Wired described how Shi’ite insurgents have been able to intercept US drone downlinks by simply pointing some satellite dishes up and soaking up the unencrypted transmissions. All they had to do next was find some commercially available software to view it.
“U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered the problem late last year when they apprehended a Shiite militant whose laptop contained files of intercepted drone video feeds,” Wall Street Journal reports. “In July, the U.S. military found pirated drone video feeds on other militant laptops, leading some officials to conclude that militant groups trained and funded by Iran were regularly intercepting feeds.”
How’d the militants manage to get access to such secret data? Basically by pointing satellite dishes up, and waiting for the drone feeds to pour in. According to the Journal, militants have exploited a weakness: The data links between the drone and the ground control station were never encrypted. Which meant that pretty much anyone could tap into the overhead surveillance that many commanders feel is America’s most important advantage in its two wars. Pretty much anyone could intercept the feeds of the drones that are the focal point for the secret U.S. war in Pakistan.
Using cheap, downloadable programs like SkyGrabber, militants were apparently able to watch and record the video feed — and potentially be tipped off when U.S. and coalition forces are stalking them. The $26 software was originally designed to let users download movies and songs off of the internet.
That wasn’t all they may have been watching. Noah Shachtman of Wired in another article notes that the vulnerability may have extended to the nearly theater wide ROVER program. “The idea was let troops on the ground download footage from Predator drones and AC-130 gunships as it was being taken. Since then, nearly every airplane in the American fleet — from F-16 and F/A-18 fighters to A-10 attack planes to Harrier jump jets to B-1B bombers has been outfitted with equipment that lets them transmit to ROVERs. Thousands of ROVER terminals have been distributed to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.” The fear is that the insurgents have simply built their own ROVER terminals. … an unnamed Pentagon official tells reporters that “this is an old issue that’s been addressed.” Air Force officers contacted by Danger Room disagree, strongly.
AFP reported that “the US military has fixed a problem that allowed Iraqi militants to use cheap software to intercept the video feeds of US-operated drones, a defense official said on Thursday. “This is an old issue that’s been addressed,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters.
The Wired article takes issue with the assertion that the problem is fixed. The problem, according to some of its informants, is system wide. And facing the Air Force is one of the oldest dilemmas in the encryption game. How do you securely transmit the keys to the those at the end of the line, those who need it most?
“This is not a trivial solution,” one officer observes. “Almost very fighter/bomber/ISR [inteligence surveillance reconnaissance] platform we have in theater has a ROVER downlink. All of our Tactical Air Control Parties and most ground TOCs [tactical operations centers] have ROVER receivers. We need to essentially fix all of the capabilities before a full transition can occur and in the transition most capabilities need to be dual capable (encrypted and unencrypted).” …
“Can these feeds be encrypted with 99.5% chance of no compromise? Absolutely! Can you guarantee that all the encryption keys make it down to the lowest levels in the Army or USMC [United States Marine Corps]? No way,” adds a second Air Force officer, familiar with the ROVER issue. “Do they trust their soldiers/marines with these encryption keys? Don’t know that.”
But a far bigger factor in creating the debacle may not have been encryption. It was psychological, what someone once described to me as the ‘inabiity of government to think anyone can do things the nonbureaucratic way’ The AFP article hints that the military simply didn’t believe the enemy could improvise a capability that took thousands of bureaucratic hours of effort to acquire. For a certain kind of mentality, the idea that something might cost less than ten million dollars is wholly inconceivable. And because it was inconceivable to the bureaucrat, therefore it was impossible.
The practice was uncovered in July 2009, when the US military found files of intercepted drone video feeds on the laptop of a captured militant, intelligence and defense officials told the Journal. They discovered “days and days and hours and hours of proof,” an unnamed source told the Journal. “It is part of their kits now.” Some of the most detailed examples of drone intercepts have been uncovered in Iraq, but the same technique is known to have been employed in Afghanistan and could easily be used in other areas where US drones operate.
The US government has known about the flaw since the 1990s, but assumed its adversaries would not be able to take advantage of it, the Journal said.
Interestingly, the insurgent’s secret wasn’t discovered (if published reports are to be believed) by some counter ELINT effort, but by someone kicking in an insurgent’s door, finding a laptop and having it analyzed. The boot came to the rescue of the electronic circuit and uncovered the vulnerability, or at least made its knowledge so widesread that bureaucracy had to fix it. In bureaucratic ontology existence has two meanings: the first is that a something actually exists; and the second is that something be bureaucratically recognized as existing. The latter dominates the former.
As I’ve often written before one of the subtle benefits of being in contact with the enemy is simply being in contact with the enemy. Back in the day it was widely recognized that “being in contact” was in some sense desirable; cavalry units were used to stay in touch with enemy forces so the commanders would know what the other side was up to. While military operations are fundamentally designed to destroy the enemy, it is often not appreciated that an important byproduct of every encounter is information. Part of the reason there have been no mass attack surprises since 9/11 is that across the whole spectrum US forces have been in contact with the enemy.
Today, being in “contact” is politically bad. One day the politicians will break contact. This will have the benefit of reducing losses, both human and material. Fewer dead bodies will come back from the War on Terror. Fewer resources will be spent fighting it. That’s all to the good. But it will come at a subtle price. The US will be out of contact, or at least in more intermittent contact with the enemy. The losses will be fewer, but so will the information point. The price of not looking, the cost of not peeking under the rocks — is not seeing.
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The AFP article hints that the military simply didn’t believe the enemy could improvise a capability that took thousands of bureaucratic hours of effort to acquire. For a certain kind of mentality, the idea that something might cost less than ten million dollars is wholly inconceivable. And because it was inconceivable to the bureaucrat, therefore it was impossible.
And this mentality is now applied across all of modern western, ‘progressive’ governance, isn’t it? From health care to space programs to military technology and campaigns.
One more thing: How much of this vast, and interceptible, communication linkage between ground and air has been spurred on by the obsessive concern with avoiding civilian casualties?
Today, being in “contact” is politically bad. One day the politicians will break contact. This will have the benefit of reducing losses, both human and material. Fewer dead bodies will come back from the War on Terror. Fewer resources will be spent fighting it. That’s all to the good. But it will come at a subtle price. The US will be out of contact, or at least in more intermittent contact with the enemy. The losses will be fewer, but so will the information point. The price of not looking, the cost of not peeking under the rocks — is not seeing.
this is what our “5K army” (someone called it so) can still do, not enough big money to be spent on costful gadgets
Arrogance on our part. The Israelis displayed the same disregard for their enemy’s intelligence by broadcasting in the clear before and during the 1973 war.
The Germans thought their U-Boat communication system was too complex to decode.
Always respect the enemy. Don’t make him into a superman, but always remember that humans are all pretty smart.
Damn the Perfumed Prince who allowed that assumption to stand.
Actually, this is a great opportunity for us to inject some counter-propaganda. We could send them images of their leaders and icons boozing it up in Dubai (ok, well then Constantinople or somethin’).
