Keep giving away our secrets and the terrorists will have to communicate with smoke signals ...

[kentuck]

...and carrier pigeons.

Now that they know we are monitoring their emails, Facebook, and phone calls, what other methods are left for them to communicate?

James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, has stated that these leaks have caused "irreversible damage" to our efforts to safeguard the nation.

Which of the leaks will cause the most damage to our security? The fact that we are collecting the phone numbers? The Internet monitoring? How will the terrorists change their modus operandi?

What is the next step in the evolution of the war on terror?

[leftstreet]

1. How dumb would a terra-ist have to be to use Facebook?

Or email, or anything like that

[kentuck]

2. The government thinks so...

and spend a lot money monitoring them, evidently.

[leftstreet]

3. Private contractors collected a lot of money to do it n/t

[JI7]

5. isn't al qaeda on twitter ?

[leftstreet]

6. LOL and they're a threat...how again?

Please

[JI7]

7. use to be, remember 9/11 ? but they are not nearly as powerful as they were before

[boston bean]

4. If the public knowing makes it harder for them to communicate, well then...

tell us more please!

[hobbit709]

8. Samizdat.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Yeesh...it's just counter-intelligence operations

Old as time. You know they do X, then you do Y instead. I love this sense that these terrorist organizations are made up of dumb primitives. They're not. Ultimately, human intelligence is required to pin an al Qaeda email. Counter-intelligence would simply tell you to vary emails and avoid patterned behavior. The question is how deeply these patterns can run.

The result of these disclosures is more care in counter-intelligence operations, more attention to the traces and patterns one is leaving behind. Yes, of course it compromises intelligence and security. It takes time and human investment to nail down an al Qaeda related email address and monitor it. If that address goes silent to avoid pattern recognition, you've lost a security asset and maybe even burned a human source. What kind of fucking idiot doesn't know this? It is very foolish indeed to think that one would give up email or other digital "message dropping" devices completely - indeed, there are more of them now than ever. The trick is to vary enough that patterns become harder to discern.

Every corner boy with a burner phone knows this. If you've got a wire on a mobile phone, and the dealers get smart and dump it, you've lost an asset, and maybe burned a source. Again, what kind of idiot doesn't know this? Hell we knew this back in the late-80's and early 90's when we were teenagers doing pager drops: don't use the same pay phone too much.

[KoKo]

10. Keep Doing this SPYING and we will Revive the USPS and putting Notes

in Hollow Tree Trunks if we are Conspirators.

That's the way it seemst to be going. The TERRORISTS knew after "9/11" to communicate "outside the Cell Phone and Internet" to do their deeds while we all Lined up Like "Good Soldiers" getting X-Rayed and Prodded and Poked by TSA Zealots and our Shampoo, Nail Cutters, Files and Tweezers, Shampoos and Lotions and Creams and Personal Products of "other kinds" were confiscated by TSA along with the traveling folks who had gifts of foods, jellies, jams, wine and other purchases on our Vacation Trips Overseas CONFISCATED as Toxic. Were these goods sold on a Black Market doing more Profiting for the Contractors who Run our Govt. as we've Outsourced our Taxpayer Dollars to THEM?

So...yes...maybe we can revive the USPS and get back to dropping notes in Dead Tree Stumps if we have SECRETS and even meeting in GROUPS ...FACE TO FACE to escape all this surveillance.

Or we will be sheep and go to the Orwellian World and eventually to some Dystopian Society where we will await the "Grand Armageddon."

I don't know anymore...but, the times we live in get more and more serious and disturbing for all of us given what we see going down.

When we WWII Babies die...you will see the GRAND INQUISITION...the way it seems to be going. When those who carry the HISTORY DIE OFF...Who will be left to know who Nixon was...who Herber Hoover was and Vietnam and WWII and WWI and the GREAT DEPRESSION and JFK ASSASSINATED and BOBBY and MARTIN and all the others.

Who will be Left to TELL THE TALES...to KNOW THE HISTORY.