European antiterrorism agencies favor human intelligence over technology

The tip from Spain was only a vague warning. But it was enough for France's domestic intelligence agents to go to work, tapping phones, tailing suspects and squeezing informants. Before long, they rolled up a group of Muslim men in a provincial French town who, beneath a tranquil surface, were drawing up al-Qaeda-inspired plans to set off a bomb in the Paris subway. The plot, described by a source with firsthand information, was one of 15 planned terrorist attacks by jihadist cells in France that have been thwarted in recent years, according to a count by the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI), France's main antiterrorism force. One was a bomb plot directed against the directorate's own headquarters.

The antiterrorism policing—it is a not a "war," specialists here emphasized—has been conducted for the most part in the dark, and in a style that sets France and other European countries apart from the United States. As U.S. officials seek to understand what may have led a Pakistani immigrant to try to blow up Times Square, and how he boarded an airplane at John F. Kennedy International Airport despite multiple computerized watch lists, Europe's specialists have pointed to their own approach as an example of how to proceed.

From the beginning the emphasis in Europe has been on domestic human intelligence rather than the computerized systems such as watch lists favored by U.S. security agencies. That has meant tedious hours of surveillance, patient listening-in on telephone conversations, careful review of bank records, and relentless recruitment of informants among Islamic zealots who are motivated to betray acquaintances by everything from fear of losing visas to a desire to clear the name of Islam in European minds.

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Embassy Bombers Moved to Prevent Escape

Two militants on death row for the September 2004 car bombing at the Australian Embassy compound in Jakarta were transferred to a maximum security prison on Thursday after police discovered a plot to attack Cipinang Penitentiary and free the terrorists, an intelligence expert said. The transfer was also made amid concerns that the inmates, Iwan Darmawan Muntho, alias Rois, and Achmad Hasan, were able to communicate with fellow militants in Aceh using cellphones from inside their cells in the state penitentiary in East Jakarta. They have been transferred to the prison island of Nusakambangan in Central Java. “Police have uncovered a plot by a group of militants who were recently caught holding paramilitary training activities in Aceh. Their objective was to free Rois and Hasan by force,” Dynno Cresbon, a renowned intelligence analyst, told the Jakarta Globe.

“A series of operations that started in Aceh in February revealed key information that included contact between Rois and the group regarding the plot. So Thursday’s transfer was not carried out hastily. Police have been preparing for it for weeks,” Dynno said, adding that he obtained the information from a source at the police antiterror unit Densus 88. If the plot had materialized, the planned attack could trigger the use of a new terror method, with prisons targeted instead of hotels or tourist venues.

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Plummeting Marijuana Prices Create A Panic

For decades, illegal marijuana cultivation has been an economic lifeblood for three counties in northern California known as the Emerald Triangle. The war on drugs and frequent raids by federal drug agents have helped support the local economy — keeping prices for street sales of pot high and keeping profits rich. But high times are changing. Legal pot, under the guise of the California's medical marijuana laws, has spurred a rush of new competition. As a result, the wholesale price of pot grown in these areas is plunging.

In 1983, the Reagan administration launched a massive air and ground campaign to eradicate pot and lock up growers in northern California. With the Reagan crackdown, writer Charley Custer recalls, wholesale prices shot up — to as high as $5,000 a pound. That sudden and ironic windfall for those growers willing to risk prison time transformed the community. "Outdoor growers are having a hard time unloading their fall harvest," Custer says. "And this is six months later and when some people do move it, they don't get nearly the price they were hoping for." That goes for both legal growers who cultivate limited quantities of pot under the medical marijuana laws and illegal operators who often grow larger amounts.

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Parking attendants trained to watch for terrorists

While recently attending a course in the "Entertainment Capital of the World", a colleague in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, told me that 17 of the 20 largest hotels in the world are located in Las Vegas. That is a truly significant statistic, with many implications. One of those implications is that large numbers of people congregate in, and move around, "The Strip" and other major attractions in the city. A second implication is that with such large assemblies and its iconic status, that "Sin City" is a target for terrorist attacks, maybe as much as New York City is.