I have often meditated on what one would do if one were to hijack a secure Government feed. I mean for instance with State Dept. feeds, I would be tempted to inject some Doris Day movies, but then again, that might be too subtle for that tribe. (Maybe Leave it to Beaver?)
As for trusting the lower echelons, of course they do. Those keys change per mission anyway, and sometimes per half day. It is no different that radio encryption, and they changes those all the time. There are squad drill (platoon, company and brigade too) for changing them in a the middle of a fire fight if it has thought that security has been broken, which can happen easily as a hostile might just kill someone and grab their gear.
These comments out of the AF people are a little strange. Surely they know how iot works. I wonder what they are up too.
Once found this could have been a terrific way to feed false information to the enemy. Let us hope they did that.
But similar things have happened in the past. In the late 70’s the people who ran the Red Flag exercise were baffled by one particular F-5 aggressor squadron pilot’s ability to evade getting “killed.” The gauntlet had been thrown and they tried better and better combinations of AWACS and F-15’s, more innovative tactics. And none of it worked. Finally they sat down with the pilot and asked him what his secret was.
It was simple. He had gone out and bought a Fuzzbuster radar detector and mounted in his F-5. Every time they had him locked up, he got a buzz and a light and they did not have him for long.
As for encryption, that has its own problems, aside from compromise. We did so well at getting the wrong encryption codes installed in spacecraft before launch that it became a standard practice to send an officer to the tracking station to compare those in the spacecraft with those used by the tracking people. Launching a spacecraft and finding the encryption codes are not what you thought they were is always embarrassing and well may be far worse than that.
costs for an american soldier in Afghanistan 400 000 € per year
costs for a french soldier in Afghanistan 150 000 € per year
cost for an afghani soldier in afghanistan (trained by the western forces) 2400 € per year
according to E. Morin our minister of the armies.
So the evidence is to make some economical cuts, that’s where it seems urgent to train Afghani
Mongoose said:
Part of this is management philosophy. The Navy evolved from a situation where when the ship was over the horizon, it was gone. No calling it back except with another ship and no real hope in that case of catching the first. Further, the first ship had to have the authority to do what needed to be done with the confidence that unless it was totally outrageous, it would be ignored or blessed later.
The USAF was born with a radio in its ear. Everything was under close control and only some senior Col or a General could make important decisions. And that same Col or Gen decided later what an important decision was. The attitude is that it has to be decided up the line. That leads to a failure to learn to trust your subordinates. Ergo, “Can you guarantee that all the encryption keys make it down to the lowest levels in the Army or USMC [United States Marine Corps]? No way,”
Fella doesnt know many Sailors or Marines.
At least the Army could send a courier on a fast horse to catch the dispatched unit. But that didnt always work, Witness JEB Stuart before Gettysburg.
USAF enlisted I encountered back in the day were not trained to make decisions outside their sandbox. Navy Chiefs and Sr Marine NCO’s? yep. Ever hear of the Strategic Corporal? How about the Strategic Airman?
No offense to the Junior Service but Im just sayin’…..
Just add some really serious pron to the video feeds. Or BBQ’d pork feeds.
As I always said, Situational Awareness is a wonderful thing, bit it should never every get in the way of knowing what is going on.
Simplest explanation is plain old bureaucratic incompetence. But just maybe –. When the “leak” even tells the bad gusy where to get the software, one starts to wonder.
There was a news item recently (sorry, no link) that mentioned Al Quaeda in Af/Pak using weapons that had been abandoned by US forces when they evacuated a forward position. Hmmm. Locating device on the weapon?
It does raise a broader question. Where are the bad guys getting their weapons? And why would supplying weapons/ammunition/explosives not be treated as an Act of War?
#7 Marie Claude
Perhaps a better metric might be how many Taliban are killed per Euro/dollar spent in regard to each category of soldier. A soldier that costs 100 units a year that kills 20 of the enemy per year is more cost effective than a soldier who costs 10 units a year but only kills one of the enemy per year. And both of those categories are infinitely better than soldiers who cost one unit per year and somehow can’t get around to killing any of the enemy at all.
The cheapest way is not always the best. It often ends up being more expensive in the long run.
herb:
“Just add some really serious pron to the video feeds. Or BBQ’d pork feeds.”
Or clips from Japanese game shows
Since the sources for this story are USAF, they are probably unaware that Army and USMC units have been distributing crypto keys to soldiers and marines in the field in a reliable way since I was a cadet (how do you think the secure radios work?). I won’t get into details, but as insofar as you can trust any anonymous nut on the internet, distributing keys is not a problem. Once again, bureaucratic blindness at its very best.
In the realm of “intelligence” there are webs within webs within webs ad infinitum. Perhaps it is so, and perhaps it is not.
Is this really the result of bureaucratic incompetence, or is it a Trojan Horse waiting for the opportunity to spring forth? Say what you will–but I will say this–underestimate the NSA at your own peril.
herb @ 9: just what I was going to say, just publicize that the password is something insulting to mohammed or “i eat pork” or whatever.
more seriously, how stupid can anyone be? ok don’t answer that. anyway there are any number of moderately secure ways of encrypting and handing out keys, more than likely any one of which would do the job indefinitely. to broadcast stuff in the clear violates data security 101 rules. in fact, wtf are they doing *broadcasting* the data, can’t they do something a little more directional? apparently not. harumph.
tcobb – yeah but this isn’t the NSA.
Tcobb,
that would be interesting to know too, then you’ll have to be more precise than in a video game, and to count comparatively civil casualties, as a result of population empathy or unempathy that is implied within the different nationalities of soldiers fighting in this war.
Assuming you could get the raw feed the problem for the insurgents would be real time analysis. The feed’s not very useful tactically several hours after the fact. But if they could duplicate ROVER, then they would potentially have something very useful.
Interestingly, the Skygrabber program allegedly used by the insurgents was developed in Russia. John Robb writes:
So one could write “aftermarket” software applications on the US military backbone that are theoretically better or at least newer than the ones issued by the government. Whether this can actually be done depends on the technical characteristics and encryption. But I should reiterate that multiple sources of intel in this case (US ground troops capturing an insurgent) saved the day. Collateral is king.
#16 Josh
tcobb – yeah but this isn’t the NSA.
If you don’t think the NSA has some involvement in monitoring what’s going on in a combat zone that is your privilege. As for myself I tend to doubt that is true.
One of the French revolution’s biggest contributions to military history was the idea of a “nation in arms” to set against the smaller professional armies that beset it. This theme crops up over and over in history. The idea that you can mobilize the resources of a nation to fight a “people’s war” is an evergreen one. World War 2 was to some extent, an example of the “nation in arms” against the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
The War on Terror has taken the form of Leaving It To the Government. This is in part because nobody wants to embark on hostilities against an entity like the Islamic World. We are only at war against the “bad guys” amid the “religion of peace”. Therefore the season is closed except to badged and licensed rangers who will carefully pick out the bad guys among the good. Very well.
But the enemy may not be so discreet. The Jihad is by definition a kind of people’s war; the Faithful versus the Infidel. So to some extent it will mobilize private participation far more readily and sometimes more creatively than War-By-Government. In truth, this in part conceals a failure in policy making by the West. War should be guided by policy, not by targeting and maybe what we are occasionally seeing is targeting being substituted for policy. But clear targeting is not always a direct replacement for muddled policy.
