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Islamic State using leaked Snowden info to evade U.S. intelligence

Sep 7, 2014 3:19 pm By Robert Spencer

edward-snowden1How proud Snowden and his friend Glenn Greenwald (who has addressed gatherings of Hamas-linked CAIR) must be to be enabling jihad on this scale. “Islamic State using leaked Snowden info to evade U.S. intelligence,” by Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, September 4, 2014:

A former top official at the National Security Agency says the Islamic State terrorist group has “clearly” capitalized on the voluminous leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and is exploiting the top-secret disclosures to evade U.S. intelligence.

Bottom line: Islamic State killers are harder to find because they know how to avoid detection.

Chris Inglis was the NSA’s deputy director during Mr. Snowden’s flood of documents to the news media last year. Mr. Snowden disclosed how the agency eavesdrops, including spying on Internet communications such as emails and on the Web’s ubiquitous social media.

Asked by The Washington Times if the Islamic State has studied Mr. Snowden’s documents and taken action, Mr. Inglis answered, “Clearly.”

The top-secret spill has proven ready-made for the Islamic State (also referred to as ISIL or ISIS). It relies heavily on Internet channels to communicate internally and to spread propaganda.

Mr. Snowden “went way beyond disclosing things that bore on privacy concerns,” said Mr. Inglis, who retired in January. “‘Sources and methods’ is what we say inside the intelligence community — the means and methods we use to hold our adversaries at risk, and ISIL is clearly one of those.

“Having disclosed all of those methods, or at least some degree of those methods, it would be impossible to imagine that, as intelligent as they are in the use of technology, in the employment of communications for their own purposes, it’s impossible to imagine that they wouldn’t understand how they might be at risk to intelligence services around the world, not the least of which is the U.S. And they necessarily do what they think is in their best interest to defend themselves,” he said.

Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden ran the NSA when al Qaeda struck on Sept. 11, 2001. He moved to modernize technology and methodology in an agency that some internal critics said “had gone deaf” in the 1990s.

“The changed communications practices and patterns of terrorist groups following the Snowden revelations have impacted our ability to track and monitor these groups,” said Mr. Hayden, who writes a bimonthly column for The Times.

Matthew G. Olsen, who directs the National Counterterrorism Center, supports Mr. Hayden’s assessment.

“Following the disclosure of the stolen NSA documents, terrorists are changing how they communicate to avoid surveillance. They are moving to more secure communications platforms, using encryption and avoiding electronic communications altogether,” Mr. Olsen, a former NSA general counsel, said Wednesday at the Brookings Institution. “This is a problem for us in many areas where we have limited human collection and depend on intercepted communications to identify and disrupt plots.”

A former military official said some Islamic State operators have virtually disappeared, giving no hint as to their whereabouts or actions.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, an Iraqi devoted to former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is known to practice evasive tradecraft that undoubtedly improved because of Mr. Snowden’s disclosures.

A former military intelligence official said the U.S. thought it had killed him several times when he was a chieftain in al Qaeda in Iraq, which morphed into the Islamic State. The U.S. later discovered he had passed his communication devices to another terrorist whom intelligence agencies tracked thinking he was the man who then went by the name Abu Dura.

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Filed Under: Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), United States, Useful idiots Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. John says

    Sep 7, 2014 at 3:55 pm

    I bet Greenwald is pretty pleased with himself since he seems like a typical leftist.

  2. Jovial Joe says

    Sep 7, 2014 at 4:43 pm

    As in the recent assassination of Al-Shabab’s leader and Israel’s assassination of the Hamas command, it is human intelligence and assets that win the day, always has been and always will be. It comes down to bribery and betrayal; human weakness in other words.

  3. Beagle says

    Sep 7, 2014 at 4:55 pm

    The problem isn’t a lack of intelligence gathering overseas. The problem is a lack of mental intelligence. The US had Abu Bakr in its grasp and let him go. No amount of technological sophistication can make up for basic old-fashioned stupid.

