Around Russia

The miscalculation of special services

April 19, 2013 Andrey Soldatov, Irina Borogan

The fact that the Tsarnaev brothers (in the photo) were the Boston terrorists, put the American intelligence services before two problems.

Firstly, now it is clear that the special services really pierced, and it was in that direction that was considered a priority for at least the last three years.

As we wrote , back in 2010, US intelligence services began to talk about the predominance of the threat of internal terrorism over the external. It was primarily about people who did not have obvious ties with terrorist organizations-they did not go on training in Afghan camps, did not receive funding from abroad, but were inspired by radical ideas through the Internet. In full accordance with this theory, special services began to invest serious resources in the tools of surveillance on the Internet and social networks.

For example, the FBI launched a program for monitoring social networks in 2012, which should collect information from open sources that identify threats, geolocation, incidents, etc. It is similar to the FBI Social Media Application FBI, which was posted in early 2012. This application, as the FBI explained, should monitor all the open information on social networks by keywords, such as Bomb, White Parish, Suspicious bag, etc. The information collected on social networks should be analyzed in the strategic information and operational center of the FBI.

In addition to the FBI, the monitoring of social networks - Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Linkedin and blogs, at least since 2010, has been engaged in the internal security department. Last year, the department launched a new program for monitoring social networks, which analysts appreciated as a more powerful than a similar FBI program. The search is carried out by keywords - 380 of them, cataloged by topics, among which not only “terrorist and internal threats” appear, but also “weather” and “cybersecurity”. Keywords on the topic of terrorism include "jihad", "scammage attack", "conspiracy", etc. This monitoring application is part of the extensive program "Publicly Avalable Social Media Monitoring and Situational AwareNess (Initiative).

Meanwhile, even at first glance, an account on YouTube.com Tamerlana Tsarnaev, the eldest of the brothers, was supposed to interest the employees of the American special services. He created a page with the songs of the famous Chechen bard Timur Mutsuraev, where he laid out his song "He is dedicated to his jihada." Many works of this bard are recognized as extremist Russian courts. There, Tsarnaev loaded the “appeal to the militias” by Amir Rabbanikalya Abu Dujan (Amir Abu Dujan is the leader of one of the militants' groups in Dagestan, and the reports on his group operations are regularly laid out on the sites of the militants, including the Caucasus Center). Especially for English -speaking employees of special services in Tsarnaev’s profile, there is a subscription to the channels of the ISLAMCenter3, and They Say, it's only Sunnah, the clips of Shehammad alhaidan, etc. Several videos posted by Tsarnaev were deleted by the Google administration.

Tamerlan Tsenaev started the General Account on YouTube.com last summer, and the last video clip appeared there two months ago. That is, the time for conducting at least the initial audit of the special services was more than enough. The good question for what reasons are expensive surveillance programs on the network, implemented by the FBI and the Department of Internal Security, did not fulfill their direct task and did not allow special services to calculate the Tsarnaevs.

Perhaps the American special services will also have to urgently revise their strategy in the field of cooperation with the Russian security forces.

For many years, experts in the field of fighting terrorism believed that American citizens are not goals for terrorists in the North Caucasus. Accordingly, the strategy of American special services was built. By and large, there was never a close cooperation between the security forces of the two countries: in 2004, a memorandum of cooperation between the FBI and the FSB was signed with a large pomp, but by and large all the cooperation was limited to one joint operation, and even that was a provocation - at first the unsuccessful Indian Hemant Lakkhan sold the FSB officers, and then the FBI agents of the FBI from the FBI agents Lakhani bought it. In addition, in January of this year, the Russian Foreign Ministry even announced the termination of the Russian-American agreement on cooperation in the law enforcement.

Probably, now Americans will have to urgently establish cooperation for quite practical reasons: if the United States is now among the goals for militants, this applies to American citizens both in America and abroad, and after all the Olympic games in Sochi are approaching, which, presumably, the Americans should come in large numbers. If we do not forbid the Americans to go to Sochi in principle, US intelligence services will be forced to bow to Lubyanka.

It is unlikely that this will contribute to the development of a fundamental and tough position of the United States regarding the observance of human rights and politically motivated persecution in Russia. As a recent story shows, when it comes to a joint hunt for terrorists, even the most democratic states tend to turn a blind eye to principles, preferring not to annoy the allies in the struggle with excessive issues. Even if the allies were the modes of Mubarak or Gaddafi.

Photo by ITAR-TASS/ EPA