FBI expanding its role in global anti-terrorism.

FBI expanding its role in global anti-terrorism.

 The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.

Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said....

The "global justice" initiative starts out with the premise that virtually all suspects will end up in a U.S. or foreign court of law. 

That will be the case whether a suspected terrorist is captured on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, in the Philippine jungle or in a mosque in Nigeria, said one senior U.S. counter-terrorism official with knowledge of the initiative. 

"Regardless of where any bad guy is caught, we want the bureau to be in a position to put charges on them," the official said, adding that the Bush administration's emphasis on CIA and military operations often marginalized the FBI -- especially when it came to interrogating suspects.

Two senior U.S. officials said efforts are being made to ensure that intelligence-gathering and law enforcement efforts proceed side by side. They stressed that the CIA and military would continue to play pivotal roles, particularly in gaining strategic intelligence against terrorist groups and thwarting future attacks. 

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Instant Hacker In A Box

May 28, 2009: Expanding on a hacker analysis tool (COFEE, or Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor)  Microsoft developed for the police and military two years ago, there's now a similar tool that enables a non-hacker to analyze wireless network activity, and determine which targets can be attacked with a variety of hacker tools and weapons. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has several teams (including one from the navy and another from the air force) developing versions of this cyberattack system.

These would be encountered by ground troops, both in combat, or on patrol. The cyberattack system has to be simple enough for a soldier to learn how to use it with minimal (a few hours) instruction, but flexible and powerful enough for a more experience operator to get the most out of it.

This concept was first tested two years ago, when Microsoft Corporation quietly introduced a powerful tool for getting past security on laptops and PCs running the Windows operations system (which about 90 percent do). The device was a USB thumb drive called COFEE. When you capture an enemy computer, you plug in COFEE and then use over a hundred software tools to quickly get whatever information is on the machine. COFEE can quickly reveal passwords, decrypt files, reveal recent Internet activity and much more. A lot of this can be done without COFEE, but with the Microsoft device, intelligence collection is a lot faster.

Microsoft has distributed thousands of COFEE devices to police and military intelligence personnel in the United States, and some foreign countries. COFEE was developed mainly to assist the investigation of Internet based crime. But military intelligence operators find it very useful in uncovering enemy plans quickly, so additional raids can be quickly made. Islamic terrorists love their laptops, and never go killing without them. The success and popularity of COFFEE got the ball rolling on similar tools for other aspects of Cyber War.

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Gerald

Internet Anthropologist Think Tank: FBI going Dark

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