The Intercept

> Since June 2013, article after article about the NSA has been illustrated with a single image supplied by the agency, a photograph of its Fort Meade headquarters that appears to date from the 1970s.

> The photographs below – which are being published for the first time – show three of the largest agencies in the U.S. intelligence community. The scale of their operations was hidden from the public until August 2013, when their classified budget requests were revealed in documents provided by Snowden. Three months later, I rented a helicopter and shot nighttime images of the NSA’s headquarters. I did the same with the NRO, which designs, builds and operates America’s spy satellites, and with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which maps and analyzes imagery, connecting geographic information to other surveillance data. The Central Intelligence Agency – the largest member of the intelligence community – denied repeated requests for permission to take aerial photos of its headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

> My intention is to expand the visual vocabulary we use to “see” the U.S. intelligence community.

Might want to ensure it's running on the latest version of WordPress,

Not trying to be cynical I am genuinely curious.

Then there's the fascination with the "/"

- "The//Intercept" - https://firstlook.org/theintercept

- "Re/code" - http://recode.net

I also noticed that it uses HTTPS by default which is, of course, very cool.

Also, I'm glad this content has arrived...

(edit: not so impressed by the desktop version of the site, but I guess I can make it beautiful by resizing my browser)

Also, make sure you don't say No Such Agency or type their acronym. Wouldn't want the article to get censored and fall off the front page. Moving on...

>According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the [No Such Agency], the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

What could possibly go wrong? What might the enemy do upon figuring this out? Well, it's clear that our own operatives understood the problem:

>One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the [No Such Agency]’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.

So... why are we still doing it? Is there a way that this might become at least a bit more reliable?

>What’s more, he adds, the [No Such Agency] often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.

You've got to be shitting me. The source continues later in the article:

>The former JSOC drone operator estimates that the overwhelming majority of high-value target operations he worked on in Afghanistan relied on signals intelligence, known as SIGINT, based on the [No Such Agency]’s phone-tracking technology.

>“Everything they turned into a kinetic strike or a night raid was almost 90 percent that,” he says. “You could tell, because you’d go back to the mission reports and it will say ‘this mission was triggered by SIGINT,’ which means it was triggered by a geolocation cell.”

And the source does at least concede that the [No Such Agency] builds a matrix of characteristics to try and pin down a target:

>In fact, as the former JSOC drone operator recounts, tracking people by metadata and then killing them by SIM card is inherently flawed. The [No Such Agency] “will develop a pattern,” he says, “where they understand that this is what this person’s voice sounds like, this is who his friends are, this is who his commander is, this is who his subordinates are. And they put them into a matrix. But it’s not always correct. There’s a lot of human error in that.”

I'm sure this is what the president meant by "near-certainty" of a target's validity:

>In his speech at the National Defense University last May, President Obama declared that “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.” He added that, “by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.”

The highest standard we can set:

>As of May 2013, according to the former drone operator, President Obama had cleared 16 people in Yemen and five in Somalia for targeting in strikes. Before a strike is green-lit, he says, there must be at least two sources of intelligence. The problem is that both of those sources often involve [No Such Agency]-supplied data, rather than human intelligence (HUMINT).

A high standard indeed. But don't worry! The [No Such Agency] insists that HUMINT is involved. After the fact:

>Hayden felt free, however, to note the role that human intelligence plays after a deadly strike occurs. “After any use of targeted lethal force, when there are indications that civilian deaths may have occurred, intelligence analysts draw on a large body of information – including human intelligence, signals intelligence, media reports, and surveillance footage – to help us make informed determinations about whether civilians were in fact killed or injured.”

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There's also some nice tidbits about the technical manner in which this is pulled off. The GILGAMESH program is described:

>As the former JSOC drone operator describes – and as classified documents obtained from Snowden confirm – the [No Such Agency] doesn’t just locate the cell phones of terror suspects by intercepting communications from cell phone towers and Internet service providers. The agency also equips drones and other aircraft with devices known as “virtual base-tower transceivers” – creating, in effect, a fake cell phone tower that can force a targeted person’s device to lock onto the [No Such Agency]’s receiver without their knowledge.

As well as the SHENANIGANS program:

>In addition to the GILGAMESH system used by JSOC, the CIA uses a similar [No Such Agency] platform known as SHENANIGANS. The operation – previously undisclosed – utilizes a pod on aircraft that vacuums up massive amounts of data from any wireless routers, computers, smart phones or other electronic devices that are within range.

>VICTORYDANCE, he [different operator from an [No Such Agency] doc, not the JSOC source] adds, “mapped the Wi-Fi fingerprint of nearly every major town in Yemen.”

When raising children I learned a valuable lesson: you don't educate by telling them. You educate by living up to what you tell them.

Don't get me wrong: I am exited as the next person about this experiment. I laud them for their effort. But I expected better.

EDIT: Spelling

I mean, it does (theintercept.org) but that just redirects you to https://firstlook.org/theintercept/