Don’t Shoot
The CIA’s kill teams were modeled on Israel’s hit squads
By Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 14, 2009

A ferocious dispute between the CIA and congressional Democrats centers on an ultrasecret effort launched by agency officials after 9/11 to draw up plans to hunt down and kill terrorists using commando teams similar to those deployed by Israel after the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, according to a former senior U.S. official. . .

http://www.newsweek.com/id/206607

h/t antiwar.com

Shiny Object?

Re: the sniffers — there have been cases where they detected radioactive particles which are completely benign, causing real traffic snarls in airports. They became more commonly used after the Po-210 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

The presentation is from 2007 and just about a year later we have word of this.

“The tags primarily consist of naturally occurring pollen, a substance that evolution has provided with extraordinary adhesive properties,” said Prof Paul Sermon from the University of Surrey, who led the research. “It has been given a unique chemical signature by coating it with titanium oxide, zirconia [zirconium dioxide], silica or a mixture of other oxides. The precise composition of this coating can be varied subtly from one batch of cartridges to another, enabling a firm connection to be made between a particular fired cartridge and its user.”

According to the UK Home Office, there were 18,489 crimes involving firearms in England and Wales in 2006-7. But DNA profiling using skin cells or other biological material stuck to gun cartridges is only successful in about 10% of cases. DNA is damaged by the heat produced when the bullet is fired and also by copper released from the cartridge case by mildly acidic sweat.

If all ammunition were marked with pollen tags, they could help police find out when and where a bullet had been bought. The nanotags are also difficult to remove from clothes and hands, so it would be possible to prove that a suspect had handled a particular batch of ammunition.[my emphasis]

Of course what you want is something perhaps more “transitive” where the tags can move by association – either proximity or direct contact. Sticky is good. Too sticky not so much. Building those association networks is the key. Tag someone or something and try to find someone (once or twice removed) they have been associated with. I guess that might be the theory.

Technological tracking isn’t new of course. During the Vietnam war we apparently were bombing buckets of urine occasionally. But that wasn’t particularly “transitive”.

Now let me turn the Telsa knob thingy on my tin-foil hat up to 11.

I’ve been in one of these puffer machines at the SF airport. There is a whole shitload of things these puppies can detect if programmed right. They use “Ion Mobility Spectrometry” They might even be able to tell if you have lung cancer. Anyway… here is the thing about getting asked to step into one of these at SFO: I notice that only something like 1 in 6 or 1 in 10 passengers were being asked to have air blown up their shirts. Now think about that. Ostensibly they are looking for someone with explosives or who has been recently handling explosives. But either they didn’t believe in the system enough to actually screen everyone or they are just counting on getting pretty damn lucky. Afterwards I thought “man, someone sure sold these people a lot of expensive and operationally useless crap.”

But maybe there was a different use for these sorts of things…

The rest are still very much in development, like nanotech “tagging.” We’re not even close to simple nano meds at scale yet.

Have done some competitive intel in these areas for futurists within the last 5 years, so I’m familiar with most of these items profiled. The time line in the doc is also a bit accelerated, must have some drag when it meets with reality.

Keep in mind that any technology deployed must be completely invisible, undetectable, or it tells others how far along we are and tips them off to countermeasures quite rapidly. Unless a target is completely neutralized, disclosure is likely, breaching the cover of the op.

There’s also a need for HUMINT with deployment of each of the most likely tools, adding to the complexity of the situation — and increasing my skepticism.