press on post-WTC policy

Eugene Leitl Eugene.Leitl at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Wed Sep 12 03:47:59 PDT 2001




-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/">leitl</a>
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http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vnews/display.v?TARGET=printable&article_id=3b9ef8aa31f4b

In eyes of experts, a new age has dawned

By Gregory Richards and Tristan Schweiger
September 12, 2001

As the world reels from the worst terrorist attack in history, observers
are predicting a drastic overhaul of America's domestic and international
policy.

Specialists in political science, international relations and history say
that domestic security will be stepped up in the wake of the attack.

Penn Political Science Professor Stephen Gale, who teaches a popular
seminar on terrorism, likened yesterday's events to the Japanese bombing
of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

"An event like this is a turning point," Gale said. "This changed the
world for the United States."

According to Gale, America may have to resort to the high level of
security under which Israel operates on a daily basis.

"There's only one country that's ever tried to live under this kind of
terrorism -- that's Israel," Gale said.

Throughout yesterday, as Americans struggled to comprehend the severity of
the terrorist attacks, millions were asking who was responsible for the
horrible tragedy.

Although no group or individual has yet claimed responsibility for
yesterday's attacks, Political Science Professor Ian Lustick said he
believed that it may be the work of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, who
is believed to be responsible for the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and
Tanzania.

"He's got the motive, he's got the capability and he's made the threats,"
Lustick said. "Anyone who watches crime television knows that knows that
you have to look in that direction first."

A follower of bin Laden, Ramzi Yousef, masterminded the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Center.

Political Science Professor Anne Norton said that the attack will force
Americans to question their security.

"When wars were fought by armies, we thought we were pretty safe," Norton
said. "But when wars are fought by individuals, we're not safe at all."

She also predicted stronger criticism for Defense Department spending,
especially the large allocation of money for a national missile defense
system.

"One [response] will say, `You guys dropped the ball -- we're not going
throw any more money at you until you've cleaned up your act,'" Norton
said. "Another possibility is `You're spending money on the wrong things.
You've been spending money on traditional warfare and the infrastructure
for traditional warfare. That's not the threat you're going to face.'"

Regardless, military spending will likely increase, she said.

"It is generally true that when there's a threat or an attack, the
Pentagon appropriation goes through like a greased pig," Norton said.

Others said that the events will force America to re-evaluate its policy
concerning the Middle East, specifically regarding the Israeli-Arab
conflict. Lustick said that "eventually, Americans could start to
reevaluate [their] relationship with Israel."

"It's such a huge attack that this could actually lead to Americans asking
what we're doing over there," Lustick said.

Political Science Professor Joanne Gowa said that if the attacks turn out
to be sponsored by bin Laden or other Middle Eastern fundamentalists, it
could cause the United States to bolster its support of Israel.

"The only thing that strikes me as topical is that President Bush might
see a stronger reason to try to intervene in the conflict in Israel," Gowa
said.

Lustick also said that American airports need to adopt higher security
measures reminiscent of European airports. Specifically, Lustick predicted
the use of elaborate, multiple check points, guards with machine guns and
less accessibility to the general public.

Several other experts were hesitant to speculate on the long-term
international effects of the attacks until it is confirmed that the
attacks were, in fact, carried out by foreign terrorists.

Gowa recalled the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, when the attackers turned
out to be American reactionaries.

"First we have to be clear that this is actually an act of foreign
terrorism," Gowa said. "Because when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred,
[foreign terrorism] is what everybody assumed, but it turned out not to be
the case."

Furthermore, Gowa said that the effectiveness of security thus far has
caused her to question whether the attack was actually masterminded by a
foreign terrorist group.

"I've always been surprised that there weren't more successful terrorist
attacks in the U.S.," Gowa said. "That always meant to me that we had a
very effective system.... That's why it's not completely obvious to me
that this attack is foreign-sponsored."

Lustick disagreed with Gowa's assessment of America's preparedness.

"I think this was a humiliation for American intelligence," he said,
pointing out that when an alleged Algerian terrorist was recently arrested
in Seattle, he gave police the names of top terrorists that "they had
never heard of."

Both Gale and Lustick said they were worried about the consequences of a
strong American response to the attack.

"If [the response is similar to that of Pearl Harbor], the scary aspect is
that much of that response could occur in the United States," Lustick
said.

And Gale said that Americans would not tolerate too great a change in
their lives or an infringement on their personal rights.

"Most Americans do not want to have their lives changed," Gale said. "The
cure may be worse than the problem."

Furthermore, some experts said that Arab Americans may become the victims
of misdirected hostility. Political Science Professor Robert Vitalis
stressed that many such citizens may have been victims of the attack.

"Many Arab Americans and Muslims were probably in that building," Vitalis
said.

Gale recalled the movie The Siege, in which terrorism causes the United
States to intern Arab Americans.

But perhaps the strongest question on anyone's mind is how this event
could have happened. According to Nagel, Americans have all been
overwhelmed by "the sense of fragility and vulnerability."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-05-binladen.htm

06/19/2001 - Updated 05:05 PM ET

Terror groups hide behind Web encryption

By Jack Kelley, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - Hidden in the X-rated pictures on several pornographic Web
sites and the posted comments on sports chat rooms may lie the encrypted
blueprints of the next terrorist attack against the United States or its
allies. It sounds farfetched, but U.S. officials and experts say it's the
latest method of communication being used by Osama bin Laden and his
associates to outfox law enforcement. Bin Laden, indicted in the bombing
in 1998 of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, and others are hiding maps
and photographs of terrorist targets and posting instructions for
terrorist activities on sports chat rooms, pornographic bulletin boards
and other Web sites, U.S. and foreign officials say.

