Report: Snowden leaks affected terrorist behavior

[Valin]

Hot Air:

Jazz Shaw

August 2, 2014

 

We’ve already seen people as high up the food chain as Jon Tester saying that Edward Snowden’s leaked material didn’t really hurt anything. But does that argument hold water? One report from a leading data firm claims to have done a very thorough investigation and concludes that al Qaida made some big changes to their communications protocols shortly after the Snowden material moved into the public domain.

 

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Through some reverse engineering magic, Recorded Future determined that the terrorists had been using a home grown encryption program called Mujahideen Secrets for the past seven years with only minor updates to the code. (To be thorough, I went and looked for Mujahideen Secrets on my Droid right after reading this story, but the Play Store doesn’t offer that app for Android.) But after the Snowden leaks dropped, things took a sudden turn.

 

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Of course, the real questions about the Snowden leaks go unanswered in this report. The fact that they upgraded their software is interesting, but what we still don’t know – and may never know, for obvious reasons – is how much other damage was done. How many agents had to be moved around or removed for protection? How many foreign informants supplying us with information were compromised, or simply disappeared? What opportunities were lost which our intelligence agencies clearly can’t talk about in public?

 

If you still think Snowden was a hero, read through this report and ask yourself those questions. Yes, there are big questions about the NSA and its practices – particularly regarding US citizens – which deserve answers. But Snowden went a lot further than just that and he’s not just a whistle blower.