though, which a lot of folks working in tech would be really good at,
but articles like this are the equivalent of commenting on the merits of using
PHP having never written a line of code in your life.

I understand peoples' frustration with what (if true) would be an egregious
slight on the public trust. But, is it more likely that the 4+ million
security clearance holders are in on some large conspiracy to take away our
freedoms, or that a disgruntled worker wanted to watch the world burn a
little. Having worked in every facet of the NSA as a linguist/intelligence
analyst/programmer/many other things, and CIA contractor for a year, I tend to
think the latter, and I'm very vocal about my thoughts on the intelligence
community.

Read my previous comments if you want to see my thoughts on how the media has
been getting it wrong, and what the deal is from the perspective of someone
who worked in this community.

~~~
lambdasquirrel
This is just patently not true. If you read up how Osama bin Laden practiced
tradecraft, you'd know that he did not even so much have a land line at his
compound when they offed him, definitely not a cell phone. If you'd like a
credible news source for these sorts of things, read Stratfor. They're
relatively cheap as far as these things go. Terrorists do not use gmail, skype
or cell phones.

You are right that armchair BS isn't going to get us anywhere here. To that
end, your comment is ironic because _do_ know that the real terrorists know
they're being snooped on.

~~~
bazillion
While I can't comment on the UBL part, I will say that the stratfor part made
me pee a little in my pants. I don't mean this to come off as condescending,
but stratfor is one of the biggest jokes by people who do real intelligence.
It's like saying "if you want to know what's really going on in the world and
what's really important, watch Fox News.".

~~~
lambdasquirrel
You know... it's a joke, but it's still less of a joke than everything else
out there, kind of like Hacker News or /r/programming. ;-) The people who
actually do "real" anything tend to think that everything beneath them is a
joke.

------
seferphier
Should post the original article that did the research:
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-
is...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is-not-aimed-
at-terrorists.html)

~~~
leopoldo
Thanks! I have been trying to make this point to my friends in light of recent
events

------
leoc
I can think of three possible reasons (I claim no expertise here) to doubt
that FISA orders and phone metadata are completely useless against terrorists
even if (as seems likely) serious terrorists know to steer clear of Skype,
Facebook and friends.

1) By monitoring Internet services like these, the NSA denies their use to the
terrorists. It's not as if exclusively using couriers, dead drops and the like
has no costs to an organisation (say, have you moved off GMail yet?)
Apparently some fairly serious terrorists are using the Internet in more
secure ways, but the spooks have some ability to go after those too.

2) Any big network or organisations is going to have slipups, no matter how
good it is. It would be hard to imagine that no serious terrorist ever gets
lazy, or decides to take a risk under time pressure.

3) There have to be a lot of guys who start out as Facebook jihadis, and only
later get serious and realise (or have it explained to them) that they need to
stop making it easy for the authorities to track them. But by that time
they'll already have left a useful trail of contacts and activity through FB.
(By the way, that's one reason why I think it's wrong to assume that PRISM has
been useless even if it hasn't stopped any specific attacks. Realistically,
that kind of intelligence is going to be less about discovering big plots
_just in time_ and more about gathering enough information to locate and move
on terrorists - espcially if you can then turn them into informers. Running
"touts" is central to effective counterterrorism, if history is any guide.)

------
damoncali
Criminals (I hate to use the word "terrorist" because it has a distracting
political bias - we're talking about people doing bad things to other people)
are not some sort of hyper-disciplined super spies. They do some pretty dumb
things. A while back I met a guy looking to put together a Twitter system
designed to combat drug cartels, who, yes, communicated via _Twitter_. This
was several years ago, but still.

The whole reason I'm so upset about what the NSA is doing is because it
_works_ , and over time it will work much better than it does today.

------
hawkharris
The author is focusing on the wrong issue. He is mostly concerned with whether
or not the surveillance is effective.

