Snowden leaks show that terrorists are JUST LIKE US

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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's media allies have launched a counteroffensive against allegations by intelligence agencies that terrorists have upped their game in cryptography as a result of his leaks about NSA spying.

Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept published leaked GCHQ mobile phone OPSEC guidance from 2010 alongside excerpts from a comparable jihadist handbook from 2003 to argue that terrorist groups were focused on mobile phone spying risks years before the Snowden leaks began last year.

"So sophisticated is the 10-year-old 'Jihadist Manual' that, in many sections, it is virtually identical to the GCHQs own manual, developed years later (in 2010), for instructing its operatives how to keep their communications secure," The Intercept argues.

Greenwald's piece attempts to rubbish a recent NPR Morning Edition radio report suggesting that the Snowden revelations harmed national security and allowed terrorists to develop countermeasures to state surveillance. NPR used research from web intelligence and predictive analytics firm Recorded Future to back up this accusation, which has repeatedly been aired by everyone from Sir Iain Lobban, director of Britain's GCHQ spy agency, who did so last year in front of a parliamentary committee, to former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker earlier this month (here).*

"Following the June 2013 Edward Snowden leaks, we observe an increased pace of innovation, specifically new competing jihadist platforms and three major new encryption tools from three different organizations GIMF, Al-Fajr Technical Committee, and ISIS within a three to five-month time frame of the leaks," Recorded Future states.

NPR failed to point out that financial backers of Recorded Future include In-Q-Tel, the CIAs investment arm. Mario Vuksan, chief exec of ReversingLabs, a cybersecurity expert who worked on Recorded Future's report, entered into a "strategic partnership" In-Q-Tel two years ago.

"Beyond all these CIA connections, the conclusion touted in the NPR reportthat al-Qaeda developed more sophisticated encryption techniques due to the Snowden reportingis dubious in the extreme. It is also undercut by documents contained in the Snowden archive," The Intercept argues.

Recorded Future subsequently claimed that terrorists were turning to "off the shelf" methods of cryptography.

Noted cryptographer Bruce Schneier maintains that the changes terrorists appear to be making will, if anything, make the counter-terror role of signals intelligence agencies such as the NSA and GCHQ easier rather than harder.

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Snowden leaks show that terrorists are JUST LIKE US