World

Did U.S. Block Bin Laden Video?

by jmberger | September 7, 2007 at 09:52 am

1097 views | 31 Recommendations | 11 comments

SECOND UPDATE: At least part of the bin Laden video was obtained by NBC, and a short clip has been circulating online. At the two-minute mark of the three-minute video, the picture freezes (although the subtitles continue to update). The picture remains frozen for much of the remainder of the video.

CNN says voice analysis confirmed bin Laden as the speaker. The complete video still does not appear to be circulating many of the major jihadist boards. I could not confirm the whole tape as posted anywhere online, although NBC was referring to it as being "released."

Even before the freeze-up, the video is not well synced to the sound. It's almost like bin Laden recorded an audio tape which was performed by an actor. I don't know if I want to be the person who sticks his neck out to argue this idea, but I wouldn't rule it out either. If Bin Laden is hiding under an assumed name in a relatively populated area, it would be a logical strategy.

UPDATE: NBC confirms that there was a disruption in the video pipeline today. But you read it here first. What they are describing is different from the site mentioned in this analysis -- it's an additional layer. NBC's analyst speculates the shutdown may have been done by the jihadist themselves, who were trying to find the source of a leak. However, it's highly unlikely (while not impossible) that the site I am discussing here was shut down by jihadists. The NBC story is talking about the message boards; I am talking about the file transfer pipeline. The message boards are run by jihadists; the file transfer sites (and the specific site in this analysis) are not.

Reports have surfaced that U.S. officials have intercepted the new Osama bin Laden video release and are currently analyzing it. It is perhaps not coincidental that the one of the main distribution nodes for al Qaeda videos has been offline for the last several hours. Banners promoting the imminent release of the bin Laden video were removed from a jihadist Web site within minutes of the outage.

Typically, news stories describe videos as being released through jihadist message boards. That's not entirely accurate. The videos are announced on jihadist sites, but they are released through a variety of online services that host large file transfers for free.

When al Qaeda's Al Sahab media production arm releases a video, it uploads the video to one service, and then individual jihadists and sympathizers around the world then re-upload the video to a variety of other services.

Most of these services eventually remove the videos for violating their terms of service (by facilitating terrorism). But by the time they do, the videos have been downloaded thousands of times and are then re-uploaded to new services (or to the same service under a different name).

The most reliable of these services is a U.S.-based video file repository, which was knocked offline for several hours, starting early this morning and continuing through approximately 1:30 p.m. This occurred even as media reports revealed that the U.S. was currently analyzing the new bin Laden tape, which had not yet been announced on the more visible message boards as of 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Many bloggers and observers have criticized the U.S.-based Internet service providers for allowing al Qaeda to use their infrastructure for propaganda purposes. But what many of these critics fail to acknowledge is that the government can exploit servers based in the United States much more effectively than those based overseas.

Today's exercise is an excellent example of the flaw in that criticism. The U.S. not only intercepted the bin Laden video, but it appears to have delayed its public release, buying valuable time to prepare a response.

J.M. Berger is editor of INTELWIRE.com.

0 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend This comment thread is now closed

ryan

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 09:55 on September 7th, 2007

jmberger, great analysis and insight.

jmberger

at 11:36 on September 7th, 2007

Thanks! I have updated to reflect that NBC is now reporting a very similar and no-doubt-related story.

ryan

at 11:45 on September 7th, 2007

Is the site underdiscussion siteinstitute.org? I observed yesterday that aprox. 30 mins after the story broke the site which had the release went down. Now the site is up but there is no mention of of the Bin Laden video. See here - specifically the screen shots.

Jordan Yerman

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 11:54 on September 7th, 2007

jmberger,thanks for the article and the update. Good stuff.

jmberger

at 11:56 on September 7th, 2007

No. SITE gets their videos from the same pipeline as the site I mentioned. (I didn't identify it for a couple of reasons, mostly that one never knows where to draw the line in discussing an ongoing operation.) They may have pulled the initial notice after the main jihadist boards suddenly stopped promoting the video, which happened just minutes after the pipeline went down (I have also updated the story to reflect that fact).

I wasn't aware of the jihadist boards going completely offline, as NBC is saying, but there are many of them and I usually stick with one that has served me well over the years. It could have gone off while I was asleep. NBC may be right in saying they shut themselves down to track down the leak, but the pipeline site is not controlled by the jihadists.

They could have hacked it or initiated a DDoS attack, but I don't know why they would have, unless they were worried a Trojan had been introduced to the video and they wanted to stop it from being distributed. I haven't heard of the U.S. using Trojans in this way, but it wouldn't surprise me either.

gryphon

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 12:49 on September 7th, 2007

Good stuff.

pwalmsley

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 13:47 on September 7th, 2007

Thanks jmberger.

Here's a link to an AP story that just went up about the tape:

No Overt Threats In Bin Laden Video

Kaitlin

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 14:19 on September 7th, 2007

jmberger, this is fascinating...thanks for the inside scoop. It's interesting to know how individual jihadists get ahold of Bin Laden tapes...the same way I get music files.

Er...I mean...I don't do that.

jmberger

at 14:28 on September 7th, 2007

Ah well, most folks (whomever they might be) share music use P2P, but terrorists don't. Too much exposure -- you're broadcasting your location widely over a long period of time. They use dropbox sites and FTP.

Back in the day, they used to hack Web sites that had certain specific vulnerabilities and drop the files there, but the proliferation of large-file-upload sites online has made that tactic largely obsolete.