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New Solution To Terrorism

evildave

Unregistered
E
Well, thanks to the 'al-Qaeda's big mistake' thread, we now have a better solution to terrorism.

Any 'terrorist' group that isn't thoroughly infiltrated and shot full of holes by police within a week will be composed of cells with limited contact to other cells. This is an old and successful structure with which to operate insurgencies of all kinds.

The question that needs to be driven into all the members' and potential recruits' heads is: "How do you know who you're really working for?"

For instance, the Jihadist group you joined that is working against the 'great satan' du jour, might actually be run by the intelligence services of that same 'great satan', who wants to have political excuses to take extreme measures. Being evil, they don't mind the minor killing and collateral damage as an excuse for their 'retribution' that cripples your nation's work for freedom/independence/theocracy/whatever. Maybe even to motivate whole wars to take control of your natural resources. For all you (as a Jihadist) know, certain businessmen with political and intelligence connections wanted to build something else on that real estate in New York, and it worked with a long-standing desire to take greater control of their government and your local natural resources. (Elaborate with racial/religious profiles as desired to make the story compelling to the Jihadists.)

When you join a 'name brand', like 'Al Qaeda', it is built of cells. You are never likely to have contact with 'Osama Bin Laden' or any other famous person, because you could be captured and forced to betray secrets that get him caught.

So, how do you really know you're really working for 'Al Qaeda'? This cell you're in, and those adjacent could actually be run by *anybody*. By Saudi Arabia. The USA. By Russia. By Egypt or Syria. By Israel. How could you possibly know for sure? Your sacrifice will only cause you to damn yourself before your god and directly betray the cause you believe in.

A little bit of paranoia goes a long way when you're dealing with people who are desperately trying not to get caught.

Now all intelligence services need to do is establish and train up a few of these cells, and spread rumors that other cells are being run by their intelligence service, and/or others. Naturally an intelligence service could have all the answers, because they supply the questions to their dimwitted cultish recruits. They could even arrange a brief personal appearance of a convincing 'Bin Laden' for the troops to 'prove' they're legitimate. A trivial matter to set up and "expose" an "American-run" cell to better establish your own, for instance. Give it a nice, easy cliche` signature to identify them, that happens to match real cells.

There are several direct effects. Fear and distrust within cells. Greater communication difficulties between cells. Greater difficulty recruiting. Real cells may accidentally come into contact with your fake cell, and could be infiltrated and taken over. Perhaps even a breakdown of cellular structure for the leaders to regain control, exposing the 'big fish'.

Oh, and you get control of a bunch of naive suicidal idiots, convinced to the core that they're working for 'Al Qaeda' who you can use to execute bloody, idiotic attacks and/or get caught 'in the nick of time' at things, that can be used to justify your nation's brutal actions in response to 'suppress' these attacks.

OK, realistically terrorism still doesn't go away. It's just under the control of various governments using the dimwitted little puppets to further their respective political agendas. The more chaos they spread, the more control they gain. Handy.

All very useful for potential jihadists to believe in, fairy tales or not.
 
I'm not sure that the terrorists would mind this in the slightest -- after all, the fairly strict militaristic responses taken in the past couple years have tended to make their support bases stronger rather than weaker.
 
You don't think they'd mind being used by the very states they most hate?

How would a celullar network recover from a defocus from from its 'authority'. From being copied and having things done in its name that it can't account for? It seems rather vulnerable to a hijack.

Who cares about the 'legitimate' organization's authentication? You just move in and say "I'm them". With any sort of secrecy, the 'authentication' is whatever you invent. Without secrecy in authentication, forgery all the way.

The organization loses if it remains silent or ignorant about the counterfeit version of its self, and it loses if they make waves and let people know there are 'false' versions, because now they are placed in a position where they have to validate themselves.

As I already put forward. Put out two or more versions, but one is more 'obviously' false. How will a potential recruit know the difference? And when he's used poorly and 'martyred' in an ugly way to evil, or captured for what he is supposed to 'spill', he's going to give some pats response.