If one could step back, one might re-architecture the whole war. Well the whole former war, because in the age of Obama, we’ve made policy even fuzzier to some extent and yet more targeted at the same time. There is no more war. Only individual acts of crime which must be punished after the fact. The potential perps are still not prosecutable because they haven’t done anything yet. Warfare is about anticipation. Crime is about retribution. We’ll always be slightly behind the curve in this situation. But that’s a failure of policy, not one of targeting.
in complement to my above comment
Strength in numbers itself is a protection. Numbers change attitudes. Small units are more in danger. The use of technology is not enough. War is about control, and control in the population is about numbers.
…
We need technology, but it’s not enough to have technology, you need boots on the ground. This is the clear lesson of the recent past
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3262075
from BRIG. GEN. VINCENT DESPORTES
As a former tank commander, Brig. Gen. Vincent Desportes has worked alongside the “poor bloody infantry,” the foot soldier likely to be patrolling a population under protection or coming into direct contact with the enemy, never quite knowing when one situation turns into the other.
tcobb @ 19: If you don’t think the NSA has some involvement in monitoring what’s going on in a combat zone that is your privilege. As for myself I tend to doubt that is true.
I’m sure they have $25 for their own copy of Skygrabber.
We want the airwaves, baby!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnVP7pmHB5o
Mr. Programmer, I’ve got my hammer.
It failed for the Ramones.
Almost comical.
Using stuff that any erstwhile college freshman wanting to pirate the latest movie could do in their dorm rooms, these guys did the same to our very best high tech weapons.
As if they dont have college freshmen…
Worst mistake is understimating the enemy.
Thank you Tcobb (15) for reminding us that this door swings both ways. In Iraq the enemy underestimated the US in many ways. We are not done there yet.
Those ways should stay as formless as possible yet all defense cracks eventually if it does not adapt. The Taliban are formidible, devoted, and enough of them are clever enough to eventually defeat the great US superpower. They do have the home field advantage.
US doctrine for many years has been to press the advantage. That advantage at its root derives from the American people. I worry that the president has not rallied the population to a just war. He has not addressed the nation in a way that resonates.
Now we pledge billions for some crap about Global Warming when our sons and daughters are freezing through another Afghan winter.
This is not leadership. Mr. Barak Obama; you are not longer Senator from Illinois. You are not running for office, now you are there. We going are through our own winter now. What the hell else do you want from us?
Spindok
Marie Claude writes:
that would be interesting to know too, then you’ll have to be more precise than in a video game, and to count comparatively civil casualties, as a result of population empathy or unempathy that is implied within the different nationalities of soldiers fighting in this war.
Well, you are the one who wished to delve into quantitative analysis, and when you are challenged you jump back into things that can’t be quantified like “empathy.” I think its called in English “intellectual dishonesty.” But in these days and times intellectual dishonesty is sweeping the West much like the Black Plague of old. Time will tell of what remnants of the old culture that the survivors will inherit.
Elaboso: Exactly. And do not forget organic company and battalion intel personnel/assets. It is even tighter in the MEU’s and MAGTF’s.
Just silly, particularly since they are starting to wire everyone in a platoon now, at least in certain units.
Mike: too funny
#25 Tcobb,
aw com’on ! the big moral lesson when I argued on the effective results
All right you may kill 20 Taliban, but this is just to make a score at the bottom line of a report, like jetfighters used to make when they returned from operations in WW2.
But this isn’t only “sport”, what is your gain at the end, if the population doesn’t respect you and that each new born Taleban boy want to see you down
All right you may kill 20 Taliban, but this is just to make a score at the bottom line of a report, like jetfighters used to make when they returned from operations in WW2.
And how many Nazi regimes are there in Europe these days Marie Claude? Killing the enemy actually is a wining strategy–its been time tested for all of recorded human history. It works.
MC said “….if the population doesn’t respect you….”
Perhaps then they will get war. Vulgar, horrible, bloody, overt, war. Then again probably nit. (Typo not intended).
But this isn’t only “sport”, what is your gain at the end, if the population doesn’t respect you and that each new born Taleban boy want to see you down
I don’t mean to assert a truth about Afghanistan, but I do know from other experience that “respect” means different things in different cultures. I think I’ve told the story of running into a Sulu Muslim named “Pershing”. Upon inquiry the man (who was a high ranking sort of guy) explained his grandfather had named him after the toughest hombre he could think of.
My guess is that the Afghans would understand the idea that Americans were retaliating for an attack against the American tribe. In fact, my ignorant guess is that they would find the idea perfectly natural. To convey that any attack against the American tribe would result in a reprisal and that therefore, all must live in watchful harmony so that the incidents would never be repeatable, might in my ignorant view, actually be comprehensible.
So respect in this matter might not take the form of treating them the way a British socialist would like to be “respected”, but as a man of the mountains might want to be respected. When we come to them with what seems to them a legalistically bizarre set of rules, which constitute our idea of “humanity”, misunderstandings might arise. They attack Americans, the American President decides to withdraw. The Americans don’t explain they are there to revenge themselves for an attack by al-Qaeda, in fact they deny it, for revenge is terribly un-PC in the West; but rather to help the cause of gender equality, democracy and fight climate change, all of which play well in a Labour meeting hall but which may be gibberish out in the sticks. And so forth and so on.
In the end, they may think we are mad and respect us the less for it. And maybe we are mad, we just don’t know it.
And how many Nazi regimes are there in Europe these days Marie Claude? Killing the enemy actually is a wining strategy–its been time tested for all of recorded human history. It works.</i<
It worked. though if Dday operation had been conducted like the war in Afghanistan, me think that we still be under "soviet" rules.
Reprisal operations when civil casualties occur, are much like when the wehrmacht made reprisals against our populations, more people reverse to become against the "invadors" ! That is much what we are seen now in Afghanistan
Marie Claude;
You know the formula.
The population will respect you when you can deliver security, easy trade, and a certain amount of individual liberty. They will pay cash money for that and will give up some liberty for security..
That all needs to be backed up by something.
Sp
Well what I wanted to say isn’t of course “intructed” in an army academia, just my “spoiled” civil remark
@30. Wretchard, Absolutely spot on. From your keyboard to Gen. McChrystal’s eyes on would pray. But I think the institutional bureaucracy and it’s inertia are too strong for such a change in mindset. It will take a catastrophic event with the loss of tens of thousands maybe as much as a million to make that change. I do believe this administration would shrug at anything less and offer a mea culpa. Sadly very sadly.
You sure? if I am not mistaken, the Romans had no problem with inflicting more civilian casualties in order to pacify an occupied territory, same with the Islamic invaders and let us not forget the Mongols. The rule was simple, the hostile populace can hate us all they want, but if they harm one of our men, we will kill them all the way down to their livestock while we sack and burn their town and cities and render the land inhospitable.
Oh please, when an Afghan version of Oradour-sur-Glane occurs, don’t compare normal military operations with genuine atrocities.
