---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 14:13:23 +0200 From: Hadmut Danisch <hadmut@danisch.de> To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com Subject: Did the US defeat wiretapping success? As far as I heard from the news (who knows how much news meet reality...) the CIA and NSA could not find a real correlation between the terrorists and Bin Laden (or at least they couldn't within the first days after). German news magazine DER SPIEGEL (current issue, p. 27) reports, that the german intelligence service BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) did find that link. Usually wiretapping people of Bin Laden's organization is found as good as useless, because these people keep strict discipline when using phones. In contrast to that, some of them dropped discipline after the attacks. They did jubilate and strut with their attacks. This was wiretapped by BND and forwarded to the US. The BND asked the US to keep this absolutely secret, because the BND hoped to catch more of these phone calls and thus more information, what obviously wouldn't work if it got publicly known. US senator Orrin Hatch is said to have publicly revealed this wiretapping success, thus sealing this source of information. Can anyone confirm this story? What's the use of a crypto-ban and wiretapping, or an intelligence service in general, if american authorities behave like this? Hadmut --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@wasabisystems.com