Terrorism in America After 9/11

The New America Foundation has a report on Terrorism in America After 9/11 "A comprehensive, up-to-date source of online information about terrorist activity in the United States and by Americans overseas since 9/11". So far there are five parts, all short, with nice graphics.

Post Paris Stupidity

Republicans have started to say that we shouldn't take in Syrian refugees because they might be terrorists.

Bullshit. First off, this just shows how afraid (and stupid) they are. The refugees are the people fleeing ISIS. And young orphans aren't terrorists. And they say we're taking too many (Trump said hundreds of thousands). In fact we've said we'd take only 10,000, way less than other nations and the vetting process is quite extensive, taking 18-24 months, they must have UN refugee status, go through various interviews and background checks, biometric data and involving "the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Federal Bureau of Investigation". Yes we should have strict vetting and we do, it's slow enough that we're way behind schedule. And now (Republican) governors are saying they won't take them into their state, as if they have any control over this. Though the Washington Post points out How Republican governors could again make life miserable for Syrian refugees. Republican Presidential hopeful (and asshole) Ted Cruz and front runner Jeb Bush have said we should only let in Christian refugees. Nope, that's not religious discrimination at all. Seriously these guys should never lecture anyone on the Constitution.

The other big thing in the news is about how terrorists use encryption and since Snowden is gotten worse and Paris is his fault. Again, bullshit. Glenn Greenwald rips this argument to threads in Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS. Terrorists use lots of technology just like anyone does. We know the terrorists used cars to travel during their attacks, why is no one talking about banning cars, or giving governments a kills switch to disable cars when we're in a yellow alert? Also, the terrorists assume the US is listening to all their electronic communications, so they don't use them much.

And Snowden's revelation wasn't that the NSA listens to terrorists (or even foreigners), that's what they're supposed to do. What Snowden revealed is that the NSA is listening to every American. Putting "backdoors" in everything will make your communications less secure to everyone, like hackers and terrorists and China. Your health care records, bank accounts, employment records, photos, emails, etc. And lets be clear, U.S. Mass Surveillance Has No Record of Thwarting Large Terror Attacks, Regardless of Snowden Leaks.

Despite the intelligence community’s attempts to blame NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for the tragic attacks in Paris on Friday, the NSA’s mass surveillance programs do not have a track record — before or after Snowden — of identifying or thwarting actual large-scale terrorist plots.

But the reason there haven’t been any large-scale terror attacks by ISIS in the U.S. is not because they were averted by the intelligence community, but because — with the possible exception of one that was foiled by local police — none were actually planned.

Even still, the metadata collection program is supposed to give valuable intelligence even if the messages are encrypted. But that's not working out so well, The Paris attacks weren’t stopped by metadata surveillance. That hasn’t stopped officials from saying it might have.

Yes, Terrorists Use Encryption But That Doesn't Mean It's A Bad Thing. "According to Canetti, Boston University cryptography professor: “[Law enforcement] developing better encryption-cracking tools is a very good thing. But they should concentrate on encryption made by bad guys. Making the everyday encryption of the general public weak isn’t going to get you what you want, [not] when it comes to coordinated terrorist attacks. There’s no silver bullet answer. It took us hundreds of years to get democracy right…It’s going to take time for us to get this right.”"

And to the idiots that can't distinguish between ISIS and Islam; would you rather fight ISIS who's size estimate is about 50,000 to 250,000 people, or Islam with over 1,500,000,000 followers. Can you keep it straight now?

Smart on Terrorism by Nancy LeTourneau. "Because once again, the Republicans are attempting to drag us into making stupid moves in order to avoid being labeled “soft on terrorism.” So it’s time for Democrats to get out ahead of this kind of fear-mongering. I’d suggest they do something similar to what former Attorney General Eric Holder did to combat the “soft on crime” message…he began a Smart on Crime initiative. When it comes to terrorism, we’d don’t need the bellicose chest-thumping we’re hearing from Republicans, we need leadership that is smart on terrorism."

The new dialog between the US and Russia is a case in point. While before, the US couldn't help Russia and Russia couldn't help the US, it turns out it might be possible for both the US and Russia to help France. And maybe even Iran, Saudi Arabia and China could too.

Here are some other interesting articles on how we shouldn't overreact.