Soon 'Al Qaeda' can be blowing up mosques, burning down orphanages, and slaughtering Arab babies. How can anyone tell the difference? How can the 'real' Al Qaeda even know their own cells aren't doing it? Even if caught red-handed, you have plausible deniability of and for your agents. You were 'infiltrating' this dangerous cell, after all. Just make sure the patsies are trained to 'give their all' and martyr themselves spectacularly, and nobody will have a version of events different than the agents that were coordinating the cell.
 
This is a bit like the culture in Brazil. There have been so many inflitrations and counter-infiltrations that nobody knows who is working for whom any more, or even if there are any terrorists left.
 
epepke said:
This is a bit like the culture in Brazil. There have been so many inflitrations and counter-infiltrations that nobody knows who is working for whom any more, or even if there are any terrorists left.
Click to expand...

Not only that, but I've been getting no end of grief from the Department of Central Services just because my name is Harry Buttle. And my air conditioning is shot, again.
 
I'd say that as long as there's money to be made, there will be recruits for anything...
 
Mr Manifesto said:
Not only that, but I've been getting no end of grief from the Department of Central Services just because my name is Harry Buttle. And my air conditioning is shot, again.
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You've 'ad that scab Tuttle in here, 'aven't you? Where'd this come? Out of your nostril?
 
It's sorta a false flag thing and I would bet that it is being done. The problem is that there is no way of knowing who the winner of a bet is.
 
Dunno. Seems if it occurred to me, it must have occurred to other people in intelligence services who are paid to be devious bastards, as opposed to me, just a devious bastard as a hobby.

I can't say whether counterfeit cells in a network have been tried in an international setting. Certainly a regional set of cells could better cope with counterfeit cells and networks. Quietly opening a "new cell" in a place that didn't have any prior representation makes it awfully hard to check its credentials, especially when you're not supposed to communicate outside the cell.

How are you going to ask 'Al Qaeda', when some attack is attributed to them? Especially a gruesome public image nightmare attack? Someone attributes it to 'Al Qaeda', or your puppets are trained to spray graffiti and chant recognizable 'Al Qaeda' things, and suicide at the slightest risk of capture, there aren't a lot of people left to point fingers away.

Of course, the strategy has a terrible risk. If someone ever does manage to conclusively track the cell's notorious actions back to YOU, very, very bad things could happen. For one thing, everything that the real Al Qaeda, and anybody else's 'Al Qaeda' ever did while your fake cell was in operation could be blamed on YOU.

[ Tin Foil Hat ] Now consider, if you have puppets running counterfeit cells and instigating attacks, say 'over the internet', and you have to round up Al Qaeda members over an attack you've had committed yourself (people who would know your puppet cell is not legitimate), would it be better to kill them outright, or keep them locked away, incommunicado while you try to get more authentic behavior out of them, or try them openly for the crimes they may be able to compellingly demonstrate they didn't commit? With such a sweep to destroy YOUR cell, it would also serve to take your agent(s) out of the field quietly, so everyone assumes he/they are either dead or behind bars, but are actually free to begin again.[ /Tin Foil Hat ]
 
or suppose that you developed a series of cells that really did nothing, just talked a lot. And suppose you took the "best and brightest" from each cell and had them form new cells. And when each cell reached a certain size you simply killed all of the members.
 
Did you happen to catch my tinfoil speculation a while back, wondering the feasibility of the government colluding with Intel to place super-secret spyware instructions on future cpu's? (This idea I don't like, however, for privacy reasons.)
 
Ed said:
or suppose that you developed a series of cells that really did nothing, just talked a lot. And suppose you took the "best and brightest" from each cell and had them form new cells. And when each cell reached a certain size you simply killed all of the members.
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That would be handy for making a ready supply of 'Victories against al Qaeda' every time you needed a boost in your popularity ratings.