However, Las Vegas and other cities are fighting back with parking attendants and meter maids being drafted into the nation's latest line of defense against terrorist attacks. A new government program aims to train thousands of parking industry employees nationwide to watch for and report anything suspicious — abandoned cars, for example, or people hanging around garages, taking photographs or asking unusual questions. Organizers say parking attendants and enforcement officers are as important to thwarting attacks as the two Times Square street vendors who alerted police to a smoking SUV that was found to contain a gasoline-and-propane bomb.

“We can no longer afford as a nation to say, `It doesn't impact me or my family, so therefore I'm not getting involved,'" Bill Arrington of the Transportation Security Administration told parking industry professionals at a convention this week in Las Vegas. "We're saying, 'Please, sir, get involved.'" The program has been in the works for about a year and gave its first presentation at the convention, attended by hundreds of people who run parking operations for cities, universities, stadiums and other places around the country.

• "City of London security guards told to report 'suspicious' photographers", The Guardian, 5/13/10.
  

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Predictive Analysis and Death From Above

The way predictive analysis works is quite simple. With more data (from the vidcams, electronic eavesdropping and informants on the ground) it's possible to create a model (or simulation) of what terrorist activity on the ground looks like. Thus, if the CIA analysts see certain patterns of actions on the ground, they can accurately predict where the Islamic terrorists are, what they doing and, often, exactly who (like a key Taliban or al Qaeda operative) is down there. At that point, the Hellfire missiles are applied. The track record of the accuracy of these predictions has been striking. Few civilians have been attacked, nearly all the targets have been, as the predictive analysis indicated, terrorists.

A key factor in making all this work was the U.S. government changing its policy, in the last two years, of only attacking terrorists on a list (of up to 500) of named individuals. Predictive analysis cannot always guarantee that a target will be a specific individual, but it can, with near certainty, indicate that the target is an Islamic terrorist. It all began back in the 1970s, when some CIA analysts discovered a new way to analyze the mountains of information they were receiving. The new tool was predictive analysis. What does this do for intelligence analysts? Predictive analysis was the result of a fortuitous combination of OR (Operations Research), large amounts of data and more powerful computers. OR is one the major (and generally unheralded) scientific developments of the early 20th century.

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Bloody Day in Bangkok

At least seven people were killed and more than 100 others injured as troops battled red-shirt protesters around the Rajprasong rally site in the most violent day since the April 10 bloodbath. Despite the insistence of the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES) that the general situation was under control, gunfires and explosions were still heard last night at the Bon Kai area. Tyres were burning along the Ratchaprarop Road, which leads to the red shirts' rally stage. Bonfires were also started on Sathorn Road. Several grenades fired from M79 launchers hit the Ratchaprarop, Bon Kai and Sala Daeng areas. Rumours abounded last night that the red shirts' militant wing, which is loyal to Maj-General Khattiya Sawasdipol, who was shot and critically injured by a sniper on Thursday, would run amok in vengeance.

Key clashes took place in front of the Lumpini Night Bazaar in the afternoon as troops sought to edge closer to the red fortress and reclaim some strategic areas seized earlier. Four people were reportedly killed as a result of the battles in this key area. The Rama IV Road was sealed off, making it an eerie space marred by black smoke from burning tyres and occupied by troops and angry, belligerent protesters. Later, protesters fought troops moving up from the northern side of Rajprasong. Clashes on the Ratchaprarop Road were more intense due to the narrower space, and continued until the evening.

• "The Battle Rages On", The Nation, 5/15/10.
  
• "UN head Ban Ki-moon urges end to Bangkok clashes", BBC News, 5/14/10.
  
• "Unfazed red-shirts guards ready for military incursion", The Nation, 5/14/10.
• "Sniper 'targeted Khattiya from high-rise'", The Nation, 5/14/10.
  

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Colombia's marijuana feeding Europe's habit

These are the mountains of Colombia's southwest Cauca province, far from the reach of the law and just as far from market -- making it difficult, the dirt-poor peasants say, to scrape a living selling legal produce. Around every bend and in every village there's a surprise. Marijuana plantations stretch sometimes for several acres, clinging to steep-sided canyons. Farmhands wielding machetes disappear amid a "forest" of thousands of plants, two or three times taller than a person. They reappear minutes later with a bundle of marijuana over their shoulder and head for rudimentary drying houses made of black plastic slung over wooden branches. In some of these shacks hundreds of pounds of marijuana are hung out to dry.