If effectiveness were the only consideration, he would have a weak argument.
Even if most terrorists are smart enough to avoid Gmail, Skype and cellular
networks, it might still make sense to eavesdrop in these places.

After all, smart criminals sometimes get caught because they make dumb
mistakes. For example, my understanding is that Sabu (a member of Anonymous)
was caught because he forgot to use Tor in one instance when he logged into a
social network.

But we can argue all day about whether or not PRISM is effective. I think the
author would have a stronger argument if he focused on the fact that the
program is unconstitutional, regardless of how well it works.

~~~
corin_
Why limit your argument to one or the other? Some people will think PRISM is
effective, others may not. Some people may think the privacy issues are
important, others may not. But surely they balance each other out - if the NSA
cannot catch any terrorists, then it doesn't matter if the privacy issues are
not important, PRISM is clearly a waste of money, case over. And presumably
somewhere along the line it could go the other way - if 50% of letters contain
anthrax, would you not be happy sacrificing some privacy to let the NSA to
screen them for you? Or a wider example, what if there was evidence that
without PRISM, terrorists would be killing 1000s of Americans on a weekly
basis - would we all be so against it still?

~~~
hawkharris
You're welcome to make any argument about PRISM. But if your goal is to
discredit the program and ensure others like it won't be established, the
legal argument is stronger and more direct: Government programs can't violate
constitutional rights, regardless of their efficacy. Period.

Why dance around your opponent when you know where to place a powerful right-
hook?

~~~
corin_
Clearly the right-hook hasn't knocked them out yet - which is perhaps why even
the strongest boxers supplement their fist power with at least a little foot
movement.

------
logn
I think the next leak will show they've redefined 'terrorist' and that a
terrorist these days is anyone who does anything the US doesn't like and is
vaguely related ultimately back to national security. So, I think already
we've established that any drug crimes (even low-level ones) are national
security threats. Bitcoin miners will soon be terrorists I think. People
encrypting email are highly suspect and probably a national security threat.
People running free web hosting will soon be terrorists. It directly serves
the interests of the government for everyone to be considered a terrorist.
It's probably one of the biggest loopholes our country's seen.

------
codex
"In 2010, Google estimated that it had indexed just 0.004% of the internet."

I don't believe this. Does anyone else?

~~~
agilebyte
Infographic with source at the bottom here:
[http://urlm.co/blog/2010/10/28/the-awesome-size-of-the-
inter...](http://urlm.co/blog/2010/10/28/the-awesome-size-of-the-internet-
infographic/)

~~~
codex
So Google has indexed 200TB? My cat pictures alone are 1TB!

------
cookiecaper
I don't buy the concept that terrorists don't use common online services. Does
anybody actually believe things are safer if you use HushMail et al as your
provider? While it's unlikely that the NSA has asked HushMail to FTP up all of
its account data as it apparently did with PRISM participants, one would be
highly naive to assume that intelligence services have just decided to leave
certain providers' data untouched just because they're unwilling to lay out
the welcome mat. One would therefore logically conclude that with very basic
steganographic measures, it's easier to hide among the hundreds of millions of
mails that Google processes each day than the thousands processed by HushMail
or other minor email providers (or even a fully-hosted custom mail server at
"terrorists-r-us.com").

Furthermore, if you use any cryptography at all besides SSL you're probably
already on an NSA list somewhere, but GnuPG alleviates all of these concerns
and I'm sure that some terrorist organizations have discovered it. In this
case, there should be no issue using Gmail or other services for your
communication.

------
dclowd9901
I've really nothing more to say about the NSA at this point. I'd just like to
give a shout out to Vice for being one of the most vital and relevant news
organizations of the modern era. Whenever people say journalism is dead, I
just point them to a Vice article. They make me proud to have a journo
background.

~~~
CrunchyJams
They certainly seem less beholden to whomever the mainstream media is trying
not to upset.

~~~
dclowd9901
Indeed, but more than that, they cover some amazing material and actually put
people in places and shed light on some really uncomfortable topics. They
manage to make news as informative as it is enthralling. I can't imagine a
better way to cover news.