“Oradour-sur-Glane” happened in 1944 after Dday, when the wehrmacht was retreating, and this atrocity was made by a Gestapo company that was retreating too
Assuming you could get the raw feed the problem for the insurgents would be real time analysis. The feed’s not very useful tactically several hours after the fact.
Maybe not tactically but looking over old tapes or watching tapes in real time over a matter of weeks could be very profitable for them.
They might notice that the UAV goes over Achmed’s house every day at 9am.
They might notice the kinds of things that interest the UAV and the kinds of things that don’t interest it. Does it go certain places and not others? They could even do experiments by placing bait of various kinds out where the UAV would fly over it and see what it does. All of our enemies have learned how to evade detection by spy satellites because they know when the satellites are overhead.
They might notice that the UAV flew right over Achmed and didn’t appear to see him sitting under a tree.
They might notice the techniques used to search for something when the UAV is interested in something. It probably flies certain patterns.
Does the UAV produce color or BW images? Can it fly at night and see things in the dark?
I’m sure that watching a film of a UAV blowing sh*t up would be very interesting to them.
I certainly agree that kicking in their doors on a regular basis to see what they’re up to has many benefits. Obviously “analyzing” a laptop recovered from a terrorist’s lair is a kind of fishing expedition. At least someone on our side is showing some initiative to do this kind of thing. Maybe he should have been in charge of security for the UAV mission.
el baboso:
Yup. Like I said.
Spindoc:
It aint just Buraq. the complaint includes GWB to his everlasting detriment.
Wretchard @ 30:
Spot on. The westerner cannot understand the tribal process. There are those in the Southeastern US who for some reason who do understand it fairly well. Its sort of amazing that many from Chicago cannot. It seems so basic to their “culture”
I should have taken the exemple of a muslin country like Algeria which war was much like Afghanistan’s as far as how the mere war was fought.
Every casualty or reprisal were taken as a propaganda by the muslins against us and the colons. At the end the whole population wanted us out, even if we had them under control
This was no more a “Hack” than listening to a police scanner radio is. This was just a passive intrusion. If they had inserted their own imagery into the data stream or if the Taliban had gained control of the drones operating circuits, so that it could be retargeted to photograph or attack Kandahar airfield, then that would have been a hack.
In the Navy we always had intrusion detection protocols and authentication codes. If anyone suspected that an intruder was on the circuit they would call out the alert code. The Soviets were good, they would test us by passing maneuvering codes or answering up for someone who was slow to respond. The old guys told me that usually the Russkies were given away by speaking better English than we did. It was assumed that they had a copy of the Signal Codes. The story was that on one occasion someone assigned the soviet shadow to Rescue Destroyer Station, and they complied.
Every casualty or reprisal were taken as a propaganda by the muslins against us and the colons. At the end the whole population wanted us out, even if we had them under control
Interestingly, the FLN killed far more Muslims than they killed Frenchmen, maybe 6X as many. The goal of a terrorist insurgency is to retain control over the population, not to defeat their opponents military force. It is almost always true that the insurgents will kill far more civilians than any “foreign force”. This is by design. Fear is the greatest source of control they have.
Now the biggest strategic advantage the US has in Afghanistan is that America doesn’t want it. Unlike France, America has no desire to make it part of Departmental United States. What America wants is a successor regime that will not attack the United States or foster a group that will do so. So what the US seeks to do is empower forces which have broad local support and yet make non-aggression against the West a firm plank of their policy.
The Pashtuns must accept this and once they do, there’s no more point in remaining in Afghanistan. Right now, certain factions among the Pashtuns, some with Pakistani support, don’t accept that, or don’t accept it sincerely. And they are willing to use terror to stay in power. Now it’s not clear to me that the average Afghan must, as an unconditional matter, require a governing authority bent on attacking the US, and that — so far is or was — what the Taliban is about. They are betting that the population will see them as the eventual winners. The party of militant Jihad is interestingly enough, a modern develoment. So to some extent, Afghanistan as an offensive base to attack the West is not something traditional but artificial. And that artificially aggressive strain, support by foreign money, seeks to regain control over its base by terror. The West should not duplicate their terror, but they should always explain, I think, that it is terror — visited on the west — that is at the root of this conflict. Contrary to the theory that this about crime, it is about terror, about something that goes above and beyond the traditional shoot-em-ups or opium trade that are endemic to the region. That’s comprehensible and it clarifies the choices before the population. Some things are given. They will be ruled by their own. What is at issue is whether they will accept a party which is outwardly belligerent and committed to the Jihad, or revert to a style in which they were content to rule over their own. How they rule over their own, to what customs they wish to submit themselves, is not for us to say.
But I’ve lost the thread. All I set out to say is that terror and respect are often decoupled. Sadly, we often respect those we fear; or rather we fear those we fear. Terror is what our enemies use to control their victims. What we should offer is freedom from terror in response to an act of terror on us. That’s where respect comes from. Not from gestures about education, lectures on human rights or climate change.
It is a known fact that CNN has been able to pull down analog video from UAV’s for 3 or 4 years now. The Rover was originally developed by General Atomic the manufacturer of the Predator and was essentially handed to the L3 Communications by the DOD and has gone through much iteration. The product created so much market buzz that whole programs in the billions were created to give L3 a single source stake in the market. What aggravates matters is the Secretary of Defense has mandated that the Common Data Link (CDL) be used using secret but open sourced (to the community) waveforms that allowed data-links from different manufacturers to work together. The L3 packet-mux encoding was a stovepipe solution and they would not share the secret sauce of encoding metadata to other manufacturers. More often than not, the solution was to give L3 all of the new business to outfit everything in the arsenal from, air to ground with their proprietary encoding scheme, violating clear mandates from the SecDef. This is partially excusable because of the ad hoc nature of evolving requirements and in part to the masterful marketing and lobbying by L3.
The agencies involved have mandated hardware based encryption but the problem is what comes first the chicken or the egg in that a ground data terminal was not readily available that handled this and furthermore no platforms were being outfitted because there were no clients available to use the data. None the less the larger systems do have this integrated. Meanwhile the user community has been pushing less stringent software based encryption but the agencies have steadfastly required that the more robust encryption be used to stay ahead of the curve. One of the other problems has been is that the encryption gear has had a tendency to be a bit big but emerging systems are now small enough to put in Shadow and other Class III UAV’s and man-portable systems. Some data is top secret but most data is tactical and no one cares that there is a smoldering hole somewhere in the desert after the fact.
wretchard,
Interestingly, the FLN killed far more Muslims than they killed Frenchmen, maybe 6X as many.
uh, sorry that’s not the “official” numbers
The FLN estimated in 1962 that nearly eight years of revolution had cost 1.5 million dead from war-related causes. Some other Algerian sources later put the figure at approximately 1 million dead, while French officials estimated it at 350,000. French military authorities listed their losses at nearly 18,000 dead (6,000 from non-combat-related causes) and 65,000 wounded. European-descended civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 (including 3,000 dead) in 42,000 recorded terrorist incidents. According to French figures, security forces killed 141,000 rebel combatants, and more than 12,000 Algerians died in internal FLN purges during the war. An additional 5,000 died in the “café wars” in France between the FLN and rival Algerian groups. French sources also estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN
There is a misunderstanding, Algerians were french “citizens” since 1947, Since 1947, when they were allowed to enter France freely as full citizens, they have flooded into the country in what French sociologists call ‘the immigration of hunger. Algerians “Nationalist” started the hostilities, and yes they were taking hostages in algerian families if they didn’t want that their men joined FLN guerilla
http://www.time.com/time/archive/collections/0,21428,c_algerian_war,00.shtml
Now I am finished the disgressive “rectification”
How do you securely transmit the keys to the those at the end of the line, those who need it most?