In other communities, old ladies take advantage of a brief break in the rain to toss marijuana up to dry on the tin roofs of their homes. Others hang the herb in the rafters of the kitchen, where the strangely sweet smell mingles with the aroma of a stew cooking on a smoky fire. In Cauca province at least, there's a new bonanza. This is one of the few regions of Colombia where, according to United Nations' anti-drug officials, the production of marijuana and coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine, is increasing. At the same time, Colombia is once again exporting good quality pot and has become a "major supplier" to Europe, according to the DEA.

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Italy expelled Moroccans on suspicion of Pope plot

Two Moroccan students deported from Italy last month were suspected of plotting to assassinate Pope Benedict, an Interior Ministry source said on Friday. Mohamed Hlal, 26, and Ahmed Errahmouni, 22, students at the University for Foreigners in the central Italian city of Perugia, had been under surveillance by anti-terrorist police for months before they were expelled on April 29. During their inquiry, investigators found evidence suggesting the two (suspects) were plotting an attack on the pope."

An interior ministry statement issued at the time of their deportation said they were being expelled under prevention of terrorism laws. Six other foreign students, suspected of contacts with militant Islamic groups, are still under investigation. News magazine Panorama, owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's family, reported on Friday that local anti-terrorist police had tapped Hlal's phone and had raised the alarm when he said he wanted to acquire explosives.

The magazine said police discovered a map of Turin at Errahmouni's house annotated with numbers and circles, ahead of a visit to the northern Italian city by Pope Benedict on May 2 to venerate the Shroud of Turin, which many Catholics believe was Jesus Christ's burial cloth.Panorama described Errahmouni as a computer expert who remained in contact with militant groups over the Internet. It said Perugia had become a centre for travelling imams to preach radical Islam.

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Maritime Security—Actions Taken to Enhance Cruise Ship Security, but Concerns Remain

In an extensive investigation and analysis of cruise ship security, the U.S. Government Accountability Office generally gives high marks to the industry and the maritime safety and law-enforcement agencies tasked with protecting cruise ships. Still, nearly everyone associated with cruise ships is sensitive to the possibility that a single terrorist act could inflict huge losses on the industry. While loss of life is the paramount concern in safety efforts, the loss of billions of dollars in bookings would represent a body blow that might extend for years. "A successful attack on a cruise ship in or near U.S. waters that resulted in the closure of a U.S. port or discouraged cruise travel would likely harm the U.S. economy because of the significant economic impact that ports contribute to the U.S. economy," the GAO report said.

In 2008, more than 9.3 million passengers boarded cruise ships in U.S. ports, with roughly 3,900 cruises emanating from 30 U.S. ports. The ships continue to get larger, and so do the security stakes. For many reasons -- visibility, predictable sailing schedules, and large floating targets -- the GAO says the U. S. Coast Guard considers cruise ships to be "highly attractive targets to terrorists." The good news is that the National Maritime Intelligence Center did not have a single credible terrorist threat against cruise ships in 2009. There has been a sustained increased in overt efforts to protect cruise vessels, including providing Coast Guard escorts, more aggressive reviews of crew and passenger manifests, and stepped up security by the cruise lines themselves.

• "Maritime Security—Varied Actions Taken to Enhance Cruise Ship Security, but Some Concerns Remain", GAO, April 2010.

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U.S. airport security officers targeted in ID theft

A Massachusetts couple has been charged with stealing the identities of dozens of Transportation Security Administration officers, who screen passengers and baggage at U.S. airports. A Federal Grand jury accused Michael Derring, 48, and Tina White, 47, on Wednesday of conspiracy and aggravated identity theft, alleging they stole personal information including the Social Security numbers of dozens of TSA workers at Boston's Logan International Airport. While there was no indication the information was passed to any militant group that might be planning an attack, the case suggests federal officers are vulnerable to identity theft.

The TSA is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Prosecutors said that, between July 2008 and December 2009, the couple obtained information on TSA workers from a relative of Derring's who worked as a contractor for TSA's human resources department at the airport in Boston. The grand jury alleged Derring and White used the identities to obtain electricity, cable television, telephone and other services for themselves, relatives, friends and customers. Some of White's customers were relatives and friends of state prison inmates, the indictment said.

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