Aug 11 2006
Hundreds Of Cell Phones Confiscated!
OK, we have more than a ‘trend’ going on here. I posted last week on two middle eastern men arrested in Ohio with 600 cell phones on them. Then came this story today from Michigan (I believe) where three more middle eastern men were arrested with 1000 cell phones in their possession. And now we have this story of another Middle Eastern man arrested in my family’s home town of Grafton WVA last week with 150-200 cell phones. That adds up to nearly 1800 cell phones.
If this is not a money laundering scheme then something truly serious is afoot. Here is the statement from the Grafton Police:
The activity seems to be more than just a coincidence. All three men are from Dearborn, Michigan and all three gave similar reasons for buying the phones. Sayed said he was buying them to ship to California to sell for a profit. But Washington County’s sheriff says that may not be the whole truth. “They are digital for detonating car bombs and they have a particular digital frequency and that’s what they’re using them for,” said Sheriff Larry Mincks.
I am going to see if I can get any more information, but the best source would have been my late uncle. So I am not sure what I can dig up. But what is worrying me is the possible uses for 1800 detonators. Are these for IEDs here in the US? You only need one or two for a large explosive device. But if you were going to do a swarm of smaller detonations across the country then you would need a lot of these. And it seems someone has been collecting a lot of these. Small charges distributed on highways, bridges, etc can have a huge impact in sufficient numbers. I can see no other reason for the numbers.
You can make a bit of money off of these – if you can clear $10 per phone that nets $18,000. But I am not convinced. Too much effort for too little money. And you have to understand Grafton to understand how crazy their story is. Grafton is well off the beaten path. The only reason to go there is because the Walmart is in an isolated spot away from prying eyes. My guess is these people have been cruising small town USA to keep under the radar. If they wanted the cell phones why not just bulk order them off the internet? Well, you wouldn’t do that if you wanted to hide the transactions. You would instead DRIVE from one small town to another buying them in smaller lots of maybe 20 or 30. Something is not right here.
Major Update: I missed this news from August 5 regarding those Ontario Terrorists nabbed a few weeks back:
The suspects are accused of plotting to attack several targets in southern Ontario.
They were caught buying three tonnes of ammonium nitrate. Police also found a pistol and an apparent cell phone detonator during the arrests.
Is this simple coincidence?
AJ
NSA tap of phones exposed by NYT, suddenly bunches of untraceable tracphones throw aways so the US end can’t be exposed. NYT exposes, the bads alter their tactics.
In the story they say they sell them without the chargers, seems like a strange thing to do.
Phoning It In…
… in West Virginia two other men were caught with between 150-200 cellphones in similar circumstances. But that’s where things get curious……
Islam the kinder gentler Religion.
Biggest mistake we ever did was to pollute our country with people who did not have the same value set we have now it’s too late we will have to bear the brunt of it when it hits.
A long time ago a Japanese PM decried why we allowed everyone in including the scum.
He was crucified by the media, politicians and the rest.
What we see now was the result of that stupidity and lotto’s for entry passes.
IF we are to survive we will have to get very brutal or we will not make it.
All this tiptoeing about Islamic Facism, Islamic Nazzism is missing the point and delaying our ability to protect ourselves.
It is the Islamic Religion that is driving these folks and if we do not start sealing off their entry we will only have worse things to deal with .
But I am sure you baby faced oh please don’tdeport anyone will hinder us till the bombs start going off.
By then the damage will have been done.
These people would rather live in shit and disease hoping for death to bring them paradise than working to build it.
Al Qaeda likes to do things in groups. Generally in groups of three but sometimes not. They rarely set off one lone bomb. We need to be prepared to shut down the cell phone system or to at least block general callage and restrict it to use by emergency responders. If cell phones are used as detonators, shutting down the cell nets in a region or city might prevent additional explosions.