~~~
selimthegrim
As someone whose mother was born and raised in Karachi and who visits the city
with some frequency, my jaw dropped when I saw their reporting from there. The
local media won't even go near half the people they managed to get interviews
from. They were a bit jumpy but their brio more makes up for it. That and the
Mexican Mormon drug war were the real kickers.

~~~
selimthegrim
Well to be a bit more accurate, the media will interview them but with kid
gloves. The last time a TV station aired someone obliquely criticizing the MQM
political party (as Vice did), all the cars in their parking lot got torched
and the windows got shot out of their studio while they were broadcasting
live.

------
runarb
Well apparently both Al-Qaeda and some CIA employees uses public email
accounts like Gmail to communicate in secret.[0]

The method is a little bit different than normally email. They used Gmail as a
electronic dropbox by saving messages in the draft folder, but now that NSA
have direct access that are probably picking up that also. So be careful not
to make a draft with text like "the drunk monkey sings at midnight", or the
NSA may come knocking :)

0:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12/heres-
the-e-mail-trick-petraeus-and-broadwell-used-to-communicate/)

~~~
dllthomas
Wasn't this 1) how Petraeus and his biographer carried on their affair, and 2)
how they got caught?

~~~
mpyne
Yes and yes, though #2 didn't happen until the FBI had been tipped off for
other reasons, IIRC.

~~~
dllthomas
Right, and I think it was correlated against other records (hotel stays?)

------
mpyne
Don't the people that the terrorists need to recruit use Skype, and GMail, and
Facebook? Find the recruiters & PR types that have to be where the people are,
and that's one more in you have with a nascent terror cell.

~~~
nooneelse
Indeed. If the objection is that people drop off the easy to see communication
systems and start having more shielded communications as they radicalize, then
the objection carries within itself a description of very pattern that one can
use such a internet traffic surveillance program to search for.

A naive version would generate plenty of false positives, but following up on
random entries in the list generated would quickly reveal classes of other
reasons that people's comms go dark (having children, new job, moving to a new
town, major injury or illness, depression, etc.), and one could start
filtering using that. Also one might get some use out of looking for clusters
of people going dark in various social-connection graphs, and commonalities of
what people fitting the comms-going-dark pattern read and say online.

------
runjake
Some clearly terrorist elements have used all three of the services in the
headline. It still doesn't make NSA's domestic surveillance, in violation of
the Fourth Amendment, right.

------
qwertzlcoatl
I would just like to crosspost a comment from reddit user MarcusHalberstram88
which I found to be insightful :

Ok, I feel I have to speak up. This is why I take issue with subs like
/r/politics, and I would hope for more from /r/technology.

Most people who see this post will only read the title and not follow the link
to the article (even though the title sensationalizes the article). If someone
does actually click, this post links to a Motherboard article, which basically
just cites, summarizes, and links to a Bloomberg article. The Bloomberg
article[1] cites, extrapolates, and links to AIVD UK (a Dutch website). Said
Dutch website[2] (finally) links to the actual report that all these different
sources are supposedly reporting on. That report was by the General
Intelligence and Security Service for the Dutch Ministry of Interiors and
Kingdom Relations.

The actual report itself is just shy of 30 pages long and dedicates one of its
four chapters of findings to "How does online Jihadism work?" (roughly 4
pages).

I think 4 pages discussing where and how (it is thought) 25,000 Jihadists
gather online is one thing. Making a blanket statement saying that terrorists
do not use Verizon, Skype, or Gmail is another. But anyone who just reads the
title of this post, or just reads the article that the post links to, or even
the article that THAT article links to, may believe otherwise.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-
is...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is-not-aimed-
at-terrorists.html)

[2] [https://www.aivd.nl/english/publications-
press/@2873/jihadis...](https://www.aivd.nl/english/publications-
press/@2873/jihadism-web/)

------
mortehu
From the original brochure:

> Of course, jihadists are also active on the surface Web, where they use
> social media and various applications, such as email, Internet telephony and
> chat programmes, to name a few. They use these means of communication to
> actively spread jihadist ideas, recruit new jihadists and proactively
> distribute and promote propaganda material. Jihadists that are active on the
> surface Web are afraid of being detected, which is why there is no (or very
> limited) dynamic interaction, as opposed to what is observed on core forums.

> "Your talk on YouTube can be monitored by the Kuffar. _Many a brother were
> arrested based on intelligence from YouTube_ , they will not hesitate to
> handover your IP details to Kuffar. Therefore, it is NOT the place you
> should be social networking."

The brochure in general seems light on science, and I'm not sure it "drew a
convincing picture", although I admit I didn't read the whole thing.

------
yeezusnice
well they don't use it anymore, thanks to snowden

We all better hope that Bloomberg/Vice is more authoritative on this subject
than the intelligence community or else the NON-ZERO number of terrorism cases
involving these types of comms just went dark.

Btw, wasn't it UBLs courier who was caught through his cell phone?