This hasn’t been a problem for 30 years. Has nobody in the US Military heard of public-key encryption? You still need some means of preventing the injection of false data, which digital signatures accomplish. If a terminal gets captured revoke its key and it can’t feed you bogus information.
Ok, Marie, let’s do it step by step. From your own quotes:
“European-descended civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 (including 3,000 dead) in 42,000 recorded terrorist incidents.” And then “French sources also estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN”. So we have 70K:10K = 7:1; or if you like 70K:3K = 23:1. Presumably this doesn’t include the “12,000 Algerians died in internal FLN purges during the war”. Right there, the number of FLN killed by internal purges is about 2/3 of the total French dead. Put it this way, the FLN killed 2 FLN for ever 3 French soldiers.
I think arithmetic clearly shows FLN killed far more Muslims than they did Frenchmen, and 6x as many may be an understatement. And this is an important point. If you look at a lot of the bad news that came out of Iraq, nearly all of it was about al-Qaeda blowing up people in pet markets, markets, theaters, pizza parlors, schools, restaurants, shooting election workers, decapitating people, torching buses, etc. Nearly all of these victims were Muslims.
If we step back a little further, there was the little matter of the Iraq-Iran war in which half a million on either side died. Others figure it as 800 K dead Iranians and 300 K dead Iraqis. A lot. Then there was the business of Saddam’s reprisals against the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds. A lot of dead Muslims. Nobody talks about Muslims losing respect for other Muslims because they got killed by them. In fact some people talk about committing a killing if you want honor. Strange to say, but there it is.
There are many good reasons for not killing civilians, but the simple idea that killing = eternal enmity isn’t one of them, though I wish it were. We live in a world where the worst murderers get the most respect. In Copenhagen Robert Mugabe is telling the West to give him climate justice. Sadly, there are people who will listen to Mugabe more than they will to Rowan Williams. “Respect” is a political thing, not always a moral one.
I think we should distinguish between political respect and moral respect. We ought pursue morality for its own sake. Because it is right. It is not necessarily true that morality is advantageous. Often it is not; but we do the moral thing anyway and pay the price for it. Sometimes we call those who do this heroes, at other times saints. Political respect is something else. It is a function of who the population thinks is going to win. It is an expected value calculation. “Respect” means the one they are betting will come out ahead. So one avoids killing civilians for its own sake, or because we quaintly adhere to Judaeo Christian values or something; but certainly not because it is advantageous or you get respect. Any thug knows the opposite is nearly always true. One should never be under the impression that just because one is ethically moral that political respect immediately follows. They are separate deals.
The challenge is to be a good guy and to win. Technology and economic superiority may allow us to do this, but the big mistake is to think: I am moral therefore I will win. It can be done, but it’s not automatic on this earth.
Fear is not the same as respect, fear is caused by not knowing what violent thing may befall our family as a result of an impossible to judge or anticipate transgression.
Respect is not bringing harm on a village despite the occurrence of such a transgression because you know what the response will be, so finding an alternative means to settle the matter is preferred.
War happens whenever there is a serious lack of respect, and fear is perceived to be the dominant emotion. The Afghani people put up with our attempts to introduce representative government as a result of Al Queda’s disrespect and because they respected our warriors. That respect is nearly used up not only as regards the Pashtun Taliban but also the regular Afghanis and Pakistani populations as well. It is not fear taking its place.
Add to that the understanding that many high school students, at least in Pakistan, are technologically capable of making that up linked hack, that LOTM mentions. Understand that in the age of computer based communications there are high school aged kids with the ability to launch cyber attacks against foreign governments as well as our own.
The ability to protect the links and the information is directly tied to our ability to protect privacy and personal information from prying eyes, including especially the government eyes and ears. Respect for the rule of law is lost when fear of consequences for acting unlawfully does not mean the same thing as fearing to act in ones own best interest.
It goes back to Mikes sentiment. The natives in Afghanistan have no reason to respect us, because (insert your favorite reason here) we have not freed them from their fear of the Taliban.
Wadeusaf
wretchard:
I started with the number 350 000 minus the number of 141 000 rebel combatants, and minus the FLN victims and french casualties there is still left a significative number, that isn’t attribuated.
well, nevermind.
Yes if you want that your enemies “respect” you you have to be “hard” (ferme) on them.
Not many nowadays politicians can assume firmness
I started with the number 350 000 minus the number of 141 000 rebel combatants, and minus the FLN victims and french casualties there is still left a significative number, that isn’t attribuated.
But once you have the ratio from the known, the ratio among the unknown is likely to be the same. Once upon a time I was sitting with some guys who were excoriating the “genocidal American imperialist”. So I asked them a question: how many people do you actually know who’ve been killed by a genocidal American soldier? Nobody could mention a single instance. “Ok,” I said, “how many people do you know who’ve been liquidated by the New People’s Army?” Almost everyone knew one or more. They could see where this was going and therefore added to the argument certain “adjustments”. The Americans were starving the Filipino people; they “ordered” Filipino lackeys to kill peasants. Etc. etc. So they adjusted their mental model to produce their preconception because they couldn’t generate it from their own experience.
Now this is not to say that they might actually be right about the “genocidal American imperialist” but they will have to introduce evidence apart from the data gathered by their own lying eyes. Someone asked me whether ten years of freezing weather would dispel a belief in global warming. I said “no.” When people find that the mothership doesn’t arrive on the scheduled date they just wait some more.
48. Marie Claude:
Yes if you want that your enemies “respect” you you have to be “hard” (ferme) on them.
Not many nowadays politicians can assume firmness.
Being hard does not guarantee nor equate to respect. Firmness is not being hard. It is however insisting on being consistently fair. That is hard.
Wadeusaf
I have another take on it. Suppose some very clever people very quietly got some SkyGrabbers into the hands of Iraqi militants and showed them how to use them. What happens next is that when Commander Achmed sees a Predator over his house he jumps in his car and hightails it. No collateral damage, no civilians killed in the house, the car gets taken out on a lonely stretch of road. Goodbye Achmed. Juat sayin’.
A drone’s a bee that has no sting
And gathers him no honey
Or parasite who knows one thing
Like spending others’ money
Now sound can be a kind of drone
Like buzzing or like humming
Or talking in a dull like moan
Or fixed incessant drumming
Another drone, like bees, can fly
Much higher though, and stealthy
They fly in loops around the sky
And if you’re seen? Not healthy
The Arab is a stingless drone
A parasite who’s humming
And just because he taps our phone
He won’t know when it’s coming
Sit calmly. Center yourself. Consider the oneness of VPN. Consider how many people use VPN, to include many who are not necessarily computer geeks. Consider this problem once again. Hmmmmmmmmm!
