Free Republic

NEW DELHI: Increased use of satellite phones by terrorists is posing a serious problem for security agencies working at intercepting their communication traffic. As a result, the agencies have of late missed vital information that could otherwise have been used to prevent major terror attacks across the country because they do not have the sophisticated interceptor equipment required to monitor satphone traffic. The matter came to the fore at a high-level meeting of top security and intelligence officials in the home ministry to discuss the loopholes in the agencies’ functioning in the wake of Saturday’s serial blasts in Delhi. "Discussions...

AD DWAR, Iraq, Dec. 20 — Before his capture in a coffinlike underground bunker outside this bleak town, Saddam Hussein spent months moving furtively among 20 or 30 nondescript safe houses in the Sunni Muslim heartland, where a tightknit network of family and clan sheltered him and brought him news from across American-dominated Iraq, American military officials say. With that, he used a word-of-mouth system of couriers to carry his instructions back to a cluster of Baathist cells that helped him guide the anticoalition insurgency, the Americans say. The 66-year-old Mr. Hussein traveled on foot, by small boat along the...

U.S. military bans use of Thuraya satellite phones By Jeff Franks AS SAYLIYA, Qatar, April 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Thursday it had banned the use of Thuraya satellite phones by U.S. forces in the Iraq war and the news media covering them because the phones were a "security risk." The nature of the risk was not disclosed, but the military has complained previously that the phone could tip off the locations of its units. "Recent intelligence reporting indicates Thuraya satellite phones may have been compromised," U.S. Central Command said in a statement from its war headquarters...