~~~
talmand
That's crap, anyone paying attention knew that modern communications have been
compromised by various governments over a decade ago, if not longer. The smart
ones never used such unsecured communications in the first place. Nothing
Snowden released changes the fact that only stupid people communicate over
third party services when they are trying to keep secrets. It would be like
the US military issuing unencrypted cell phones to troops on the front-line.

~~~
brown9-2
_The smart ones never used such unsecured communications in the first place._

I don't understand why people always trot this argument out. The dumb
terrorists are capable of killing and injuring innocents also.

~~~
talmand
Just because you don't understand doesn't make it wrong. I agree that dumb
terrorists are capable of killing and injuring innocents, in fact I would say
the dumb ones are the most dangerous because they are rather difficult to
identify beforehand; regardless of spying capabilities our government has.

But none of this has anything to do with my disagreement with the top comment
in that all of the world's terrorists suddenly stopped using Verizon to
discuss their dastardly plans just because of Snowden.

~~~
brown9-2
Apologies, I misread your comment. I've seen a lot of people trot out "well
the smart terrorists already knew this" line in defense of these leaks
purportedly having harmed national security, that it's proof that these leaks
could not have harmed national security.

(which then is a bit ironic to claim that these leaks are not dangerous
because terrorists already knew this, but that these leaks are important for
civil liberties because apparently Americans did not know this)

~~~
talmand
First off, I don't necessarily feel apologies is warranted for this
discussion.

Yes, I find that defense somewhat questionable in some terms because I do
believe the leaks do in fact harm national security. The problem is that it
seems that these programs are dangerously close to crossing the line of
leading into a surveillance state and that the reason it may have crossed that
line is because the people who have the responsibility to reign such things in
have apparently failed to do so.

Therefore, yes, national security was harmed but I'm willing to sacrifice that
somewhat to make sure our liberties are still intact. I don't feel the need to
trade liberties for security if that security is essentially making the
populace prisoners to the state for "their own safety".

I also enjoy seeing the contradictions such as you describe. The reports are
full of "but" moments that no one seems to be addressing. The media is a big
fail on all this.

------
acmeyer9
I also have to disagree with this statement and the article in general. It's
very difficult to say what terrorists use when they are living in the US, let
alone make a general statement that they don't use them because they'd be
stupid to use these services. That actually makes the argument for why using
these services might be advantageous for them even stronger. If you (the
general population) doesn't think they'd use it, that makes it more of a
reason for them to use it.

Let me big clear that this is not an argument for NSA-type surveillance,
however, I don't think we should be arguing against the surveillance using
general statements or more accurately opinions like these. Argue against
surveillance with more factual/strong cases.