Given a choice between the evidence of our senses and the inclinations of ideology, ideology wins more often than we think. Albert Camus who was ethnically Algerian, saw the FLN in these terms:
All murder has to do is wear the correct uniform for it to become invisible to the Western intellectual, unless those intellectuals insist on seeing things from first principles. The US has no natural ambition in Afghanistan apart from ensuring it is never again used as a base to attack America. But by the end of the memetic cycle, the murderers will have become the heroes in spite of their murders; they will have become the protectors of the Muslims despite their murder of Muslims.
Just you wait and see.
52. programmer: exhale
LOL,
As I understand your point, for example, Insurance data using multiple interconnections between multiple systems even using encrypted signals can be “hacked”.
One to one is safest with multiple “keys”. While security is much better than the open broadcast of video referred to in the article, even one on one is still vulnerable to attack by anyone determined. But you know that better than me. Inhale, center smile.
Notwithstanding Curtis LeMay (paraphrase–’You kill the enemy and when you’ve killed enough they surrender’) and some of the above comments, killing for the sake of killing, or “body counts” as in VietNam, is rarely a good strategy. At least pre-nuclear, it rarely worked. In early 1945 the Germans had a bigger army than they had in 1939, even after the horrendous losses on the Eastern Front. What had changed since 1939-40 was the opposition was so much bigger and better equipped, had good doctrine, and was highly motivated. In 1914-18 the Germans probably killed twice as many French and Brits as they lost on the Western Front, and their Army in the West was hardly diminished until the last few weeks in October 1918 when the big desertions started. Desertions are how you know the other side is cracking, not dead bodies.
You win wars by shaking the enemy’s will and/or destroying his capacity, which generally go together. Lots of bodies may or may not be helpful, depends on the particulars, but it’s hard to think of a war that ended when one side just totally ran out of people. I read once there was a war in the late 19th C, pitting Paraguay against all its neighbors, and Paraguay gave up when it had lost something like 2/3 of its adult males dead and almost all the rest crippled, but that (if true) seems an outlier.
Ask Grant the day after Cold Harbor how well it worked to think that just because you’ve killed a lot of the other guy, he’s ready to give up. Or ask Zhukov about what a cakewalk it was in Berlin.
Of course, all that notwithstanding, sometimes you have to do something big to get their attention…(e.g., Hiroshima)
@54
No data is safe
Old data is worth much less
Time can buy safety.
Programmer bows, smiling.
Although a good name,
what da ya mean, its too hot
makes haiku too hard
==How do you securely transmit the keys to the those at the end of the line, those who need it most?
–This hasn’t been a problem for 30 years. Has nobody in the US Military heard of public-key encryption?
Annoymouse has a lot of correct information about the technical side of what happened on the UAVs. There is another aspect, though.
Yes, we could do public key. How does that solve your problem? It’s the CONOPs, not the technology at issue. How do you know whose key to revoke? What happens when they lose it? can’t remember it? can’t type it because they are busy shooting? What if it is on a token blown up by an IED? Who in the BCT has it-everyone? all different? all the same? What if they lose connectivity? What if they are supposed to certify themselves using their SATlink which is firing off a “SHOOT ME NOW” beacon into the sky, letting everyone know where they are?
Since the data at issue is tactical stuff–i.e. stuff worthless two hours from now– the military had to make a choice: are we willing to actually say “you haven’t authenticated, so Foxtrot you knowing that the enemy is sending missiles your way, or seeing the pics of where you’re supposed to shoot” ? No, we are not. So for tactical information, the decision was made long ago and high up the chain that no one was going to deny info to a tank or platoon or BCT or a SpecOp unit whether they had credentials or not.
Solving the real time encryption and decryption problem for tactical information in a way that doesn’t get any blue hat killed is harder than it seems at first glance.
If you’re upset about UAVs, you should spend some time thinking about our satellites. Their controls have no encryption whatsoever. Just send the right voltage at the right frequency.
The other issue about UAVs is the rice bowl syndrome. Everyone wants their own; no one wants to share. The big ones fell into the USAF territory, but the smaller ones were essentially owned by individual units. Who wanted to share the data? who had the right to task the UAV? Who was allowed real time access? Part of the reason that stuff was left unencrypted entirely was because sharing was mandated, but that didn’t mandate anyone could solve the crypto problems across different elements of the military. They each had their own requirements, waveforms, ciphers, and they weren’t handing out keys to anyone across branches. So often times, unencrypted was preferred.
Marty
Body counts is idiotic, I agree. But the Mongols did not have any problem when they destroyed Baghdad in 1258 and wiped out most of the Muslim inhabitants of that city. Tamerlane had no problem destroying the city of Delhi centuries later and he had put all it’s Hindu inhabitants to the sword. If an army’s goals are complete annihilation of it’s enemies and utter destruction of the land in order to prevent it’s opponent from bothering them again and they have the inclination, the ability and the motivation to achieve those goals and in our case, the technology to make it happen. Then, the phrase, killing for the sake of killing takes a very real turn . Our enemies know that and we have forgotten about that . If they are willing to kill thousands of us in our cities, in our homes and in our land, then we must be willing to reciprocate and kill hundreds of millions of them and reduce their homelands to inhospitable places for that will make it difficult for any living things to survive. It’s cruel, it’s horrible and sad to say, it works.
Marty, the German Army may have a bigger army in early 1945 than the one they had in September 1,1939 , but that army was composed of barely trained old men and young boys in which many of them had no business being in the battlefield. While they had those Tigers and King Tigers, jet fighters and V rockets, they were hobbled by poor political leadership of Hitler and they cannot replaced the men they lost in Africa, Italy and in the Eastern Front while we have to consider the effect of 24 hour strategic bombing raids on Germany’s industrial cities. The German army in 1945 is mostly quantity over quality with the exception of the Waffen SS.
Well, look at it in a cold blooded way, Grant did replace his losses, Gen Robert E Lee cannot replaced his after Cold Harbor and he surrendered in Appomattox a few months later. For Zhukov and Stalin, what was a hundred thousand casualties anyway when the prize was the city of Berlin.
With Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if the coup succeeded in preventing the emperor of Japan to surrender to the Allies, it would had made Operation Downfall a reality.
Bob Smith #45
Public – Private key pairs are used to come up with a shared key, which is then used to encrypt data. So to use PKI, the transmitter (the satellite sending the video feed) has to send multiple copies of the same video feed encrypted with different keys. And, each receiver should be able to talk to the satellite, not just receive data.
I am sure you know public/private key encryption is expensive, so it is used only for initial handshake up until you get a shared key.
Utopia,
A satellite w/o thrusters might be limited to fixed orbit and thus predictable times, but why on earth would a UAV be operated in that manner? It would be such a preschool-level mistake to do so. Do we really underestimate our opponents so much that we ignore simple stuff like this?
