WHERE ARE THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS?:

How mobile phones and an $27m bribe trapped 9/11 mastermind (Oliver Burkeman and Zaffar Abbas, March 11, 2003, The Guardian)

The electronic surveillance network Echelon played a key role in the capture of the alleged September 11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it was reported yesterday - as did a $27m payment to an "al-Qaida foot soldier", who may be planning to relocate to Britain. [...]

In Washington, the national security agency used Echelon, an intelligence system coordinated by the United States but involving several of its allies, including the UK, to monitor more than 10 mobile phones used by Mohammed.

"They were tracking him for some time," an unnamed intelligence official told the American news magazine US News and World Report. "He would shift; they would follow."

Echelon reportedly monitors phone numbers and voices, then uses satellite triangulation to locate the user. The Swiss justice ministry has confirmed reports that the September 11 hijackers used pre-paid Swiss cellular phones, not registered in any name and thus hard to trace, in preparing the attack.

"Let's say that thing that drug traffickers and terrorists thought they could do to avoid detection are really not effective strategies anymore," said Larry Johnson, a former deputy director for counter-terrorism at the US state department. "The technology being used now [by the authorities] is really pretty effective."

The rival magazine Newsweek quoted a Middle Eastern intelligence source as saying that an unidentified al-Qaida member "turned over and made a deal with the United States", taking the $25m reward offered and extracting a supplementary $2m in order to relocate with his family to the United Kingdom. A US law enforcement source confirmed that the payment had been made, the magazine said.

Other Pakistani intelligence sources said the real breakthrough had come when the FBI had managed to "persuade" an al-Qaida operative arrested earlier to reveal the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden or his close associates. The man was arrested in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, but his identity was never made public.

These sources say the Pakistani officials were kept in the dark about the real identity of this man, or the deal that the American had cut with him. The sources said it was only a few hours before the raid on Mohammed's hideout in Rawalpindi that the FBI had informed Pakistani intelligence, and had asked it to carry out the raid without the help of the local police or the civilian intelligence services.

Doesn't Echelon violate privacy rights? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 11, 2003 6:35 PM