FC: Details on bin Laden's radio communications system

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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From: "Erich M" <me () quintessenz at>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 14:33:48 +0100
Subject: Bin Laden's communications system

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Declan,

Here is the gist of three stories in German linked below
cu
erich

If Bin Ladens Voice really could be identified on intercepted radio
communications as some US Media report, he most likley used used a
Handset of the "High Power HF SSB System" by the Australian manufacturer
Codan.

These Shortwave SSB [Single Side Band modulation] radio systems [voice and
data] are used by most of the UN and many NGO relief orgs [UNHCR, UNICEF,
Omar, Red cross]

The Codan Marketing Manager confirmed that they had to ship over one
thousand additional units to resupply the losses of those organisations in
Afghanistan. Taliban/Al Quaeda systematically robbed those Codan Systems
and used them to hide their communications.

Can you imagine how difficult  it was for the US to identify a communications
station as a target when it was active with a hardware id and a callsign
belonging to a UN organization?

In many of the cases when relief orgs were hit by US missiles a Codan station
was also destroyed.

 Codan System typically consists of  automobile transceivers, a powerful base
station  [up to 1 KW covering the whole shortwave spectrum] plus a number of
handsets. Each base station can handle up to 400 [!] radio telephony channels,
Codan also delievers radio modems

Shortwave, being the dirtiest of all spectra of course does not allow 
reliable on-
the-air voice encryption  - way too much noise around. Data transmissions are
very slow [1Kbit/sec is "fast"] because of high data transmission error rates.
Strong encryption systems are difficult to apply - if one character ist 
corrupt,
the whole message remains unreadable -  so even embassies around the world
use some kind of Baudot-like numerical Code: Information is coded in groups of
five numbers.

All an easy prey to ECHELON I'd say. Al Kaida did not communicate via PGP
or Steganography in pornographic images - God forbid! They used stolen two
way radio hardware from relief organizations with stolen callsigns. The
challenge to US surveillance was to identify whether a voice speaking in 
Pashtu
[or some other dialect] belonged to the enemy. Or not: four Afghan 
engineers of
a UN  technical aid unit were killed by a cruise missile beginning October, 
the
building contained a Codan base station.


Full text
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/co/11357/1.html

Abridged version
http://futurezone.orf.at/futurezone.orf?read=detail&id=99932

first story
http://futurezone.orf.at/futurezone.orf?read=detail&id=98032





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Taeglich frische IT-Nachrichten
http://futurezone.orf.at




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