• ISIS can only succeed if we overreact — so we shouldn’t.
• Australian news anchor perfectly sums up how Islamophobia plays into ISIS's hands
• Islamic State’s Goal: “Eliminating the Grayzone” of Coexistence Between Muslims and the West
• I was held hostage by Isis. They fear our unity more than our airstrikes

And finally, he's a wonderful father explaining all of this to his young son. Lots of people could learn this lesson (and no you're not supposed to take flowers v guns literally).

What Do We Really Know About Osama bin Laden’s Death?

The New York Times writes What Do We Really Know About Osama bin Laden’s Death?

When Seymour Hersh wrote his article in May there was much debate as to the validity and I figured I'd let things settle before diving in too much. This seems a reasonable attempt to followup and dive in on some of the details. As it says:

Where does the official bin Laden story stand now? For many, it exists in a kind of liminal state, floating somewhere between fact and mythology. The writing of history is a process, and this story still seems to have a long way to go before the government’s narrative can be accepted as true, or rejected as false.

It’s not that the truth about bin Laden’s death is unknowable; it’s that we don’t know it. And we can’t necessarily console ourselves with the hope that we will have more answers any time soon; to this day, the final volume of the C.I.A.’s official history of the Bay of Pigs remains classified. We don’t know what happened more than a half-century ago, much less in 2011.

George W. Bush Made Retroactive N.S.A. ‘Fix’ After Hospital Room Showdown

The New York Times reports George W. Bush Made Retroactive N.S.A. ‘Fix’ After Hospital Room Showdown.

"For example, Mr. Bush’s secret directives to the agency, starting in October 2001, said the N.S.A. could ‘acquire’ phone and email metadata — logs showing who contacted whom, but not what they said — if at least one end was foreign or if a specific message were linked to terrorism. But the agency was apparently gathering purely domestic metadata in bulk, too, the Justice Department found.

Mr. Bush, in response to the discrepancy identified by the Justice Department, declared that the N.S.A. was authorized to systematically collect the metadata of purely domestic communications, too, so long as analysts only looked at records linked to terrorism. He also declared that the agency had been authorized to do that all along."

Americans Killed by Terrorism Since 9/11

One of the things that drove me crazy last night during the debates was when Jeb said his brother kept us safe, and that he did that by standing on the rubble with the fireman and showing that we were strong. As if 9/11 happening on his watch didn't count at all. Even though he ignored a national security briefing called Obama Determined to Strike in US while he was away in August on vacation (after taking more vacation than any other president in his first year. But hey, whatever.

The Council on Foreign Relations in July posted Obama’s Terrorism Mistake fact checking an Obama statement " if you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100." Obama's statement was wrong. Maybe he meant to say under his term, or maybe he meant to exclude Iraq and Afghanistan. The article links to this FP article from January which delves into the complexities of counting such a thing. They do claim "of the 335 Americans who have died from terrorism since 9/11, 268, or 80 percent, died within Iraq or Afghanistan".

Anyway, I plotted their data and just assumed that the Bush-Obama transition happened Jan 1, 2009 instead of Jan 20.

Update: Here's a fun twitter stream to read, sounds like a Monty Python skit; "Right. So Katrina, Anthrax, 9/11, those multiple wars, the economy, the bank crisis, terrorism, then safe?"

Zero for 40 at Predicting Attacks: Why Do Media Still Take FBI Terror Warnings Seriously?

Zero for 40 at Predicting Attacks: Why Do Media Still Take FBI Terror Warnings Seriously? "On Monday, several mainstream media outlets repeated the latest press release by the FBI that country was under a new 'heightened terror alert' from 'ISIL-inspired attacks' 'leading up to the July 4th weekend.' "

The threat was given extra credence when former CIA director—and consultant at DC PR firm Beacon Global Strategies—Michael Morell went on CBS This Morning (6/29/15) and scared the ever-living bejesus out of everyone by saying he “wouldn’t be surprised if we were sitting [in the studio] next week discussing an attack on the US.” The first piece of evidence Morell used to justify his apocalyptic posture, the “50 ISIS arrests,” was accompanied by a scary map on the CBS jumbotron showing “ISIS arrests” all throughout the US:

But one key detail is missing from this graphic: None of these “ISIS arrests” involved any actual members of ISIS, only members of the FBI—and their network of informants—posing as such. (The one exception being the man arrested in Arizona, who, while having no contact with ISIS, was also not prompted by the FBI.) So even if one thinks the threat of “lone wolf” attacks is a serious one, it cannot be said these are really “ISIS arrests.” Perhaps on some meta-level, it shows an increase of “radicalization,” but it’s impossible to distinguish between this and simply more aggressive sting operations by the FBI.