Another way to do this is to have a code in these pre-paid phones so that they can be immediately blocked without blocking other users. The cell grid would simply refuse to service these phones when the grid is in a certain state. That also allows you to potentially find the other exlosives that have not detonated. If you have, say, 4 pre-paid phones that suddenly came on the net. There was an explosion and one of the phones disappeared from the net when a call was placed to it at the time of the explosion, you shut the grid down, you notice that the same number is now trying to reach the other pre-paids, you now know which cell the caller is in (person setting off the explosives) and which cells the potential bombs are in. All of this relies on being able to block these kinds of phones very quickly. Within a very few minutes of the initial explosion.
I suspect another purpose to these 1000 phones is to collect the SMS chip from inside. The SMS chip is the phone’s “signature”. So lets say you call your friend Abdullah in Pakistan. You take the normal SMS chip out of your phone, insert the SMS chip of one of the pile you have collected, place your call, remove and destroy that SMS chip. Place your original back in the phone.
That brings to mind the need for a two part system. One part in the SMS chip that has the service information. And a second part that is hardwired into the device that identifies the actual cellphone hardware itself. That would allow law enforcement to easilly tell if different SMS chips are being used in the same physical phone.
Doesn’t it seem at least somewhat unlikely that this is a nefarious activity, much less an AQ operation, as some seem to be ready to conclude ?
That is, (in the Michigan story) “The three men allegedly bought 80 [phones] by purchasing them three at time so that an alert wouldn’t be triggered by the cash register”, and to make it perfectly clear (or reasonably perfectly clear) a WNEM video news story (at the linked-to page) has the guys apparently standing at the register with all 80 phones in tow (presumably the entire Wal-Mart stock of this $20 model – that’s pretty cheap, qué no?), which they had rung up by the cashier in lots of 3. If that’s AQ style, it’s not the traditional rather savvy and careful AQ of yesteryear/month/day. Maybe it’s a new shoot-off of Islamo-Fascism, which can best be called “Cracker AQ”.
Oh, that AQ may have been reduced to utilizing such operatives and tactics (inshallah)!
Crosspatch
When a phone is activated there are three important numbers that end up identifying a particular phone. This info is sent by your provider to a central database. You can move a sim card to a compatible phone, but too many shifts will be flagged by the data base. It makes more sense to use the phone till it’s card time expires and just chunk it when done.
For a discussion see this link
https://styx.uwaterloo.ca/~jscouria/GSM/gsmreport.html#5.2
See the authentication and security section
For the non techie types the readers digest version
1st number
phone serial number , like the vin number on your car, identifies type of phone and its capabilities
2nd number
User id number, like a drivers license number, identifes who is billed and owns the account, or for tracfones and such an anonomous activiation id
3rd number
A secret key generated by the provider is some “magic” manner
The 1st is hardwired to the phone at manufacture
the 2nd and third are on the sim card
When the tower picks up your phone in its area, even if you are not making a call, it does a who are you encrypted handsake to identify that you are a validated activated user and have a phone compatible with their equipment.
Like a driver, you can move your sim to another car, but if you do it to many times it looks funky.
Seems Pakistan earthquake relief money was used to fund the airline bombers.
link
Link to original requires registration so I have linked to a copy.
Nice catch CP, seems this gives some heads up info on the current situation, but being the examining type like I am, I wonder if any of these accounts can be tied to the India train multiple bombings and the British subway bombings or any other attacks. Kashmir seems to be the common denominator or the pivot point.
Ok lets follow each transaction in those accounts over the last five years, lets get all phone records of the bad boys and examine them for patterns. Check whoever is in their roledex or their speedial registry.
AJ: you’re correct, I’ve been following this all week, and saw too there’s at least 3 instances, and they all have the same “cover story” and it’s complete bullshit!
Clearly, clearly, clearly something is “up”, and it’s nefarious!
You just don’t drive around to ever Wal-Mart in the “sticks”, with a laptop used to pull up the Wal-Mart stores, and buy 3 damn trac-phones in each one, with Cash!, to clear $18 each.
