Inside was a computer center, manned in shifts around the clock by four to six technicians. The central feature of the facility was a $1.5 million IBM AS400 mainframe, the kind once used by banks, networked with half a dozen terminals and monitors.
According to former and current DEA, military, and State Department officials, the cartel had assembled a database that contained both the office and residential telephone numbers of U.S. diplomats and agents based in Colombia, along with the entire call log for the phone company in Cali, which was leaked by employees of the utility. The mainframe was loaded with custom-written data-mining software. It cross-referenced the Cali phone exchange's traffic with the phone numbers of American personnel and Colombian intelligence and law enforcement officials. The computer was essentially conducting a perpetual internal mole-hunt of the cartel's organizational chart.
Jorge Salcedo Cabrera, the main IT whiz who set up the Santacruz computer, eventually became an informant against cartel bosses. The DEA declined to comment on Salcedo. But according to several intelligence officials, he is now living in America at taxpayer expense, under the witness protection program
But here's what is truly frightening: Since the discovery of the Santacruz system in 1994, the cartels' technological mastery has only grown.
The drug lords have deployed advanced communications encryption technologies that, law enforcement officials concede, are all but unbreakable. They use the Web to camouflage the movement of dirty money. They track the radar sweeps of drug surveillance planes to map out gaps in coverage.
Archangel Henao is the man whom authorities credit with much of the drug runners' recent technological progress. According to Colombian and U.S. narcotics officials, Henao heads the North Valley Cartel, the largest and most feared criminal organization to emerge from the chaos that gripped Colombia's underworld after the old Medellín and Cali cartels were broken up in the 1990s by the country's military
Henao and other cartel leaders recruit IT talent from many sources, intelligence officials say. The traffickers lure some specialists from legitimate local businesses, offering scads of cash. They also contract with Israeli, U.S., and other mercenaries who are former electronic warfare experts from military special ops units. Cartel leaders have sent members of their own families to top U.S. engineering and aeronautical schools; when the kids come home, some serve as trusted heads of technical operations. Most of the high-end gear the cartels deploy comes from household-name multinational companies, many of them American; typically, front companies purchase equipment from sales offices in Colombia or through a series of intermediaries operating in the United States.
Henao's cartel built on this and other prior technology initiatives, in part by creating what amounts to a narco research and development program.
The talent and tools are among the best that money can buy, and it shows. For instance, Henao's communications have become so advanced that they have never been intercepted, Colombian intelligence sources say.
The last clear view inside the organization's technical operations was provided in 1998, when a small army of Colombian police arrested Henao's top IT consultant, Nelson Urrego. That bust soon led to the discovery of an elaborate communications network that allowed Urrego to coordinate fleets of North Valley Cartel planes and ships that were smuggling 10 to 15 tons of cocaine each month.
The network's command center was hidden in a Bogotá warehouse outfitted with a retractable German-made Rhode & Schwarz transmission antenna about 40 feet high, and 15 to 20 computers networked with servers and a small mainframe. The same kind of state-of-the-art setup existed in communications centers at Urrego's ranch in Medellín, at an island resort he owned, and at a hideout in Cali. Seized invoices and letters show that Urrego or his associates had recently bought roughly $100,000 worth of Motorola (MOT) gear: 12 base stations, 16 mobile stations installed in trucks and cars, 50 radio phones, and eight repeaters, which boost radio signals over long distances.
The range of Urrego's network extended across the Caribbean and the upper half of South America. He and his operatives used it to send text messages to laptops in dozens of planes and boats to inform their pilots when it was safe to go, and to receive confirmations of when loads were dropped and retrieved. According to one intelligence official who analyzed Urrego's network, it was transmitting 1,000 messages a day -- and not one of them was intercepted, even by U.S. spy planes.
When Urrego typed a message into his computer, it created a digital bit-stream that was then encrypted and fed through a converter that parceled the data out at high frequencies. Digital communications over a radio network can be put into a code much more easily than voice transmissions, and thus are far tougher to intercept and decipher. "There's going to be a delay in sending and receiving messages," says a surveillance expert who does code-breaking work for the DEA and CIA, "but it's going to be fairly friggin' secure."
According to a former narcotics operative in the U.S. Army's Southern Command, cartel pilots routinely map the radar coverage of U.S. spy planes by putting FuzzBuster radar detectors in their drug plane cockpits and logging the hits. "They'd use every piece of data to build a picture, just like a jigsaw puzzle," the retired officer explains. "A piece of data could be 'One of our airplanes was flying on this azimuth at this altitude, and his FuzzBuster went off,' which means he was being painted by the radar. So they put that piece of data in the computer. Then another airplane was flying on that azimuth at that altitude, and his FuzzBuster did not go off. As they put that data together, they'd build a picture of the radar signature."
Many of the targets in the power struggle, the commander says, were located by signals intelligence -- things like pager and e-mail intercepts, transmitters planted on vehicles, or bugs hidden in homes and offices. "This is a technological war," he says.
one of the principal IT gurus behind the system was Jorge Salcedo Cabrera, a former army intelligence operative and electrical engineer who crossed over to the underworld. The Santacruz computer wasn't his first big technological splash. When the Colombian government launched the unit that Velásquez would later head, it established a toll-free tip line for information about Cali Cartel leaders. The traffickers tapped the line, with deadly consequences. "All of these anonymous callers were immediately identified, and they were killed," a former high-ranking DEA official says.
This article edited from http://www.cocaine.org/cokecrime/
Technology Secrets of Cocaine Cartels
Technology Secrets of Cocaine Cartels
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He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in Darkness, and Light dwells with him.
He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in Darkness, and Light dwells with him.
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Great read!
It goes to show that with the right knowledge and the right equipment, and with the right amount of cash needed to fund such a project whether its the intelligence gathering or the counter intelligence that anything is possible. As the technology grows so will each sides reactions to the never ending saga which really becomes a type of war game between between both IT departments after all, they only see names numbers and other information which they need. Never interacting with each other on personal terms in a game of cat and mouse.
I also enjoyed reading another script from the source on my home country about how the cartel worked here. One particular part i smiled at was a chapter about who these people were and the jobs they did. For years these people were invisible and blended in with there lifestyles.
It goes to show that with the right knowledge and the right equipment, and with the right amount of cash needed to fund such a project whether its the intelligence gathering or the counter intelligence that anything is possible. As the technology grows so will each sides reactions to the never ending saga which really becomes a type of war game between between both IT departments after all, they only see names numbers and other information which they need. Never interacting with each other on personal terms in a game of cat and mouse.
I also enjoyed reading another script from the source on my home country about how the cartel worked here. One particular part i smiled at was a chapter about who these people were and the jobs they did. For years these people were invisible and blended in with there lifestyles.
Like most things people get caught because they are noticedTo their neighbours in the north London suburb of Hendon, Jesus Anibal Ruiz-Henao and his brother-in-law, Mario Tascon, were quiet, respectable men. They worked hard as cleaners, bus drivers and other manual jobs, while Ruiz-Henao's wife ran a hair and beauty salon.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
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-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
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