Article

2015-11-15 Europe

Paris Attacks Raise Questions About French Intelligence Services

[BUZZFEED] PARIS -- As Parisians woke up to surreally empty streets on Saturday, they confronted an uneasy question -- how could France's security services have failed to prevent the previous evening's terrorist attack, the worst in Europe for a decade, just months after allowing another?

The highly coordinated nature of Friday's attacks, in which at least eight assailants launched near-simultaneous assaults in six different locations across Paris, killing over 120 people, has raised questions about whether French counterterrorism units received any warnings that an attack was imminent. Though all but one of the assailants detonated suicide vests, French President Francois Hollande declared within hours that they were ISIS militants directed from abroad. French media reported that one of them was previously known to police.

"We were expecting something. We knew it was coming," said one western diplomat who spoke to BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the subject. "The fact that we failed to stop it is definitely a failure. But you can't imagine the number of attacks we have stopped. This was the nightmare scenario. The targets were all soft targets. How can you protect against people determined to attack a bar or concert?"

At the Place de la RĂŠpublique, a few minutes from Bataclan, where at least 100 people were killed on Friday, Parisians gathered to leave candles and flowers at a makeshift memorial. A banner hung reading "J'ETRE HUMAIN," an ungrammatical pun on the "Je suis Charlie" rallying cry from the January killings. Graffiti artists painted the city's Latin motto, "Fluctuat nec mergitur": "Tossed, but not sunk."

Posted by Besoeker 2015-11-15 05:26|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ] Top
File under: Islamic State

#1 SO we'll all talk about the failures of the police to deflect discussions of the march of the Islamic ... crusaders.

Posted by Bobby 2015-11-15 07:55|| 2015-11-15 07:55|| Front Page Top

#2 it was on the internet that they were going to attack france so much for super duper spy networks! Oh Henry bar anyone? Watch them Turks 2 self defense systems denied and oh yea about a 4 page article ripping into turkey from the financial times berating them like children (Sarkozy) crew about groveling to join the eu at certain levels and nato crap think Turkey trusts Europe, Israel, France, Spain, United States, United Kingdom they crapped all over them in the PINK paper geeshh dahh!?! This whole globalist thing a handful of people a few weapons the cities are going to become slaughter houses wonder at what point control is lost?

Posted by Lampedusa Creretch3679 2015-11-15 08:42|| 2015-11-15 08:42|| Front Page Top

#3 Control has been lost.

Posted by Skidmark 2015-11-15 09:20|| 2015-11-15 09:20|| Front Page Top

#4 Though the POP TART CHART is a wonderful construct that a Smith would use the FLAW the stadium should have been the focus of the attack assuring thousands dead from a few explosions a moderate amount of light machine gun fire and the best part the best part the STAMPEDE and watching them all crush each other to Death channeled down nice concrete stairs and halls blood flowing like a river out of every section see the FALSE FLAG IN THE ATTACK YET AMISH HUH? When they start acting on their own then we will see if the POP TART CHART still works yes? Sun Tzu weaponize everything in your environment self defense of course!

Posted by Lampedusa Creretch3679 2015-11-15 09:22|| 2015-11-15 09:22|| Front Page Top

#5 So the politicians are throwing the police under the bus.

Posted by gorb 2015-11-15 09:47|| 2015-11-15 09:47|| Front Page Top

#6 Pretty much for a situation their policies and programs created. It's either that or the pols can paraphrase Animal House - You f*&^#d up... you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it!

Posted by Procopius2k 2015-11-15 11:06|| 2015-11-15 11:06|| Front Page Top

#7 The French Cops knew their jobs, not much waiting for negotiations and TeeVee time.

Go Frogs!

Posted by Shipman 2015-11-15 12:23|| 2015-11-15 12:23|| Front Page Top

#8 Seems to me it's the journalists who are throwing the security folks under the bus. I watched a couple of people 'covering' this the other night; Shepard Smith on Fox was just blathering in order to avoid dead air, so he fell back on the usual tired tropes about internet chatter and security warnings and the potential impact on Marine Le Pen in the upcoming elections. It seems like it's hard to stay focused on the core issues of radical islam and muslim immigration when you're trying to fill air-time.

Posted by Peter Carroll 2015-11-15 14:58|| 2015-11-15 14:58|| Front Page Top

#9 PS: There are lot of former military and intelligence folks who comment here at Rantburg; I have a question: when we droned Jihadi John the other day (peace be upon him), it seemed from the explanatory coverage like downtown Raqqa is a veritable ISIS-central. How come we haven't just arclighted Raqqa? How come we don't do it now? Why the precision zaps and not the MOAB?