Reassessing Airport Security

Bruce Schneier on Reassessing Airport Security

News that the Transportation Security Administration missed a whopping 95% of guns and bombs in recent airport security "red team" tests was justifiably shocking. It's clear that we're not getting value for the $7 billion we're paying the TSA annually.

But there's another conclusion, inescapable and disturbing to many, but good news all around: we don't need $7 billion worth of airport security. These results demonstrate that there isn't much risk of airplane terrorism, and we should ratchet security down to pre-9/11 levels.

We don't need perfect airport security. We just need security that's good enough to dissuade someone from building a plot around evading it. If you're caught with a gun or a bomb, the TSA will detain you and call the FBI. Under those circumstances, even a medium chance of getting caught is enough to dissuade a sane terrorist. A 95% failure rate is too high, but a 20% one isn't."

He also has a (relatively short) three part article on Should Companies Do Most of Their Computing in the Cloud? part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Pentagon accidentally sent live anthrax samples to labs via FedEx

We learned this week that the Pentagon accidentally sent live anthrax samples to labs via FedEx.

The Pentagon this week said that it accidentally sent live anthrax samples to government and private laboratories in at least nine states, and to a US military base in South Korea. As the Associated Press reports, the samples originated from a Department of Defense lab in Utah, which was supposed to send out killed samples. The labs were not equipped to handle the live spores they received instead, though military officials say there is no indication that the potentially fatal bacteria poses a broader health risk, and exposed workers are undergoing treatment.

Does this count as one of the biggest terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11? (I'm only half joking).

The many problems with Seymour Hersh's Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory

Vox explains The many problems with Seymour Hersh's Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory "Hersh's story is amazing to read, alleging a vast American-Pakistani conspiracy to stage the raid and even to fake high-level diplomatic incidents as a sort of cover. But his allegations are largely supported only by two sources, neither of whom has direct knowledge of what happened, both of whom are retired, and one of whom is anonymous. The story is riven with internal contradictions and inconsistencies."

So I'm not going to bother reading Hersh's story.

The al Qaeda Files: Bin Laden Documents Reveal a Struggling Organization

The Intercept reports on The al Qaeda Files: Bin Laden Documents Reveal a Struggling Organization. Kinda interesting insider stuff.

Exclusive: TSA Issues Secret Warning on ‘Catastrophic’ Threat to Aviation

Remember the threat levels moving from green to yellow which basically provided no information about what to actually do? Apparently it's just as bad inside the TSA. Some are worried about a Thermite threat on plane which would be difficult to put out and potentially deadly. There's not specific threat and it would be difficult to get a device and igniter past screening but it's still a threat. So what should be done if such a device goes off on board? Well they just tell you what not to do.

The Intercept reports TSA Issues Secret Warning on ‘Catastrophic’ Threat to Aviation "TSA warned federal air marshals not to use customary methods of extinguishing fires — the water or halon fire extinguishers currently found on most aircraft — which would make the reaction worse, creating toxic fumes. Instead, air marshals are told to ‘recognize a thermite ignition’ — but TSA has provided no training or guidance on how to do so, according to multiple sources familiar with the Issue."

Here's the real reason North Korea hacked Sony. It has nothing to do with The Interview

Max Fisher says Here's the real reason North Korea hacked Sony. It has nothing to do with The Interview. "The effort that North Korean state media makes to convince us they're crazy gets to the three real reasons that North Korea launches these occasional attacks."

Those three reasons are:

1. By appearing crazy North Korea's enemies (who are far stronger) try to avoid conflicts
2. By keeping tensions high, they feed their internal propaganda machine, keeping the party in power
3. it's really only two reasons

"This strategy of portraying itself as crazy is remarkably effective at securing North Korea's strategic goals. But it is also quite dangerous. By design, the risk of escalation is high, so as to make the situation just dangerous enough that foreign leaders will want to deescalate. And it puts pressure on American, South Korean, and Japanese leaders to decide how to respond — knowing that any punishment will only serve to bolster North Korean propaganda and encourage further belligerence. In this sense, the attacks are calibrated to be just severe enough to demand our attention, but not so bad as to lead to all-out war."

