Keeping Tabs on Terrorists: Aaron Mannes & V.S. Subrahmanian in the "Wall Street Journal"
By Aaron Mannes
The Wall Street Journal Asia just posted an article my colleague V.S. Subrahmanian and I wrote on the ongoing game of catch-up intelligence agencies are forced to play as terrorists quickly adopt and adapt the latest communications technologies.
* OPINION INDIA
* AUGUST 22, 2010
Keeping Tabs on Terrorists
India's spat with the maker of the Blackberry underlines a broader technological challenge for intelligence agencies.
By V.S. SUBRAHMANIAN AND AARON MANNES
The war on terror came closer to home this month, when the Indian government pressured Canadian company Research in Motion to hand over encryption keys for its popular Blackberry device. New Delhi claims terrorists are using the company's secure networks for covert communications. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia—all of which face significant terror threats—have also expressed concern. But such moves may do more harm than good.
India's concern is clearly justified: Terrorists are using new media sources to facilitate covert communications that—directly or indirectly—have led to numerous deaths. According to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center's Worldwide Incident Tracking System, Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), perpetrator of the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks, is responsible for over 700 fatalities in India during the last five years.
But publicly browbeating RIM into providing its encryption keys is a Pyrrhic victory. Terrorist organizations can only survive if they study the capabilities of their adversaries and adapt. Terrorist organizations backed by intelligence agencies tend to be even more sophisticated. If terrorists know that Blackberries are monitored, terrorists will not employ them—or will do so only in combination with other channels of communication in order to evade intelligence agencies. The much-publicized nature of India's threat to Blackberry thus may well have compromised potential operational gains.
LeT's Mumbai attack shows how quickly terrorists adapt to new technology.
Read the full article here.