Greifer @ 57: You don’t necessarily have to reestablish the key every time, just as you don’t have to change passwords every day. When needed you can still use a public channel to ask for a new key using a registered ID and a known public key, and if it’s not 100% secure, it’s a WHOLE LOT BETTER than unencrypted data.
Open channels are simply not acceptable for even mildly sensitive data … according to the data security training they made me take twice in six months at Megabank this year. Would you run a PC with no firewall or virus protection? You just can’t. Even the dumb backbone of the Internet is a questionable design at this point.
40. Marie Claude:
Re Algeria
“Every casualty or reprisal were taken as a propaganda by the muslins against us and the colons. At the end the whole population wanted us out, even if we had them under control”
It didn’t matter that the “whole population wanted us out” after the paras’ victory over the rebels. They weren’t going to win if they tried anything.
But France, as usual, caved anyway.
–You don’t necessarily have to reestablish the key every time, just as you don’t have to change passwords every day.
I don’t think you are up to date on what the Army is saying must happen re: keys. But who said every day? Let’s say it’s every 30 days. So what? What if they lose it? What if the machinery is compromised? what if no one is around to type in their old password?
And back to the bank analogy: security only works if you have physical security. In a bank, the premise is the machines themselves are phsyically secured against tamper, against enemies, and it’s only virtually that they can be attacked. This has no bearing on what’s happening on the battlefield.
There are other reasons to leave things unencrypted. Anything labelled secret or below is allowed to run on certain hardware, but anything above that needs to run on hardware that’s been provably verified. Providers then need to prove that that information is never in a shared cache, a shared dataspace, etc. virtual machines are required and can’t share underlying hardware. Entirely new BIOSes and OSes and data layer sw needs to be written and implemented, often on machines with new hardware. All of the above meant in fell under the purview of the NSA, too. So guess how quickly they were going to approve things?
all of the above is technically difficult. it was extraordinarily difficult in a real time os. It was more difficult for anyone trying to get something out the door to help people already in theatre.
so: unsecured data had advantages. And higher ups decided long ago they weren’t going to deny units tactical information, period, so it was going to be sent regardless of authentication.
So “it’s better than unencrypted data”, the question is FOR WHOM? If unencrypted data is the way you get ANY DATA AT ALL to your BCT in the field, then there are good reasons to pick that.
am I defending the military mindset? the NSA takeover of all IA? no, I’m not. Just pointing out that the CONOPs for security in a battlespace aren’t the ones you’re comparing to in the banking world.
Bob Murphy,
But France, as usual, caved anyway.
OK, you like to think that !
But if you’d been really interested in truth , that historians try to sort out, you would have another perspective upon the resolution of this war, which was a victory on the military plan, and a political fail as far as gaining the world sensibilities for us : you don’t remember, but America and its alliees (the Brits, the mains)wanted us to fail in Algeria.
I already posted this link, unfortunately only those that can manage french can understand
http://bokedou-an-hanv.blogspot.com/2009/11/ca-fait-au-moins-3-ou-4-fois-que-je.html
wretchard:
But by the end of the memetic cycle, the murderers will have become the heroes in spite of their murders; they will have become the protectors of the Muslims despite their murder of Muslims.
exactly !
Marty:
You win wars by shaking the enemy’s will and/or destroying his capacity, which generally go together.
That used to be effective, but became less and less evident since propaganda could find its ways through medias, and today through the net
Germans were the first to use medias, press, radio, TV and movies to display their propaganda as invincible, for discouraging the populations to resist, as so to make them accept that they were “humanist” heros
This is why when we have to make a rightful war, it is important to take “propaganda” into acount, and be prepeared for a counter-propaganda, and you can’t do that well when you decide a war in urgence, this takes quite a while to be ready.
It is much easier to make a propaganda to demonize a country and its population (see how we were demonized for the UN vote in 2003) with the nowadays communication means.
Muslin populations are merely communicating very well through our modern medias, they used them since they were displayed on the market.
Expat muslims in France communicated through tape-recorders cassettes that were sent by the post when telephones were rare in their countries, and anti-french sentiments (or anti-westernies) were displayed with much more strengh when it’s from a familiar voice
It’s also why the cell-phones have such success by them, and now internet
Which is more damaging to the overall mission, allowing insurgents to view some aerial vids of themselves or informing them that we will start pulling out in 18 months?
Will Cruz–
I agree war is death and you cannot free it of that, and also that attrition can reduce an opponent’s ability and willingness to continue.
But I still maintain that a strategy based primarily on just killing a lot of them is hardly a strategy at all. Verdun was based on that thinking– Falkenhayn’s attempt to just kill a lot of Frenchmen, and while he succeeded in doing that, he lost more of his own than he could afford and while the bloodbath at Verdun was a major factor contributing to the 1917 mutiny, it never came close to knocking France out of the war. No one now remembers Falkenhayn as a genius for his Verdun strategy.
You need to be seizing and holding important locations (yes, things they will fight and die for), trying to put the enemy in a position where they doubt their ability to win or even to persevere. The deaths will come but they aren’t the immediate goal. In contrast to Falkenhayn-1916, Manstein’s 1940 Sichelschnitt through the Low Countries IS considered a work of genius and DID knock France out of the war.
(PLEASE, I don’t want a long debate about the different situations facing Falkenhayn vs. Manstein, that’s not the point.)
During the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003 IIRC there was much bragging about how precisely the US could target its ordinance, almost no collateral damage including civilians, and I thought, “That’s all well and good, but if we don’t inflict real pain with the fear of lots more, they (Iraq) have no reason to give up, there’s not enough downside risk for them, if we are trying hard to NOT make it hurt.” So, I’m not unrealistic about the need to break eggs, if you will.
And my Hiroshima comment was written approvingly and I don’t know how it could be read any other way. I cannot conceive Truman making any other decision under the circumstances, and the great weight of everything revealed since is that it was the right call by a wide margin. Nagasaki, too. Read “Hell to Pay” just out from Naval Institute Press, in addition to Frank’s “Downfall” and others.
I would put Mongol massacres (Baghdad was far from the only or even the worst) in the same strategic category as Hiroshima in that it tells the enemy what they face if they continue to resist–which we (USA) did NOT do in Iraq 2003 (above). It also accomplished the goal of removing any threat to the rear as the hordes advanced (as per Stalin, “No man, no problem”)
Marie Claude—
The issue with propaganda doesn’t much matter, it has never been the great mass of the populace that decide such things, it’s always been the leadership– in ancient China and Greece or Bourbon France or modern Iraq, and everywhere in between. I’ll suggest the rise of propaganda a la Goebbels was a way for the leadership to neutralize or control the popular political consciousness that developed after the late 18th C, and served to maintain the age-old norm that the leaders decide.
Completing my thoughts–
Marie Claude—
So it’s the leaders’s will that is most important–and if the leader is insane or sees nothing but the noose if he surrenders, you can wind up with Germany in May 1945.