    • sujith says

      Sep 8, 2014 at 9:01 am

      The fact is even before snowden revelation ….the terrorists knew they could be tracked using internet , cell phone ….and that explains the elaborate avoidance tactics used by Osama bin laden.

      So this attempt to link Snowden with difficulty in tracking terrorists is just a Lame assed attempt.

      So how did the Terrorists know about it earlier ? It was the trusted war on terror Ally – The pukistanis .

      They alerted their jihadi bros…..and used it to protect Osama bin Laden too.

      The dumb buts in NSA still don’t get it don’t they ?

  4. Larry S says

    Sep 7, 2014 at 5:30 pm

    Mark my words: Snowden’s leaks will result in loss of lives. I will not be able to tell you exactly when that occurs, but his treachery is going to kill. Why so many people consider the traitor a hero is quite beyond me.

    • johnny says

      Sep 7, 2014 at 10:02 pm

      Traitor? The government is violating the constitution. It is brain deads like you that don’t see that. Oh and FYI, they are not that dumb as not to know the internet can be traced. Oh, and I think these thing generate from somewhere near Iraq. Sheeze…they are they bomb them. Simple

  5. An Unhappy Camper says

    Sep 7, 2014 at 5:59 pm

    I’m not so sure about this. Surely after 9/11 and the madness that followed these guys knew their communication was being monitored. The US spent billions in monitoring the internet cell phones and other forms of Communication. The guys that make up IS may be Muslims but there not all that stupid. I think this is more to piggy backing on the IS hysteria and to smear Snowden, and distract from the fact that the NSA, CIA and the entire American Intelligence community didn’t see IS coming. That should scare everybody if these bone heads missed IS what else is swimming around out these they’re not seeing.

    • Tom Davis says

      Sep 9, 2014 at 3:10 pm

      Yes, the jihadists knew they were the objects of attempts to monitor communications (which is not the same thing as they “knew their communication WAS being monitored”). But, they also had terrorism operations to manage, and such operations put and will continue to put pressure on them to use such communications. They know that they have to take risks and thus make tradeoffs on their communications security. This is not a black-white, either-or subject.

      And how do you know that the ENTIRE U.S. intelligence community didn’t see IS coming? You have access to the classified reports? My reading of unclassified and leaked reports stretching back over 50 years tells me that it is far more likely that portions of the intelligence community knew full well that IS was brewing, and that the real problem is that their political superiors sanitized and ignored any such intelligence that didn’t fit their political goals.

  6. Angemon says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 7:58 am

    B-B-But, but, but, the MSM says Snowden is a hero unfairly persecuted!

  7. voegelinian says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 8:34 pm

    Some here evidently can’t grasp the elementary difference between:

    1) Muslims were able to evade tracking to a certain extent before the Snowden leaks

    and

    2) the Snowden leaks made the ongoing Muslim need to evade tracking in order to pursue their two-track jihad (stealth and bloody jihad) easier.

  8. Uncle Vladdi says

    Sep 8, 2014 at 9:46 pm

    And the fact that 0bama himself hired, paid, trained and armed ISIS via the CIA had nothing to do with their agile counter-surveillance training abilities, I guess?

    Nice try, but *maybe* if the NSA hadn’t been busy ILLEGALLY spying on innocent (non-muslim) Americans in the first place, Snowden wouldn’t have HAD to have leaked news of their CRIMES to everyone.

    • Tom Davis says

      Sep 9, 2014 at 2:57 pm

      GOOD point on the training given to the anti-Assad forces.

      LOUSY point on Snowden’s actions. Even if true, Snowden didn’t HAVE to leak anything beyond the alleged ‘spying on innocent Americans’. No, his wholesale leaks of U.S. intelligence methods went way beyond what was necessary to achieve that goal. His actions indicate that his goal was to cripple U.S. intelligence, and the ‘spying on innocent Americans’ line is simply a cover and an excuse.

  9. Brother Mark:) says

    Sep 9, 2014 at 10:07 am

    Of course, the N.S.A. told us this this so we can believe it……..after all, they would have no reason to lie about him….right?

    Brother Mark:)
    http://www.talktruthful.com

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