She still has her shoes on
Airport body scanners are a bad idea because too many people who really understand how they work have said that the scanners would never find the type of explosives the Underwear Bomber used. Also, because we Americans think throwing money at technology will easily solve all problems instead of investing in what really works: intensively training people in interviewing skills, behavior indicators, the Jihadist Threat Doctrine, etc.
Now that a Muslim group in America has issued a fatwa against the scanners for another reason, will this be what stops the buying of this extemely expensive technology? Another twist in airport security is that the whole reason why people have to now subject themselves to body scanners is because of a string of past terrorist attacks on airplanes by Jihadist Muslims. Yet now, Muslims are forbidden by their religion to go through these scanners (if they follow the fatwa).
So, to protect against yet another Islamic doctrine-driven Muslim attacking or attempting to attack an airplane, non-Muslims will have to go through the body scanners while Muslims won’t (opting for a pat-down which obviously wouldn’t venture to the place the Underwear Bomber hid his explosive). Something is definitely wrong here. Scrap all the millions of dollars spent on technology and train people to be smart.
Detroit Free Press, 11 Feb 10: Saying that body scanners violate Islamic law, Muslim-American groups are supporting a “fatwa” – a religious ruling – that forbids Muslims from going through the scanners at airports. The Fiqh Council of North America – a body of Islamic scholars that includes some from Michigan – issued a fatwa this week that says going through the airport scanners would violate Islamic rules on modesty.
“It is a violation of clear Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women,” reads the fatwa issued Tuesday. “Islam highly emphasizes haya (modesty) and considers it part of faith. The Quran has commanded the believers, both men and women, to cover their private parts.”
The decision could complicate efforts to intensify screening of potential terrorists who are Muslim. After the Christmas Day bombing attempt in Detroit by a Muslim suspect from Nigeria, some have called for the use of body scanners at airports to find explosives and other dangerous materials carried by terrorists. Some airports are now in the process of buying and using the body scanners, which show in graphic detail the outlines of a person’s body.
But Muslim groups say the scanners go against their religion. One option offered to passengers who don’t want to use the scanners would be a pat down by a security guard. The Muslim groups are urging members to undergo those instead. Two members of the Fiqh Council are from Michigan, Imam Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, and Imam Ali Suleiman Ali of the Canton Mosque. “Fiqh” means Islamic jurisprudence.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has a chapter in Michigan, says it endorses the fatwa. “We support the Fiqh Council’s statement on full-body scanners and believe that the religious and privacy rights of passengers can be respected while maintaining safety and security,” said Nihad Awad, national executive director of CAIR. . . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 361–The Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 362–Informant Development for Law Enforcement to Fight Terrorism
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 515–Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques: Basic to Advanced
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 163–Dying to Kill Us: Understanding the Mindset of Suicide Operations
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 560–Middle Eastern Intelligence Services and Terrorist Organizations
Trend News, 12 Feb 10: Interview with Clare Lopez (Vice President of the Intelligent Summit and CI Centre Professor, retired CIA case officer)
Trend News: Iranian president announced yesterday that the country has finished producing its first batch of 20-percent enriched uranium. Do you believe the nuclear program influences Iran’s domestic policy?
Lopez: Iran’s nuclear weapons program is considered by its clerical rulers to be indispensable for both domestic and foreign policy. Internally, the mullahs believe that acquisition of a deliverable nuclear weapon would encourage national pride, but also convince dissidents and internal opponents that if the entire world could not stop Iran from getting a bomb, then their quest for liberty is also a hopeless one. Externally, Tehran wants a nuclear weapons capability for two key objectives: geostrategic dominance, including adventuresome aggression, in the Persian Gulf and Middle East region, and to seize leadership of the international Jihad movement away from the Sunnis. The idea is ‘Shi’a Rising,’ Persian Empire reborn, and Shi’a at the forefront of the Islamic Jihad vs. the Western, non-Muslim world.
Q: Do you think that Iran has the necessary technology to use the enriched uranium that it supposedly has?
A: It is my conviction that Iran has already developed nuclear warheads and tested them in non-chain reaction, non-fission, trigger device testing, probably in deep underground sites. I don’t think there is any doubt whatsoever that Iran has mastered the full nuclear fuel cycle….moving to 20 percent enrichment is merely the latest challenge to the impotence of the international community. Once a nation has mastered enrichment even to 4-5 percent, moving additional steps beyond that is merely an exercise in the re-calibration of the centrifuges. The hardest technological challenge comes at the beginning, learning how to build and install and calibrate centrifuges and to link them into cascades. Once that is mastered, the rest is actually much easier – also a quicker process to reach Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) at 90 percent or even Weapons Grade, which is 93 percent enriched. Finally, we are fools if we think that Natanz and Qom are Iran’s only two nuclear enrichment sites. We have no idea at what stage of enrichment the other clandestine sites are.