Maybe a combination of approaches. You see, if your terrorists never get anything to do, they might go off and form their own groups to follow their own agenda, just like a real 'Al Qaeda'.

The real handy thing would be to have them travel to places and say "Al Qaeda is in ____!" Sure, they never did anything. You send them to ____, and tell them it's "for training", so now ____ is a "training ground for terrorists", and you have the proof when you catch them at the airport with tickets and get them to spill their untrained-in-resistance guts. Authentic.
 
varwoche said:
Did you happen to catch my tinfoil speculation a while back, wondering the feasibility of the government colluding with Intel to place super-secret spyware instructions on future cpu's? (This idea I don't like, however, for privacy reasons.)
Click to expand...

I don't remember. The unique identifier they already put into Pentiums is adequate. Windows XP collects lots more unique stuff "for you". Any such spying gadget utterly needs OS support to tattle on your habits, and that's Microsoft's domain, and we already know they do 'spyware' built into their product registration, and their file formats have registered a unique user ID with every document written by their Office platform. Some tiny minority of the "back doors" into Microsoft's products were probably placed there deliberately, rather than creeping in as bugs. It's the sort of thing 'wiretapping compatibility' laws extended by the 'USA Patriot Act'.

http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/blair.htm
http://www.computerbytesman.com/
Software has far greater potential for getting at your privacy than any hardware hack could, and it's far cheaper to integrate and distribute. The banner ad article on the linked web site is interesting. Yet another reason not to use IE with its JAVASCRIPT mess.
 
You'll need people who look, sound and act like Jihadists to pull this off. They'd spot a poser from a mile off.

So who's to say that if they look, sound and act like Jihadists, they might not indeed be Jihadists?

You could end up channeling funds and information into al-Queda and inadvertantly become a state sponsor of terrorism.
 
Originally posted by evildave
That would be handy for making a ready supply of 'Victories against al Qaeda' every time you needed a boost in your popularity ratings.

You give me an idea! We could francise the concept to countries with a terror problem so that they always have good news. I call it ....

MacQaeda
Billions Made
Spokesperson Osma MacQaeda



Maybe a combination of approaches. You see, if your terrorists never get anything to do, they might go off and form their own groups to follow their own agenda, just like a real 'Al Qaeda'.

The real handy thing would be to have them travel to places and say "Al Qaeda is in ____!" Sure, they never did anything. You send them to ____, and tell them it's "for training", so now ____ is a "training ground for terrorists", and you have the proof when you catch them at the airport with tickets and get them to spill their untrained-in-resistance guts. Authentic.

If they really take 2 years for planning it does not sound like an action packed existance (except when the Daisy Cutter goes off)[/QUOTE]
 
peptoabysmal said:
You'll need people who look, sound and act like Jihadists to pull this off. They'd spot a poser from a mile off.

So who's to say that if they look, sound and act like Jihadists, they might not indeed be Jihadists?

You could end up channeling funds and information into al-Queda and inadvertantly become a state sponsor of terrorism.
Click to expand...

I could just see a 318 lb six foot geek in glasses walk up and say in a Southern drawl, in English: "Hi, I'm yore cell leader from Arkans- I'mean Afgaynerstann. I am a God-Hatin' Musslim, NOT a 'Merican!"

If this resembles an infiltration from your intelligence service, definitely reconsider trying this.
 
from epepke:
This is a bit like the culture in Brazil. There have been so many inflitrations and counter-infiltrations that nobody knows who is working for whom any more, or even if there are any terrorists left.
Click to expand...
It's handled even better in Harry Harrison's Bill the Galactic Hero.

from Evildave:
I can't say whether counterfeit cells in a network have been tried in an international setting.
Click to expand...
Not exactly to the point, but (if you haven't already) check out Fenian Fire by Christy Campbell ( it's subtitled The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria). It shines a whole different light on the IRB.

Agents provocateurs have been part of political life as long as spies, assassins and prostitutes have. They've been a particular feature of Russian political life, as it happens.
 
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