IP: Hidden Files - New York Times

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 23:41:35 -0800
> To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
> From: Einar Stefferud <stef () nma com>
> Subject: Hidden Files - New York Times
>
> New York Times - January 18, 2002
>
> EDITORIAL
>
> Hidden Files
>
>
> In its war against the West, Al Qaeda's greatest success has been its
> ability to use the tools and behaviors of ordinary civilian life to
> interrupt the conduct of ordinary civilian life. Sept. 11 made that point,
> as did the arrest in late December of Richard Reid, who was allegedly
> trained by Al Qaeda and who wore explosive sneakers aboard a jetliner bound
> from Paris to Miami. But there is no better evidence of Al Qaeda's search
> for everyday targets than the discovery of two computers once used in a
> Qaeda office, a desktop and a laptop, that were later purchased by a Wall
> Street Journal reporter from a computer merchant in Kabul for $1,100.
>
> Many of us spend a good part of every working day making our way around the
> metaphorical architecture of our computers, opening files, using programs,
> sending and retrieving documents. That architecture - the map of folders and
> programs - becomes almost as familiar as the architecture of the buildings
> we work and live in. But The Wall Street Journal reports that within the
> Qaeda computers, alongside routine file structures and ubiquitous tools like
> Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Word, lurked a very different map, an
> itinerary of travels by a man called Abdul Ra'uff.
>
> That itinerary bears an uncanny similarity to the series of journeys Mr.
> Reid made in the months before his arrest. Whoever Mr. Ra'uff was, his job
> was to scout out the vulnerabilities, the opportunities for terrorism, in
> Israel, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere. The assessments of potential targets,
> and the carnage they might generate, are couched in the banal, unemotive
> language of a business transaction.
>
> The Journal says the hard drives of these computers also contain the
> bureaucratic debris of Al Qaeda. There is a letter written to set up an
> interview with the Afghan opposition leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was
> murdered by the men who came to interview him. Some texts suggest that, no
> matter how zealous its membership was, Al Qaeda had some of the same
> failings that afflict many organizations - petty infighting, internal policy
> disputes and difficult relations with other organizations, in this case the
> Taliban. Throughout many of the documents runs a corporate camouflage, as if
> Al Qaeda were just another company and Osama Bin Laden merely a captain of
> general management.
>
> The contents of these computers, and of reference works like the
> Encyclopedia of Jihad, demonstrate that Al Qaeda is vastly more familiar
> with our world than we are with the world of Al Qaeda. But then our world is
> so much easier to know. Most espionage novels convey the chill of looking
> through eyes that see in everyday life both a place to hide and targets to
> mark. There is no camouflage like the mundane, and no surer way to wreak
> havoc than to disrupt the mundane patterns that anchor people's lives.
> Merely to know that someone has been watching, looking for ways to exploit
> the confidence we have in the shape of daily life, is far more chilling than
> any spy novel could ever be.
>
> Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/18/opinion/18FRI2.html

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