Question #1: I thought you could trace a fax, with the phone number it came from or something. Wouldn’t this be–gasp!–a clue?
Question #2: Wherever he is, he must have access to a fax machine, so he can’t be that far away, right? If he is in fact at the Butt-End of Nowhere, can he be sending wireless faxes via satellite or something? Or is he dispatching messengers on horseback, “take this to the Mailboxes Etc. in Kabul, here’s 4,750 Afganis…”?
Yes, it could be traced like any call, but that wouldn’t necessarily tell you here he is.
As you say, he could be using either a satellite phone (which AFAIK can’t be located by triangulation or anything) or have sent a messenger to use any phone, possibly using a portable fax machine.
He might have code words or something to identify himself to the media.
When I bought my fax machine one of the things I had to do was to program my phone number into it. I did this and that’s how my fax machine knows what my phone number is. It adds that number automatically to any fax that I send. My documentation sternly warned that I would be breaking the law if I sent a fax without first programming my number.
I’m sure the bin Laden’s fax machine came with similiar documentation. But I’m not so sure that he would be careful as I about complying with the law. And who knows if the law really even applies in Afganistan?
But anyway, I read a statement from the Taliban stating that they had taken away his fax machine along with his cell phone, etc. It certainly seems that someone is telling a fib here.
Even if bin Laden had programmed his phone number into his fax, the reporter who got the fax would probably delete that info when he released the fax. Heck, he would probably cut it off the top of the page and destroy it. That’s protect a source and all reporters do it, even ours.
Even if you knew that the faxer was the #1 Most Wanted Criminal in the Whole Wide World, and the reason why a large number of American military personnel were camping out on your front doorstep?
So, it’s possible to send a fax via satellite phone? Okay. So you’re sitting there in the mountains with your fax machine and your satellite phone. But I’m missing something here, not owning a fax. I know the satellite phone can run on batteries (yes?) but doesn’t the fax machine have to be, well, plugged in to something? Like an electrical outlet? Is Osama doing his “Robin Hood hiding in Sherwood Forest” imitation equipped with a diesel generator? Or do they make 'em to run on batteries, too?
If he’s got all this technology, why not just bring a laptop and e-mail his manifestos, instead of faxing them? Is faxing less traceable than e-mail? He could use an anonymizer.
I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m having trouble reconciling the “Stone Age Afghan bandit hiding out in caves with antique rifles” persona with the “21st century terrorist faxing his manifestos” persona. I keep picturing him riding a horse off into the mountains, “hey ya! hey ya!” [wild tribal yells], but wearing one of those “electronic gadget pocket vests”, its pockets stuffed full of cell phones and Palmtop Pilots.
As has been pointed out, satellite phones play merry hell with tracing.
But I’m willing to bet that the digitalization of landlines in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area hasn’t been a high priority lately. And tracing a number through an analog phone network is, to put it mildly, a complex procedure. Maintaining the infrastructure for that task is probably not the primary concern for the local telcos anyway.
Of course, if I were bin Laden I’d type out the message and have someone drive a couple of hundred miles to a public post office, fax it and leave before the PGMs arrived.
I wouldn’t think it would be impossible to have a machine that transmitted facsimile-style data without having to actually scan anything… I think I had such a program on one of my old computers. You probably had to feed it a file that had been the result of a “print to file” command or something similar…
But was I correct in my assumption of the software I had? Does something like this exist?
Sure…this stuff still exists and is pretty common.
As long as you have a modem you just setup your fax like a printer. When it comes time to fax you just print to the fax. The computer will ask you for a number and then will dial and send your page. The best part is the fax comes out ont he other end as good as the receiving fax machine can print (none of those skewed documents and stuff like that).
As Spiny Norman pointed out I seriously don’t see ObL standing over a fax machine punching in numbers and feeding documents. He almost certainly sent someone else to do it for him somewhere far away from where ObL was hanging out (per force probably since I doubt fax machines are a common item in the Afghan mountains…heck electricity isn’t even common there).
Also, ObL has been very security conscious for a long time now and he is pretty good at it. I doubt he would let a fax from himself be any sort of clue to his whereabouts. If anything he might even try to toss in some misinformation to lead those persuing him astray.
I kind of have some misgivings about whether he actually sent that fax. The rumour in Pakistan is that he rode off on horseback to some inaccessible place. But I suppose he could probably have relayed it to someone else and asked them to fax it for him…?
But here’s the question: would you recognise him if he shaved off his beard, wore a baseball cap and those baggy underwear-exposing jeans, and had a Coke bottle in his hand, and rode into Kinko’s on a skateboard?
I’m not having a very difficult time imagining a multi-millionaire with a world-wide network of terrorists as having too much trouble getting a fax sent. Am I missing something?
Yeah…ObL isn’t a multi-millionaire anymore AFAIK. The Saudis froze his assets a long time ago (early 90’s I think). I have heard that what money he still had (which was substantial) he largely blew on some ill-advised investments and personally bankrolling his terrorist schemes.
What money he does have mostly comes from whatever aid he can scrape together.
Beyond that I agree with you and don’t think ObL would have any trouble getting a fax sent for him whenever he wanted to.
Maybe I dreamed it, but I seem to recall hearing that the Taliban had effectively cut off all communication with the outside world, and that there was only one phone in the country that could be used to call outside Afghanistan, and even that involved a bunch of messing around. But I don’t know where I got this information from.
I read in the Washington Post today that Osama bin Laden is very financially savvy and still has quite a personal fortune. Don’t forget that Afghanistan isn’t quite as expensive to live in as New York City. Also, I read that he provides seed money to get cells started, but the individuals must supplement with “living off the land” such as committing identity theft, petty theft, welfare fraud, etc.