ISC report into 7/7 and Information Clouds

By Roderick Jones

The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in the UK was established by Parliament as part of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act to examine the work of the intelligence and security agencies in the UK.

The ISC was asked to review information, which emerged following the CREVICE trial in April 2007 that Mohammed Siddique KHAN and Shazad TANWEER (two of the four 7/7 bombers) had come to the attention of MI5 during the CREVICE operation. The question bluntly asked was, "If MI5 had come across Mohammed Siddique KHAN and Shazad TANWEER before, why didn't they prevent this outrage?"

The full report of the ISC findings can be found here.

At its heart the report re-states the previous answer to the central question posed - - lack of resources and legal restrictions prevent the kind of large-scale surveillance required to cover all terrorist leads. Individual readers of the report will have to judge whether that is a satisfactory response.

However, one of the most illustrative parts of the whole document is on page 9 where a diagram is published detailing the number of phone-calls assessed as relating to international terrorism, between unique parties, between January 1 and 1 April 2004 (period of the CREVICE investigation). Diagram shown below:

From this enormous bundle of data the report states 4,020 calls were linked to CREVICE - with the vast majority of those eventually assessed as being, "not related to the bomb plot itself, or even the wider facilitation network, and were in fact wholly innocent or irrelevant". What is left is therefore, an interesting piece of contemporary artwork.

While clearly technology can provide an edge in certain circumstances its capabilities and limitations need to be clearly understood. This diagram solely relates to telephone calls, a diagram today would need to include, twitter, IM, VoIP, Email, Facebook email or even in-game chats. The data would form an enormous cloud behind, which plotters could operate.

There isn't a clear solution to this and a number of industries are attempting to penetrate this burgeoning cloud of data to find meaning in the tweets and chirps. One potential important lesson to be drawn from this particular ISC report is that excess data can be used to hide a plot -- this is contrary to the idea of terrorists passing torn paper notes to each other to avoid electronic detection. A 'useless information' bomb could create countless link analysis diagrams that ultimately lead nowhere, hiding the real intent. Information, unlike truth may not in fact set you free.

If you want to comment on this piece go to MetaSecurity where it is re-posted. The idea that the CREVICE operation provided a data-cloud behind, which the 7/7 plotters could operate is being explored.