FYI, Ars Technica says State-sponsored or not, Sony Pictures malware “bomb” used slapdash code. "Compared to other state-sponsored malware that researchers have analyzed, 'It's a night and day difference in quality,' said Craig Williams, senior technical leader for Cisco’s Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group, in an interview with Ars. 'The code is simplistic, not very complex, and not very obfuscated.'"

Then again, Wired says, The Evidence That North Korea Hacked Sony Is Flimsy.

Terrorism in Sinai

The Middle East Institute created a Special Feature: Terrorism in Sinai "The recent escalation of terrorist attacks in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has received widespread international attention, but is not a new phenomenon. MEI’s History of Terrorism in Sinai, which includes an interactive timeline and map, follows terrorist activity - by location, method, target, and associated group - in this geopolitical hotspot over the last decade.  Because of the nature of the security crisis in Sinai, this is not a comprehensive record, but a curated account of the most relevant attacks and events that have been reported to date."

Khorasan, explained: why the US is bombing an al-Qaeda group you’ve never heard of

Vox provides Khorasan, explained: why the US is bombing an al-Qaeda group you’ve never heard of

Obama's legal argument for droning an American citizen without trial, explained

Obama's legal argument for droning an American citizen without trial, explained - Vox "We finally know the legal argument the Obama administration used to justify killing American citizen and alleged al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals forced the administration to release the Justice Department memo making the argument and, on Monday, the memo went public."

Basically it's the 2001 AUMF but the document making this specific case is so redacted it's unconvincing. While most believe that Anwar al-Awlaki was a bad guy, the case is far more dubias for his 16 year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki who was killed by a US drone two weeks after Anwar.

After seven years, exactly one person gets off the gov’t no-fly list

Ars Technica reports After seven years, exactly one person gets off the gov’t no-fly list

The Ibrahim case marks the first and only successful challenge to the terrorist watch-listing program, which arose following the 9/11 attacks. But Ibrahim's case, as just one of hundreds of thousands of individuals who have been placed on such lists, shows the system's opacity. First, the only surefire way to even determine if one is on such a list in the US is to attempt to board a flight and be denied. Even after that happens, when a denied person inquires about his or her status, the likely response will be that the government ‘can neither confirm nor deny’ the placement on such lists.

The government's surrender in Ibrahim comes on the heels of a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union that shows just how insanely difficult it is to contest one's status on the government blacklists. The ACLU explains:

The 'redress' procedures the US government provides for those who have been wrongly or mistakenly included on a watchlist are wholly inadequate. Even after people know the government has placed them on a watchlist... the government's official policy is to refuse to confirm or deny watchlist status. Nor is there any meaningful way to contest one's designation as a potential terrorist and ensure that the US government... removes or corrects inadequate records. The result is that innocent people can languish on the watchlists indefinitely, without real recourse.

Cory Doctorow summed the insanity up nicely:

The ACLU says that the national terrorism watchlist has 1.1 million names on it, and an AP report from 2012 found 21,000 people on the no-fly list. Recently, Rahinah Ibrahim became the first person to be officially, publicly removed from a no-fly list, after the government was forced to admit that she'd been placed there due to a bureaucratic error. All through the Ibrahim case, the government argued that disclosing any facts about her no-fly status would endanger national security, but ultimately it was obvious that the only potential risk was that the government's sloppiness would be disclosed. The state was willing to spend millions of dollars and ruin an innocent person's life rather than admitting that an FBI agent literally ticked the wrong box.

Why Isn't the Fourth Amendment Classified as Top Secret?

Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic conducts a reductio ad absurdum argument, Why Isn't the Fourth Amendment Classified as Top Secret?. "Stewart Baker, an attorney who worked in the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush Administration, participated in a debate about Edward Snowden:"

"You can't debate our intelligence capabilities and how to control them in the public without disclosing all of the things that you're discussing to the very people you're trying to gather intelligence about," he said. "Your targets are listening to the debates." In fact, he continued, they're listening particularly closely. For that reason, publicly debating intelligence techniques, targets and limits is foolish. As soon as targets figure out the limits of what authorities can touch, they'll change their tactics accordingly. In his view, limits should be set in secret. A class of overseers with security clearances can make the necessary judgment calls.

