[Cryptography] Bin Laden satphones

Henry Baker hbaker1 at pipeline.com
Sun Nov 22 22:16:43 EST 2015


At 06:42 PM 11/22/2015, Watson Ladd wrote:
>On Nov 22, 2015 5:07 PM, "Henry Baker" <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:
>>
>> At 11:41 AM 11/22/2015, Donald Eastlake wrote:
>> >On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 10:50 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:
>> >> ...
>> >>
>> >> Earlier in his career, Osama Bin Laden used (Iridum?) satphones for communications.
>> >
>> >Nope, Inmarsat I believe, which is cheaper than iridium <www.inmarsat.com>.
>> >
>> >Note that Iridium was saved from going out of business due to
>> >bankruptcy by US DoD funding. While nominally run by a private
>> >corporation these days, with headquarters in McLean, Virginia, I would
>> >not be surprised if it was cooperating with the US government even
>> >beyond that, of the two known active Iridium ground stations, one is
>> >operated by the US Defense Information Systems Agency in Hawaii. But
>> >if you need communications service no matter where you are in the
>> >world where you can see the sky, from the top of Mt Everest to the
>> >South pole, Iridium <www.iridium.com> is great.
>>
>> Here's a pretty good rundown of this 'urban myth', which apparently originated with the CIA's Foreign Denial and Deception Committee!  [I didn't make this up!]
>>
>> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/osama_sat_phone_20060110
>>
>> But as early as 1996, Time magazine had reported that Bin Laden “uses satellite phones to contact fellow Islamic militants.”  Time gave its source as Taliban officials, not U.S. intelligence­-giving the lie to Bush's assertion that government leaks were to blame for the outing of that piece of information.
>
>The information Bush claimed was classified and leaked was not that
>bin Laden used Iridium, but that the US could track him with it.  This
>fact doesn't appear in the second link in your email.  Obviously bin
>Laden knew what kind of phone he used! I haven't dug up the Washington
>Post article the 9/11 commission cited as containing this detail to
>check whether or not the fact appears, but it doesn't appear in the
>Time article.

The fact that various satphones could track people was well known to anyone who actually used one, since that was one of the features advertised for backpackers/adventurers/etc.  My (non-technical) brother tested one of the first satphones, and was well aware of this capability.

Now Bin Laden may have been naive to think that the satphone provider wouldn't share this data with various govts -- probably in real time.

He (and every other terrorist) quickly got that particular memo after he narrowly escaped a missile strike.

“Cruise missiles concentrate the mind a lot more than news clips do.” 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/osama_sat_phone_20060110



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