Q: Do you think that Iran’s nuclear program will stop under pressure of economic sanctions?
A: No, Iran’s nuclear weapons process will not stop for any reason whatsoever except actual credible threat to the survival of the regime itself. Sanctions are useless.
Q: On the whole, what is the possibility to stop Iran’s nuclear program with discounts? What is the role of the U.S.?
A: The only possibility to stop Iran from achieving a deliverable nuclear weapon in the very near future is forcible destruction of their known sites, and/or regime change. Regime change is possible by a number of conceivable methods: internal implosion (the founders of the revolution actually fighting among themselves); internal dissident movement, like the Green opposition, but this has a long, long way to go and is under severe repression; external attack by Israel, the U.S., and/or the international community. It seems highly unlikely that the U.S. will lift a finger to either support or assist the internal dissidents because the Obama administration wants to preserve what it naively thinks to be a possibility of negotiating a nuclear deal with the mullahs. This will never succeed. The international community, especially the IAEA, the U.N., and the Security Council are essentially impotent, in part because China and Russia do not see it in their national interest to stop Iran right now. Only Israel retains the ability and will to act. I believe Israel will strike eventually when it perceives that its final red lines have been crossed, or when Iran is about to acquire a game-changing air-defense missile system (like the S-300 from Russia), or when it decides is the best moment to achieve tactical surprise. For Israel, this is an existential question.
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 270–An Introduction to Iranian Intelligence and Counterintelligence Methodologies
Polish Radio, 11 Feb 10: Today marks the 6th anniversary of the death of Colonel Ryszard Kukliński. One of the top officers of the General Staff in the Polish Armed Forces during the 1970s in communist Poland, he defected to the United States on the eve of the introduction of Martial Law in December 1981. During that period he supplied the Americans with plans of the operation as well as other secret documents of the Warsaw Pact, including information about the Soviet Red Army. Kuklinski was handed a death sentence in absentia by a court martial in 1982. It was not until the late 1990s that in a free and democratic Poland his sentence was reversed and his honour reinstated. He died of a stroke in Tampa, Florida in 2004 and his ashes were brought to Warsaw two months later. Ryszard Kuklinski remains a controversial figure in contemporary Polish history and in the opinion of his compatriots. For years many figures, including former president Lech Walesa, had been hesitant in assessing the colonel’s patriotism.
Ryszard Kuklinski, 73, Spy in Poland in Cold War, Dies (New York Times, 12 Feb 2004)
The Vilification and Vindication of Colonel Kuklinski (CIA/CSI, Benjamin Fischer)
Review of book (CIA/CSI)
USAO/Southern District New York, 11 Feb 10: PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and JOSEPH M. DEMAREST, JR., the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced that SERGEY ALEYNIKOV was indicted today on charges related to his theft of proprietary computer code concerning a high-frequency trading platform from his former employer, Goldman Sachs. ALEYNIKOV was previously arrested and is expected to be arraigned in Manhattan federal court at a later date.
According to the Indictment filed today in Manhattan federal court:
From May 2007 to June 2009, ALEYNIKOV was employed at Goldman Sachs as a computer programmer responsible for developing computer programs supporting the firm’s high-frequency trading on various commodities and equities markets. Goldman Sachs had obtained the high-frequency trading system in 1999, when it acquired Hull Trading Company, the previous owners of the system, for approximately $500 million. Since acquiring the system, Goldman Sachs modified and maintained the system, and took significant measures to protect the confidentiality of the system’s computer programs, including firewalls to limit access to the firm’s computer network, and limiting internal access to the high-frequency trading program. Goldman Sachs’ high frequency trading system generates millions of dollars per year in profits for the firm. Goldman Sachs takes several measures to protect the system’s source code, including requiring all Goldman employees to agree to a confidentiality agreement.
In April 2009, ALEYNIKOV resigned from Goldman Sachs and accepted a job at Teza Technologies (“Teza”), a newly-formed company in Chicago, Illinois. ALEYNIKOV was hired to develop Teza’s own version of a computer platform that would allow Tezato engage in high-frequency trading. ALEYNIKOV’s last day of employment at Goldman Sachs was June 5, 2009.