Trevor Timm, co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, attempted to defend normal democratic debate. "What separates us from countries like Russia and China is that we can have these types of debates with an informed public that are completely aware of what types of surveillance are available to governments and what the legal standards are," he argued. "We're not specifically debating who the NSA is going to spy on, but whole surveillance regimes. If we didn't debate that in this country, the Fourth Amendment would be classified. But it's not."

I found it entertaining in an academic sort of way until I got to the part where he linked to this article, EFF: The Fourth Amendment Is Not Top Secret. It seems at some point the EFF made a Freedom of Information Act request and got back a document so heavily redacted that in further court actions some of it was released. The government (I think the DOJ) had redacted as Top Secret the text of the Fourth Amendent in the document!

Americans Are 110 Times More Likely to Die from Contaminated Food Than Terrorism

Alternet writes Americans Are 110 Times More Likely to Die from Contaminated Food Than Terrorism

In 2011, the year of Osama bin Laden's death, the  State Department reported that 17 Americans were killed in all terrorist incidents worldwide. The same year, a single outbreak of listeriosis from  tainted cantaloupe killed 33 people in the United States. Foodborne pathogens also sickened 48.7 million, hospitalized 127,839 and caused a total of  3,037 deaths. This is a typical year, not an aberration.

We have more to fear from contaminated cantaloupe than from al-Qaeda, yet the United States spends $75 billion per year spread across  15 intelligence agencies in a scattershot attempt to prevent terrorism, illegally spying on its own citizens in the process. By comparison, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is  struggling to secure $1.1 billion in the 2014 federal budget for its food inspection program, while tougher food processing and inspection regulations passed in 2011  are held up by agribusiness lobbying in Congress. The situation is so dire that Jensen Farms, the company that produced the toxic cantaloupe that killed 33 people in 2011,  had never been inspected by the FDA.

This isn't arguing that we shouldn't try to stop terrorism, it's arguing that we should pay more attention to food safety.

To Understand Terrorism and Threat Assessment, Look to Aum

L'Hôte: to understand terrorism and threat assessment, look to Aum "Just as important was what the Japanese government and people did not do. They didn't panic. They didn't make sweeping changes to their way of life. They didn't implement a vast system of domestic surveillance. They didn't suspend basic civil rights. They didn't begin to capture, torture, and kill without due process. They didn't, in other words, allow themselves to be terrorized. Instead, they addressed the threat. They investigated and arrested the cult's leadership. They tried them in civilian courts and earned convictions through due process. They buried their dead. They mourned. And they moved on. In every sense, it was a rational, adult, mature response to a terrible terrorist act, one that remained largely in keeping with liberal democratic ideals."

How One Heroic Mom Single-Handedly Stopped the London Terror Attack

The next time someone repeats "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun" remember this amazing story. How One Heroic Mom Single-Handedly Stopped the London Terror Attack

"Speaking with the Daily Telegraph, Loyau-Kennett described jumping off a bus in order to attend to the soldier's wounds.

'And then when I went up there was this black guy with a revolver and a kitchen knife, he had what looked like butcher’s tools and he had a little axe, to cut the bones, and two large knives and he said 'move off the body,' she said. 'So I thought 'OK, I don’t know what is going on here’ and he was covered with blood. I thought I had better start talking to him before he starts attacking somebody else. I thought these people usually have a message so I said 'what do you want?''

Loyau-Kennett says the man confessed to the soldier's slaying, and then declared, 'I killed him because he killed Muslims.'

Despite earlier reports that the men were possibly drunk or on drugs, Loyau-Kennett says the man she spoke with was neither. 'He was in full control of his decisions and ready to everything he wanted to do,' she told the Telegraph.

'We want to start a war in London tonight,' Loyau-Kennett recalled one of the men saying.

She kept both of them talking by trying to persuade them to hand over their weapons, and distracting them from the fact that they were slowly being surrounded by police.

The two were subsequently shot and taken into custody."