Jahidist online chatter,NIE

Reading Between the Intel Estimate's Lines

By Noah Shachtman July 17, 2007 | 11:35:52 AMCategories: Cloak and Dagger

Homeland security scoopmaster Shane Harris, on his new blog, says "there was one tantalizing bit at the end" of the new National Intelligence Estimate.

The estimate seemed to say that the intelligence agencies need to better position themselves to counter the Internet as a tool for terrorism...

The ability to detect broader and more diverse terrorist plotting in this environment will challenge current US defensive efforts and the tools we use to detect and disrupt plots. It will also require greater understanding of how suspect activities at the local level relate to strategic threat information and how best to identify indicators of terrorist activity in the midst of legitimate interactions.

Let me read between the lines here a bit. "The ability to detect broader and more diverse terrorist plotting in this environment..." Here, they're talking about picking up on the signals of an attack--online chatter, rhetoric on jihadi Web sites, but also message traffic, probably money transfers. We've known for a long time that the intelligence agencies focus on the Web and online transactions to detect terrorist patterns.

But to the second point, this "will challenge current US defensive efforts and the tools we use to detect and disrupt plots;" that strikes me as a pretty candid admission. It's not like the intelligence agencies are saying, "We can't detect plotting on the Internet," but they're clearly pointing out this is an area of concern, and one that's going to keep putting counterterrorism specialists through their paces.

In light of this challenge, the agencies will need "greater understanding of how suspect activities at the local level relate to strategic threat information." This strikes me as a clear reference to the use of fusion centers, which are supposed to marry local intelligence with the global threat picture. This could be seen as a shot at the Homeland Security Department. Theoretically, it's DHS' job to put those two pieces together--local and global--but it has never really worked out that way... This is a clear signal that the intelligence community sees fusion centers, and in the integration of local, national, and global threat reporting, as a vital part of domestic security.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/reading-between.html