It’s a pretty sophisticated operation they had gong too; and it’s obvious that the “locals” were our first line of defense, and thought something suspicious was going on; but it sounds like the local police up in MI did a “catch and release”, which is a big mistake.
Whether it’s for remote detonation, untraceable phones, IED detonation, the SMS chips or another airplane plot; this is DEFINITELY NO GOOD!
I hope to God the DHS and FBI are ALL over this, but from what I can see so far their recation, I’m skeptical.
AJ, someone has to put a “bug” in their ear, and keep it going, or this could go thru the cracks!
If you’ve got the contacts, PLEASE, HIGHTLIGHT this thing as far as you can!
Some interesting observations…….
….about the London terror plot and other recent goings on. From Heritage, Lessons for Congress and …
DGF,
Did you think that all up on your own? Of course there is no terrorist threat and no need to be worried about attacks here in the US. Dumb, Gullible, Fools are the only one who believe in such fantasies – right DGF?
Darwin was right you know.
A bit of a reality check here people, the most likely use of the phones is for communication. Why do I say that? I have a background as a techkie geek type and I see the silliness.
I have in the past designed an optimal remote detonator as just an exercise in capabilities. A hacker attack if you wish.
I have a working design that with openly available parts that can trigger your weapon of choice from a minimum distance of 20 miles that costs less than 1 dollar. I have a remote one that costs less than 2 dollars. These are not hard to construct, its just basic electronics.
Cell phones are limited capability devices when converted to bomb use.
If you plant a bomb with a cellphone trigger, you almost have to be in line of sight with your desired target, their only reasonable use, or you are asking for a planned use within their battery standby limits.
There are hundreds of ways to put a bomb out and have it go off at a future date or conditon to cause it than dumb cellphone activation.
Either you have to have a charger of some kind attached or you have 3 to 5 days to do the dead.
Can you say weak link, I know you can!
“Cell phones are limited capability devices when converted to bomb use”
While they might be sub-optimal, they are the detonator of choice for a dozens of IEDs a month in Iraq and other places. I believe the bombs in Spain and India were also cell phone triggered.
Because it might not be the very best to use, it is what they are using.
I ment: “Although it might not be the very best …”
— AJ —
You’re not really reading my post, I think. Toss away some of the baggage, and give it some thought with a refreshed mind. And respond to the post, why doncha.
I’m not saying it’s impossible that this (the Michigan case, in particular) is terrorist-related, but there certainly seems to be some considerable room for well-founded doubt, on the evidence-at-hand.
“Domestic terrorism” ? Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that we will experience some “homegrown”/home-launched” domestic terrorist operations before too awfully long. Ones effected with a degree of competence. We should be so lucky that this Michigan “case” were AQ /AQ-like, for that would mean that the war on terror was all-but over and won, for all intennts and purposes. A bin Laden, an Atta — those kinda guys, I worry about; al-Larry, al-Mo and al-Curly, not so much…
–CrossP –
I’ll defer to Merlin re: the technical stuff, and assuming he’s right, consider the effective import of your response. That is, the major difference between here and Iraq, for example, is that in Iraq there are thousands of insurgents ready to be in a “sight-line” to effect the detonation via cellphone. Here, on the other hand, we have (for example) three guys with a thousand cells. Unlikely that they’re planning to commit dozens/hundreds of serial acts of terrorism here in the USA. No?
Perhaps Imisunderstood you (you weren’t terribly specific in your remarks), and you mean to suggest that these phones would be used as part of IEDs in Iraq (etc. – out-of-country) ?
All other things being equal (and I have no real clue, for example, whether cellphones sold in a Michigan Wal-Mart are suited for IED actions in Iraq) , that strikes me as more likely than that there’s a big domestic terrorist operation uncovered here.