Beginning at approximately 5:20 p.m. on June 5, 2009 –ALEYNIKOV’s last day working at Goldman Sachs — ALEYNIKOV, from his desk at Goldman Sachs, transferred substantial portions of Goldman Sachs’s proprietary computer code for its trading platform to an outside computer server in Germany. ALEYNIKOV encrypted the files and transferred them over the Internet without informing Goldman Sachs. After transferring the files, ALEYNIKOV deleted the program he used to encrypt the files and deleted his computer’s “bash history,” which records the most recent commands executed on his computer.
In addition, throughout his employment at Goldman Sachs, ALEYNIKOV transferred thousands of computer code files related to the firm’s proprietary trading program from the firm’s computers to his home computers, without the knowledge or authorization of Goldman Sachs. ALEYNIKOV did this by e-mailing the code files from his Goldman Sachs e-mail account to his personal e-mail account, and storing versions of the code files on his home computers, laptop computer, a flash drive, and other storage devices.
On July 2, 2009, ALEYNIKOV flew to Chicago, Illinois, to attend meetings at Teza’s offices, bringing with him his laptop computer and another storage device, each of which contained Goldman Sachs’s proprietary source code. ALEYNIKOV was arrested on July 3, 2009, as he arrived at Newark Airport following that visit.
ALEYNIKOV, 40, is charged with one count of theft of trade secrets, one count of transportation of stolen property in foreign commerce, and one count of unauthorized computer access. If convicted on these charges, ALEYNIKOV faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.
Mr. BHARARA praised the investigative work of the FBI in this case. Mr. BHARARA also thanked Goldman Sachs for its cooperation in the investigation. U.S. Attorney PREET BHARARA added: “Sergey Aleynikov allegedly stole confidential computer code from his employer before joining a rival company. In today’s information age, a theft of valuable intellectual property represents a serious breach of economic security. This Office is committed to working with the FBI to pursue the theft of intellectual property and prosecuting the perpetrators before they can cause further harm.”
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge DEMAREST stated:”Proprietary information and trade secrets are sometimes the most valuable assets of a business. The computer code Aleynikov copied was worth millions. But the theft of such assets is usually much harder to detect than the theft or embezzlement of tangible assets, because the thing stolen is not physically missing, it’s duplicated. The FBI is committed to policing the theft of trade secrets.”
This case is being prosecuted by the Office’s Complex Frauds Unit. Assistant United States Attorneys JOSEPH FACCIPONTI and REBECCA ROHR are in charge of the prosecution.
Broadway World, 11 Feb 10: Canadian-based NEOCLASSICS FILMS LTD. has acquired all US rights to the international hit thriller L’AFFAIRE FAREWELL from Pathé International. A film by Christian Carion, whose MERRY CHRISTMAS was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Foreign Film in 2006, and produced by Christophe Rossignon, the cold war era spy epic recounts the true story of the biggest theft of Soviet secret information in history.
At the height of the Cold War in the early 1980′s, the French intelligence service alerted the US about extensive Soviet spy infiltration at all levels of the US government, which sets off an unforeseen chain of events. Based on the book Bonjour Farewell by Serguei Kostine, the film boasts a strong international cast starring two noted film directors who are also respected actors, Guillaume Canet (The Beach, Merry Christmas, Tell No One) and Emir Kusturica (The Good Thief, Underground, Arizona Dream).
The ensemble also includes Alexandra Maria Lara (The Reader, The Baader Meinhoff Complex, The Downfall), Ingeborda Dapkunaite (Defiance, Hannibal Rising, Mission Impossible), Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) and Americans Willem Dafoe, Fred Ward and David Soul. L’AFFAIRE FAREWELL cost some $25 million to produce and has a multi-lingual soundtrack in French, English and Russian. This highly commercial story of intrigue, which world-premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and went on to the Toronto International Film Festival this past September, has generated strong box office response in France, grossing more than $7 million to date.
“We’re delighted we can bring L’AFFAIRE FAREWELL to US audiences,” says Irwin Olian, CEO of NeoClassics. “This film’s true story is one of the great spy tales of all time, yet it is little known outside of France and least of all in the US. The film’s terrific direction, performances, international story of intrigue and cast will combine to ensure its exposure and success in this market.” NeoClassics plans a May theatrical release commencing in New York and Los Angeles, and expanding thereafter to other major domestic markets. . . .
L’Affaire FAREWELL (IMDB)
The Farewell Dossier: Duping the Soviets (CIA/Center for the Study of Intelligence)