Posted by Peter Carroll 2015-11-15 15:02|| 2015-11-15 15:02|| Front Page Top

#10 Peter - The question lots have been asking.
Same in Pakiwakiland with the ISI in Rawalpindi. Since the ISI used AQ for enforcement... after 911 was Rawalpindi not vaporized?

Posted by 3dc 2015-11-15 15:53|| 2015-11-15 15:53|| Front Page Top

#11 Well, with Rawalpindi, I could see maybe why the whole thing wasn't vaporized; maybe just ISI HQ? I assume you've been there? It's a big city with over a million people. And, to resurrect the old cliché, a few of my best friends are Pakistanis; albeit none of them work for the ISI. In the case of Raqqa, the impression I get is the ratio of ISIS to innocent, cricket-loving citizens is pretty high....different calculus.

Posted by Peter Carroll 2015-11-15 16:08|| 2015-11-15 16:08|| Front Page Top

#12 "...downtown Raqqa is a veritable ISIS-central. How come we haven't just arclighted Raqqa?"

Because they're junior varsity and "we" don't attack children?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2015-11-15 16:12|| 2015-11-15 16:12|| Front Page Top

#13 Any civilian deaths are on the heads of the people who routinely attack civilians. ISIS has, through their own actions, exempted themselves and all under their rule from the protections of the laws of war.

Posted by Rob Crawford 2015-11-15 18:13|| 2015-11-15 18:13|| Front Page Top

#14 What is the validity of the terrorists using comm between playstation players, or something like that?

Posted by Alaska Paul 2015-11-15 20:49|| 2015-11-15 20:49|| Front Page Top

#15 From 3dc's Facebook page:

The scary part of all this is that there are probably still a number of ways that terrorists could send messages to each other without speaking a word, if they really wanted to. An ISIS agent could spell out an attack plan in Super Mario Maker’s coins and share it privately with a friend, or two Call of Duty players could write messages to each other on a wall in a disappearing spray of bullets. It may sound ridiculous, but there are many in-game ways of non-verbal communication that would almost be impossible to track. To do so would require an FBI or NSA agent somehow tapping all the activity on an entire console, not just voice and text chat, and that should not even be technically possible at this point.

Posted by badanov 2015-11-15 20:53|| http://www.chriscovert.net 2015-11-15 20:53|| Front Page Top

#16 Most on-line games have some sort of voice chat feature that allows talk between players in the game, or more privately, chat between members of a team. Rather like a Skype conference call without the Skype infrastructure.

But you don't need an on-line game server to communicate. Any device with a network interface and enough computing power to to open a socket will allow moderately clever people to do text-based chat between two endpoints.

A shared web-based email account allows you to exchange messages by simply leaving them as drafts that are never sent as regular, snoopable email.

Posted by SteveS 2015-11-15 21:07|| 2015-11-15 21:07|| Front Page Top

#17 A shared web-based email account allows you to exchange messages by simply leaving them as drafts that are never sent as regular, snoopable email.

Its my understanding that such drafts are indeed "snoopable".

Posted by Crusader 2015-11-15 21:22|| 2015-11-15 21:22|| Front Page Top

#18 Its my understanding that such drafts are indeed "snoopable".

Sure, it exists as a file on the server and is visible to the usual sysadmin or forensic tools. I meant it wouldn't be seen by a snooper watching traffic thru the mail system.

Posted by SteveS 2015-11-15 21:30|| 2015-11-15 21:30|| Front Page Top

#19 There are a ton of ways to communicate, or not communicate. A soccer match between two great soccer teams is scheduled well in advance.

It is no secret that console FPS are notorious for language which would throw chaff.

Posted by swksvolFF 2015-11-15 21:38|| 2015-11-15 21:38|| Front Page Top

#20 Muslim terrorists are "youths" and are "chance for France" and nothing, even a nuclear attack will make the zeropean medias deviate from the story line...
The terrorists are extremists and the only time the "extremists" are named, they are "ISLAMOPHOBES"
So, the french public being just as brainwashed as the American public, they are presumed to assume that the authors are critics of Islam...the "ALLAH AKBAR" being supposed to be a redirection to deviate the blame...
a false flag so to speak...

Never mind that all french Cities are surrounded by "projects" called "Zones sans droits"(Outlaw zones) where the firemen, ambulances and police never venture less they be ambushed and killed.
These zones are ruled by drug lords, muslim mullahs and the shariah.

Posted by Chuckles Turkeyneck3558 2015-11-15 23:39|| 2015-11-15 23:39|| Front Page Top

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