------
ansible
This reminds me of the Streetlight Effect, also known as observational bias.
[1]

I just find the whole situation quite disappointing.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect)

------
siculars
I often say, tongue firmly in cheek, that if Google doesn't know something it
is not meant to be known - or exist. Obviously this is not true. I would hate
to think that in the future if "intelligence" does not exist in an NSA
database then it does not exist. Unfortunately, I feel this will be the case.
Let's take the recent Boston Bombing, not only did the US get a tip off but
certainly they had sigint from various sources. Were they able to connect the
dots? No, they were not.

"Intelligence" is more than just rows in a database.

------
ferdo
> The NSA has to collect the metadata from all of our phone calls because
> terrorists, right?

No. The NSA is keeping an eye on us. The National Security State has ossified
into a cult. All non-members of the cult are viewed with suspicion.

When the Inquisition made excuses for its excesses, it was in the name of the
"salvation" of the flock. When the Church of the NSA makes excuses for its
excesses, it's in the name of our "security".

There are always people willing to be fooled by priests and bureaucrats.
Priests and bureaucrats love those people.

------
culshaw
Actually, they were using Gmail drafts to communicate with each other?

~~~
hga
Exactly the point I was going to make. That's how Petraeus was communicating
with his mistress, and they found her by cross referencing checkins at all the
hotels revealed by IP addresses that were at the other end of the
conversation.

------
nrivadeneira
I'm undecided on the issue, however it seems completely logical to me that
terrorists wouldn't use venues that are being monitored by the NSA. Would that
still be the case if those lines of communications weren't monitored at all?
In addition, if the NSA started monitoring whatever the terrorists use at
present, would they continue to use it? Doubtful.

I don't think this article comes to the clever conclusion that it thinks it
does.

------
joemcm
I dislike this article because it asserts that the NSA has ever said "a lot of
terrorists use X, Y and Z." In reality, the NSA has said "tracking this data
w.r.t. terrorism doesn't always prevent terrorist crimes, but it has been
successful in the past." It seems like nonsense to assert that none, zero, nil
terrorists use these services... I agree with Arnor in his comment - this is a
trivializing report.

------
vacri
For the definition of 'terrorist' that includes well-informed, trained cadres,
and not the definition of 'terrorist' that includes rampant amateurs, the kind
that get stopped before they do anything serious. The author has a fairly
naive view of what a terrorist is

------
flipcoder
Spoiler alert: It's not for terrorists at all.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/misc/comments/1gziqi/obamas_lobbyist...](http://www.reddit.com/r/misc/comments/1gziqi/obamas_lobbyists_admit_to_wanting_webcam_spying/)

~~~
mtgx
How fortunate for them that Xbox One exists now.

~~~
Karunamon
Not this crap again.

------
snaky
_>.. may only be good for gathering information on the stupidest, lowest-
ranking of terrorists_

Yes, of course. And 99% of them _are_ in stupidest, lowest-ranking part. As
for the smartest and highest-ranking ones, there is undercover agents and
informators.

------
vermontdevil
Of course. It's all about the $$ and perceived security theater.

------
rhokstar
Don't they use snailmail, tin cans with strings, chalk marks on objects, and
sign language? Lowbie tech.

------
epicwon
What about the Boston marathon bombers? One of them was on welfare. Strong
assumption in the title.

------
pinaceae
Pretty sure the Boston Bombers used exactly those services.

And they were/are US citizens.

------
rdl
Plenty use yahoo and MSN messenger, though, historically.

------
sologoub
This one made me chuckle: "So, essentially, the NSA is deeply compromising our
privacy so that it can do an extremely shitty job of looking for terrorists.
Nice."

Would be so funny, if it wasn't so sad...

------
iagomr
They don't use it because NSA monitors it

------
rob22
one thing i could tell,survilencing the people in USA is bearable(non-
american). but other countries are.

~~~
rob22
one thing i could tell,survilencing the people in USA is bearable(non-
american). but other countries aren't

