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August 03, 2004

Orange Huff Duff

Tom Ridge declared an Orange Alert today. Some people think that was stupid.

One of the extraordinary premises of 'Cryptonomicon' the historical fiction which rocked the geek world a few years back was that information theory, not superior firepower and 'greatest generation' courage, won WW2. Part of that was due to the development of 'HF/DF'.

HF/DF stands for something I am too lazy to walk over to my shelf and find out. Suffice it to say that it was the precursor to radar, and it sorta worked. In 'Huff Duff', the Allies had a secret weapon. While everyone was focused on whether or not the Enigma code was broken or not, Huff Duff stations were sensing where ships at sea were physically. With a little bit of calculated estimations and extrapolations, the Allies were able to figure out where enemy ships might go by plotting their possible movements rather than intercepting their communications. So they could be where the enemy was before the enemy was there.

Now half the trick of having a secret weapon is not to use it so as to tip your hand to the enemy. If I've been reading your mail, I don't want to act as though I know too much, otherwise you'll become suspicious that I've read your mail. One way of using, but not using your secret weapon is to mask your offense, another way is to randomize your defense.

Defense randomization makes your assets more difficult to attack because your enemy, if he is surveying you for targets, cannot accurately predict when you might be most vulnerable. If you have a regular changing of the guard and staffing levels for Sunday morning are predictably low, then your enemy would be most likely to attact on Sunday. But if you suddenly have your guard up on the Sunday of the attack, then your enemy will be suspicious that you have read his mail. If you have read their mail and you randomize your defense, and you are suddenly ready for the Sunday attack, your enemy is likely to blame dumb luck.

Offense masking throws your enemy off track by making your attack look like dumb luck. For example. Let's say your asset is a bank. You place a little old lady in front of your bank on Sunday and she just happens to suddenly twist her ankle and flags down a car which just 'happens' to have an off-duty officer. Dumb luck right?

In either case of Offense Masking or Defense Randomization you make yourself appear more stupid and vulnerable to your enemy than you actually are. Every time I hear the phrase 'intelligence failure', I take comfort that our agencies have a hundred tricks like this at their disposal.

Posted by mbowen at August 3, 2004 09:46 PM

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Comments

thank you so much, for putting it out there. People don't get that war against terror is all about information. Dean thinks we can say we got x informatin from x person on march 13 2004 so we did this.

For the war on terror to be successfully waged there has to be disinformation. The point is anyone not in the know, and ideally the enemy with 1/2 the know wont be able to tell.

The nes reports are all about these five buildings. Doesn't mean at the same time there isn't a quiet alert on all chemical plants.

It amazes me how people think they can watch CNN and think they know everything.

This is why people don't understand how bad Berger stealing documents is.

Posted by: Scott at August 3, 2004 10:21 PM

HF/DF (High Frequenct Direction Finding, I believe) was more the precursor to ELINT (ELectronic INTelligence) than RADAR. Whereas RADAR is an active detection system (send out electromagnetic radiation and listen for an echo), HF/DF is actually more akin to some types of SONAR, in that it is a passive system (just listenting for others' electromagnetic signals). The Germans knew we could intercept their transmissions but what they didn't know was that we had developed a way to determine from which direction the transmissions came. As a result, we could plot the bearings to the same transmission from multiple HF/DF stations and determine the exact location of the transmitting ship by looking at the intersection point. This was what lead to the destruction of the German U-Boat fleet.

Like you said, though, an essential element of the successful exploitation of this technological advantage was in keeping its existence secret. So many who shout so loudly about "the peoples' right to know" would still find the idea of playing face-up poker ridiculous without grasping the obvious analogies. Sources and methods are always, in the long-run, more important to protect than the actual intelligence itself.

Posted by: submandave at August 4, 2004 06:03 AM

Couple of points:

1. Berger didn't steal any documents. He didn't even COPY any documents. It hasn't been reported, but you should check it out.

2. The problem with much of this is that it is unfortunately non-falsifiable. We have to take it on faith that the government agents responsible for classifying terrorist threats and reporting them to the citizenry are actually doing so accoring to a master plan. I am not willing to do that largely because statements about terrorist threats have coincided with a variety of sticky political issues. And the notion (that appears to be based on fact) that the administration is actively persuading governments to time terrorist arrests with domestic political events doesn't make it any better.

Posted by: Lester Spence at August 4, 2004 07:31 AM

I don't have a strong opinion on the Berger affair but I do agree that we ultimately have to take intelligence tactics on faith.

Posted by: cobb at August 4, 2004 07:38 AM

I agree in general that terrorism is best fought with information rather than military armaments. After all, the true enemy is an belief system or group of ideas.

But the terrorist alert system as a willful disinformation campaign by the U.S. government? I'm not so sure. For one, the alert system makes no political statement whereas terrorists -- whoever they may be -- are always attempting a political statement.

I suppose the heightened alert status might communicate to terrorists we've infiltrated their apparatus, but again this looks to be a centralized, or 'big-box' solution to a de-centralized opponent. Suffice to say such a warning probably deters the conventional assault. However, the actual tactic of some terrorist groups -- and I would include al Queda -- might very well be the spreading of mis- and/or disinformation for indirectly precipitating an internal economic crises in America, as trojan virus of sorts.

Posted by: MIB at August 4, 2004 01:01 PM

Nice piece. The only trouble is, you have no idea if it's true or not.

Posted by: DarkStar at August 4, 2004 04:24 PM

Well, I got a big unexpected surprise today when General Tommy Franks revealed what he called 'The Turkish Deception'.

Posted by: Cobb at August 4, 2004 10:22 PM

ilove yours

Posted by: catt at September 13, 2004 09:49 PM