TG:
I was looking for some hard data. Secondhand unknown third party accusations are pretty weak tea.
OK I completly understand that.
So I am listening to Fox News and a host has a guest on who has a background in intelligence. During the interview he states that Snowden's revelations are aiding AQ because the terrorists are now using them to reverse engineer how U.S. Intel gathers data so they, then, can avoid it.
I file it away, being concerned, but never really think I will have occasion to use the info again.
Then this thread happens.
What do I do?
Another point; we're on an internet forum, which I regard (possible wrongly?) as an informal place to chat and exchange ideas and even enter into light hearted debates. This is
not a college thesis where I would be prepared, and be expected, to provide a source for every claim I make. You are not required, nor is anyone else, to believe what I say if you have strong beliefs to the contrary.
I personally don't understand why the claim that Snowden's leaks have helped AQ should be received as some sort of wild-assed guess-work, or even totally discredited.
Is it so hard to believe AQ would make use of the data? Do you think they're too stupid or ignorant to do that? That's a pretty dangerous assumption to make; to underestimate your enemies.
Making use of intercepted data, or another country's security leaks is such S.O.P. (
Standard
Operating
Procedure) that it is actually more interesting to find incidents where it DIDN'T happen, or didn't happen quite as it perhaps should have.
During WW2 we were intercepting Japanese diplomatic communiques and decoding them in what was called "Operation Magic." The info we gleaned was called "Purple Intelligence" as was distributed to only 12 people high up in the government (one of whom was FDR) called "the twelve apostles."
At one point some of this data was transmited to England. The doofus who encoded it made an error and used an outdated code to transmit it. The code he used was believed to have been broken by the Germans.
This was discovered by the British officer who received it, and he sent out the appropriate alarms.
What SHOULD have been the result of this?
Several things. First the Germans, who we learned after the war DID glom onto this and inform the Japanese (they were allied at the time). The Japanese at this point should have realized they'd been compromised and stop sending real info out over the compromised pathways. If they'd been slightly more sophisticated (they likely WERE -- normally) they would use the compromised codes and pathways to spread disinformation; stuff they WANTED us to believe true.
American intel, OTOH, should have began to doubt the veracity of any intel that was intercepted through the pathway/code that had been compromised.
BUT, apparantly, the Japanese somehow goofed and kept on sending out good vital intel over that network .... and we goofed too; there's no information claiming we started treating the "compromised" purple info as disinformation; we kept believing it real. Bizarrely, of course these two errors cancelled themselves out.
If you put this in a movie, no one would believe it.
If we had an AQ-like group in America I'd call them terrorists without using quotation marks to muddy the issue.
CIA
Really? The CIA is plotting terrorist acts against America and blowing up our buildings and killing innocents?
I really wish people would stop treating the errors and mistakes we make in the field as though it was actually our government's policy.
It isn't.
Grow up.