Will Cruz–
another example, Grant’s Wilderness Campaign. He didn’t seek an attritional bloodbath, but Lee was always able to get in place to parry the blow to his flank so that’s what it turned into. Cold Harbor showed that for all the deaths, Lee’s Army was still effective. The strategic importance of the campaign was that at teh end Lee had to defend Richmond’s supply line through Petersburg and so had no ability to maneuver his main force—the attrition, while severe, was secondary in limiting his ability to detach raids (e.g., Jubal Early).
Not saying death and attrition don’t matter, just don’t make them your primary goal—you’ll get enough while pursuing real advantage.
“Which is more damaging to the overall mission, allowing insurgents to view some aerial vids of themselves or informing them that we will start pulling out in 18 months?”
Reality is the world that you see with your eyes. If you are surveiling an area of operations and you see a passel of goat herders above a village, the goat herders knows they are there and if they are able to read your ISR data then they know you are there, but with a better view. It would definitely be better if Haji didn’t know that you were surveilling him but if he does, all you lose is tactical surprise. If you are lined up against Haji’s and are shooting one another, then it is assumed that he can see you and you can see him. But if you can see him and hold up a mirror to his back line then you know where he is positioned better and you know where he is maneuvering, the better to either anticipate his moves or the better to drop in indirect fire. Would you still do it if he could see what you see? The answer has got to be yes. If you were following their guys around trying to uncover their networks, it would be extremely advantages that they not know you were following them. But if they did it would be effective harassment and might add a few steps to everything they did to try to spoof you. Eventually if they thought you were watching everything they did and listened to everything they said if would have a very unsettling effect. But if you could put one layer of 128k encryption that ought to slow them down immensely. How long would that take to crack and when you found out that all you had was hours of video of ramshackle shacks and Haj’ tending to his goats it wouldn’t be very worth it. As Greifer was alluding to, there are many layers of the onion and black data can go anywhere including to your enemy in cases but red data must stay within the boundary of classified networks and once in can’t get out less it offer a snippet of compromising information. Haji may not be very sophisticated but you can be sure that he can get a little help from his friends that are.
you can wind up with Germany in May 1945.
?????
hmm did you ment 1940 ?
if so it is mitigated, then why the Brits retreated in Dunkeerke, if it wasn’t because they thought that the war on the continental ground was lost ?
This is also why de gaulle opted for the resistance, and that the french leaders (lawers) of the epoque accepted armistice, 100000 soldiers had already died in the Dunkeerke pocket, and they thought that it would be a mere massacre fer nuthin to carry on the butchery, the conditions of the fights, the arms… weren’t like in WW1 anymore.
Ol right this was well relied by nazy propaganda flyers, suggesting that the best for us, was to stop the war too,it is why Germany proposed the armistice with us the first (when she didn’t for the other countries) as I said in a former topic, that permitted Germany some rest, that our colonies couldn’t become the new bases for resistance, that our disarmed soldiers could rejoin them, that they couldn’t feed the alliees with goods and means…
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Expometro_GM_2479.JPG
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Roosevelt_french_hostages.jpg
http://tpe95.artblog.fr/image/1175427115.jpg/
http://tpe95.artblog.fr/r1493/L-art-comme-arme-de-guerre/2/
http://tpe95.artblog.fr/24888/Affiche-de-propagande/
so seems that we were such a big deal for the Nazis, that the made such a hard work on propaganda illusraions as artistical works to convice more people that they weren’t “mean” to the french !
that the made such a hard work on propaganda illusraions
that they made such a hard work on propaganda illustrations
sorry typo
Marie Claude @ 73–I don’t understand your comment. It does not seem to relate very well to what I wrote.
Germany in 1945 was my example of a leadership that is either too insane to know they’re beaten, or too fearful of the noose to do right by their country and surrender. In contrast to France 1940 where the leadership knew it was beat and everyone did pretty much the right thing—the leadership took an Armistice while de Gaulle and others left to fight offshore where a fight was still possible.
My point re 1940 was Germany defeated France without a huge attritional war, by seizing key points and convincing the French leadership that they could not win…. although by the actual surrender most of France had been occupied, the casualties were not heavy (compared to WW1) and the French forces and leadership just kind of gave up—of course there were individual acts of great heroism, but the jig was up before the Panzers even reached the Channel—the French political and military leadership first panicked and then saw defeat as inevitable.
I would also suggest the key was not the 100K who died or were taken prisoner at Dunkirk, it was that they were encircled at Dunkirk at all, the rest was inevitable and could have been far worse. My point is that situation came about not through attrition but by the Germans seizing key points and destroying the leadership’s will.
Of course deGaulle and others were right to leave and fight from offshore, the whole French nation hadn’t been defeated, and the colonies were as yet untouched; but the leadership had been demoralized and defeated, and the Army and Armee d’le Air had been shattered.
Marty, sorry, I didn’t understand that you were talking of germany
and I agree with your following analyse
uh, I have posted a few links with propaganda illustrations, how kind with us the Nazis wanted to be seen, how evil (and wrong) were De Gaulle fans and the Anglo-saxons too
the net has swallowed them
How do you know whose key to revoke?
You revoke the key of every device reported lost, stolen, or destroyed. If anybody tries to use a revoked key, send an immediate alert and:
1) if it’s a request to receive data, ignore them and send them a “temporary error” message. The requester won’t be able to tell the difference between his key being flagged and a real network problem.
2) If it’s a request to send data, accept it but mark it as bogus. Investigators may be able to use the information to identify who sent it and where they sent it from.
What happens when they lose it? can’t remember it? can’t type it because they are busy shooting?
I’m assuming devices are preloaded with keys before deployment. Nobody should be typing keys in the field.
What if it is on a token blown up by an IED?
That would qualify under “reported destroyed”.
Who in the BCT has it-everyone? all different? all the same?
I’m assuming two key pairs, one for theater command and one for every permitted device. Data is signed with the sender’s private key and encrypted with the receiver’s public key. Devices obviously have central command’s public key and their own private key.
What if they lose connectivity?
You do what you always do, begin the initial handshake every time you connect. Reconnecting after a dropped connection is no different.
Since the data at issue is tactical stuff–i.e. stuff worthless two hours from now
That stuff isn’t worthless. Analysis might tell you how your position was compromised, what troop formations and materiel were used, how enemy troops are moving through your area, and so on.
I’m trying to look on the bright side, to talk myself into believing this is the cutest PsyOp of all time, that’s why it looks so clownish.
It’s not working, it’s too impossibly dumb to have a bright side. So, I’m chalking it up to User Error, like our fellow countrymen at TSA who published their procedures manuals last week, like bare naked ladies. TSA used a black highlighter instead of a redacting tool on confidential info, a user error. In this case, nobody’s even bothering with the black highlighter, when the right tool – encryption – is sitting right there in the toolbox.
Yeh, as much as I try to tell myself that this video-broadcast leak is a PsyOp that is is frightening the enemy by PURPOSELY showing them us seeing them, that ain’t news is it? They got YouTube, ain’t they?
There’s no bright side to exposing our unique tech treasures like this live recce video – this is insane. What if we really need to surprise someone someday? Let’s hope there are some tricks left we haven’t deployed yet.