"Uncrackable encryption is allowing terrorists - Hamas, Hezbollah,
al-Qaida and others - to communicate about their criminal intentions
without fear of outside intrusion," FBI Director Louis Freeh said last
March during closed-door testimony on terrorism before a Senate panel.
"They're thwarting the efforts of law enforcement to detect, prevent and
investigate illegal activities."

A terrorist's tool

Once the exclusive domain of the National Security Agency, the
super-secret U.S. agency responsible for developing and cracking
electronic codes, encryption has become the everyday tool of Muslim
extremists in Afghanistan, Albania, Britain, Kashmir, Kosovo, the
Philippines, Syria, the USA, the West Bank and Gaza and Yemen, U.S.
officials say.

It's become so fundamental to the operations of these groups that bin
Laden and other Muslim extremists are teaching it at their camps in
Afghanistan and Sudan, they add.

"There is a tendency out there to envision a stereotypical Muslim fighter
standing with an AK-47 in barren Afghanistan," says Ben Venzke, director
of special intelligence projects for iDEFENSE, a cyberintelligence and
risk management company based in Fairfax, Va.

"But Hamas, Hezbollah and bin Laden's groups have very sophisticated,
well-educated people. Their technical equipment is good, and they have the
bright, young minds to operate them," he said.

U.S. officials say bin Laden's organization, al-Qaida, uses money from
Muslim sympathizers to purchase computers from stores or by mail. Bin
Laden's followers download easy-to-use encryption programs from the Web,
officials say, and have used the programs to help plan or carry out three
of their most recent plots:

Wadih El Hage, one of the suspects in the 1998 bombing of two U.S.
embassies in East Africa, sent encrypted e-mails under various names,
including "Norman" and "Abdus Sabbur," to "associates in al Qaida,"
according to the Oct. 25, 1998, U.S. indictment against him. Hage went on
trial Monday in federal court in New York.  Khalil Deek, an alleged
terrorist arrested in Pakistan in 1999, used encrypted computer files to
plot bombings in Jordan at the turn of the millennium, U.S. officials say.
Authorities found Deek's computer at his Peshawar, Pakistan, home and flew
it to the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md. Mathematicians,
using supercomputers, decoded the files, enabling the FBI to foil the
plot.  Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the World Trade Center
bombing in 1993, used encrypted files to hide details of a plot to destroy
11 U.S. airliners. Philippines officials found the computer in Yousef's
Manila apartment in 1995. U.S. officials broke the encryption and foiled
the plot. Two of the files, FBI officials say, took more than a year to
decrypt.

"All the Islamists and terrorist groups are now using the Internet to
spread their messages," says Reuven Paz, academic director of the
Institute for Counter-Terrorism, an independent Israeli think tank.

Messages in dots

U.S. officials and militant Muslim groups say terrorists began using
encryption - which scrambles data and then hides the data in existing
images - about five years ago.

But the groups recently increased its use after U.S. law enforcement
authorities revealed they were tapping bin Laden's satellite telephone
calls from his base in Afghanistan and tracking his activities.

"It's brilliant," says Ahmed Jabril, spokesman for the militant group
Hezbollah in London. "Now it's possible to send a verse from the Koran, an
appeal for charity and even a call for jihad and know it will not be seen
by anyone hostile to our faith, like the Americans."

Extremist groups are not only using encryption to disguise their e-mails
but their voices, too, Attorney General Janet Reno told a presidential
panel on terrorism last year, headed by former CIA director John Deutsch.
Encryption programs also can scramble telephone conversations when the
phones are plugged into a computer.

"In the future, we may tap a conversation in which the terrorist discusses
the location of a bomb soon to go off, but we will be unable to prevent
the terrorist act when we cannot understand the conversation," Reno said.

Here's how it works: Each image, whether a picture or a map, is created by
a series of dots. Inside the dots are a string of letters and numbers that
computers read to create the image. A coded message or another image can
be hidden in those letters and numbers.

They're hidden using free encryption Internet programs set up by privacy
advocacy groups. The programs scramble the messages or pictures into
existing images. The images can only be unlocked using a "private key," or
code, selected by the recipient, experts add. Otherwise, they're
impossible to see or read.

"You very well could have a photograph and image with the time and
information of an attack sitting on your computer, and you would never
know it,"  Venzke says. "It will look no different than a photograph
exchanged between two friends or family members."

U.S. officials concede it's difficult to intercept, let alone find,
encrypted messages and images on the Internet's estimated 28 billion
images and 2 billion Web sites.

Even if they find it, the encrypted message or image is impossible to read
without cracking the encryption's code. A senior Defense Department
mathematician says cracking a code often requires lots of time and the use
of a government supercomputer.

It's no wonder the FBI wants all encryption programs to file what amounts
to a "master key" with a federal authority that would allow them, with a
judge's permission, to decrypt a code in a case of national security. But
civil liberties groups, which offer encryption programs on the Web to
further privacy, have vowed to fight it.

Officials say the Internet has become the modern version of the "dead
drop," a slang term describing the location where Cold War-era spies left
maps, pictures and other information.

But unlike the "dead drop," the Internet, U.S. officials say, is proving
to be a much more secure way to conduct clandestine warfare.

"Who ever thought that sending encrypted streams of data across the
Internet could produce a map on the other end saying 'this is where your
target is' or 'here's how to kill them'?" says Paul Beaver, spokesman for
Jane's Defense Weekly in London, which reports on defense and
cyberterrorism issues. "And who ever thought it could be done with near
perfect security? The Internet has proven to be a boon for terrorists."





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