But from the evidence I’ve read/heard, the evidence is “slim” at this point in time. What’s the compelling evidence to disbelieve the “Michigan Three”‘s buying -for-resale story, and to favor, rather, grand terrorism designs ? Heck — 1000 phones at 18$ profit each; a month’s time (? – who knows? two?); 6 Grand (or even 3) a month is alot of dough for most people; especially kids in their teens or early twenties.
[Apologies if this ends up posting double; it didn’t show, so I’m resubmitting]
— AJ —
You’re not really reading my post, I think. Toss away some of the baggage, and give it some thought with a refreshed mind. And respond to the post, why doncha.
I’m not saying it’s impossible that this (the Michigan case, in particular) is terrorist-related, but there certainly seems to be some considerable room for well-founded doubt, on the evidence-at-hand.
“Domestic terrorism” ? Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that we will experience some “homegrown”/home-launched” domestic terrorist operations before too awfully long. Ones effected with a degree of competence. We should be so lucky that this Michigan “case” were AQ /AQ-like, for that would mean that the war on terror was all-but over and won, for all intennts and purposes. A bin Laden, an Atta — those kinda guys, I worry about; al-Larry, al-Mo and al-Curly, not so much…
–CrossP –
I’ll defer to Merlin re: the technical stuff, and assuming he’s right, consider the effective import of your response. That is, the major difference between here and Iraq, for example, is that in Iraq there are thousands of insurgents ready to be in a “sight-line” to effect the detonation via cellphone. Here, on the other hand, we have (for example) three guys with a thousand cells. Unlikely that they’re planning to commit dozens/hundreds of serial acts of terrorism here in the USA. No?
Perhaps Imisunderstood you (you weren’t terribly specific in your remarks), and you mean to suggest that these phones would be used as part of IEDs in Iraq (etc. – out-of-country) ?
All other things being equal (and I have no real clue, for example, whether cellphones sold in a Michigan Wal-Mart are suited for IED actions in Iraq) , that strikes me as more likely than that there’s a big domestic terrorist operation uncovered here.
But from the evidence I’ve read/heard, the evidence is “slim” at this point in time. What’s the compelling evidence to disbelieve the “Michigan Three”‘s buying -for-resale story, and to favor, rather, grand terrorism designs ? Heck — 1000 phones at 18$ profit each; a month’s time (? – who knows? two?); 6 Grand (or even 3) a month is alot of dough for most people; especially kids in their teens or early twenties.
I had assumed from yesterday’s stories that the primary use of these cell phones was making calls without risking identification, rather than as detonators.
Today’s “catches,” including I think three Muslim men picked up with 1000 $20 cell phones — these are the ones buying triple lots of three each, returning to same WalMart counter and buying another triple lot of three (which is what raised an employee’s antennae, he or she called the local PD).
When the three were picked up, in their vehicle, apparently heading toward another WalMart, they had been taking the just-purchased cell phones apart, tossing respectively into three boxes the chargers, something from inside the phones, I think the batteries, and the phones themselves into the third box.
I’ll leave it to the techies to figure out what they were going to do with cell phones sans batteries, phone chargers sans phones, and batteries sans phones or chargers. I’m clueless.
Except, I’m relatively certain removing the battery from a cell phone limits the quality of any calls made from that phone.
I think this was a link to a Michigan (?) newspaper from Drudge; pretty sure, but not positive.
Let me ask a very simple question and pardon my ignorance on this matter but —-
WHY CAN’T THESE PHONES BE TAKEN OFF THE MARKET ??
DGF,
I read your comments. You take a long time getting to a simple point. So let me be succinct. I wrote in my post the possibility the whole thing is legit as they say. But then I point out why it does not make sense. To make money you want to large profit on a few things or small profit on a lot. They are in the latter category so you would rather bulk buy and ship via an internet site than drive around spending gas and hotel money buying in out of the way WalMart who, due to their location, don’t have large inventories on the shelf. Now if all you are going to do is say “I think their alibis are legit” just say it. We don’t agree with you. Get over it.