USA TODAY — Smartphones helped terror organizations grow and communicate. Now the devices are contributing to their downfall.

In a nondescript, highly secured building in this Washington suburb, a group of U.S. government technicians and linguists are downloading massive amounts of data from phones, hard drives, CDs and other devices, providing a huge boost to the U.S. intelligence community as it hunts terrorists.

Many of the devices have been captured from battlefields in Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic State has lost virtually all the territory it captured in 2014.
“This is the future,” Kolleen Yacoub, director of the National Media Exploitation Center, told USA TODAY in a rare interview at the center’s headquarters.

It was the first time the center, which also supports law enforcement and other agencies, has allowed a journalist into the facility, providing insight into a critical but little known part of the intelligence community.

The center grew from a handful of employees when it was established in 2003 to about 700 today, including offices overseas. It has about 100 linguists.

“The ability to exploit captured electronic hardware is a great capability that we have adopted and expanded and improved tremendously over the past 15 years,” said Jim Howcroft, a retired Marine intelligence officer and director of the terrorism program at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.

The center in Maryland, managed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, reviews paper documents as well as electronic items.

But it is the proliferation of laptops and cellphones that has fueled the growth in this type of intelligence gathering.

Smartphones hold massive amounts of information critical to intelligence analysts, including photos, telephone numbers, GPS data and Internet searches.

Users generally assume the device won’t be compromised and don’t take precautions to protect the data, Yacoub said.

“What they’re saving on their devices is ground truth,” Yacoub said. “We tend to treat our digital devices, our mobile devices … as personal items and we don’t lie to them.”

“The adversaries don’t lie to them either,” she said.

The data include videos and photos that help identify militants and their leaders.

Even when a device is damaged or information is deleted, the center’s technicians recover 60% to 80% of the data. “Deleted does not mean lost” is one of the center’s mottoes.

The amount of data coming into the center has skyrocketed in the past two years, Yacoub said, mainly because of the campaign against the Islamic State, or ISIS.

The data analysis has been particularly helpful in giving intelligence analysts an unprecedented look at how the radical group operated in Iraq and Syria because of the ubiquity of smartphones and the meticulous way ISIS kept records in areas it controlled.

The data include tens of thousands of personnel records on foreign fighters and their families with dates of birth, aliases, phone numbers, jobs and other valuable intelligence.

“They have their own central government in a sense,” Yacoub said.

ISIS had departments that developed drone technology, chemical weapons, finance and propaganda operations. It also kept detailed records on the bureaucracy it created to provide services in areas it controlled.

Some of the terror leaders have been captured fleeing the battlefield with reams of information in the hopes that they can use it to keep the group active or to regroup after the loss of territory.

“If you’re committed to sustaining this organization and you’re going to take your show on the road … then you’re taking everything you can with you,” Marine Brig. Gen. James Glynn, deputy commanding general of the Special Operations Joint Task Force, said in an interview from Baghdad.

The intelligence is helping analysts map out how the Islamic State may try to evolve.

“If you don’t have a clear understanding of how ISIS is operating today, I don’t think you can really understand where they are going to next,” said Seth Jones, director of the Transnational Threat Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are not going to disappear.”

Northeastern residents believe the wall being constructed by the government along the Kenya – Somalia boarder is a waste of time and money and will not help block al Shabaab militia.

Some are unhappy because they expected a concrete wall and not the barbed wire fence being put up.

Others however believe the 440km wall launched in March 2015 is ultimate solution to end the constant attacks by the terror group.

The government had not estimated the cost, but one unofficial estimate places the cost at Sh20 billion, another at Sh203 million a kilometre. The wall is supposed to stretch from Border Point One in Mandera to Kiunga in Lamu county.

“We though it was a concrete wall but what we are seeing is more of a fence and we wonder how it will keep off the militants who are known to use explosives to have their way,” resident Ahmed Mohamed said.

Mohamed said it was better to have a concrete wall that will take years to put up than what they were seeing.

But Resident Abdi Maulid said that the wall was more than enough to deter the militants from moving in and out of the country at will and.

Speaking in Mandera town when he inspected the 8 km completed section of the wall, regional coordinator Mohamud Saleh said the initial concrete security wall was redesigned because of the huge financial implication and that the works will be carried out in phases all the way to Kiunga in Lamu County.

Saleh however said he was satisfied with the work so far done.

According to the new design, the wall is being constructed with parallel chain links, concrete poles running parallel to each other and razor wires running in between them.

A 3 metre deep trench on the Kenyan side also runs along the fence and next to it is a road to be used by security personnel to patrol the border.
Designated entry points will consist of concrete walls feasted with CCTV cameras.

Saleh said project’ is meant to secure residents from terrorist attacks.

He said an additional 28km of the land had been surveyed, its bush cleared and soon the construction will resume.

Sales added that citizens crossing over to the country for business must do so in a structured manner.

“We want to have good relations with our neighbours but we won’t allow our people to be terrorised by anybody,” Saleh said.

“The era the Somali citizens used to walk in and out is no longer there. Anybody coming into Kenya must use a passport or other legal documents,” he added.

“I am satisfied as the chairman of the Northeastern security and intelligence team with the work the being done by the KDF who are undertaking the project,” Saleh noted.

“I want to assure Kenyans that the government is focused on the project. We have no problems with the people of Somalia. They are our neighbours who have had serious security challenges for the past 26 years,” he added.

GALKAYO, Somalia — In late 2016, the semiautonomous Puntland region of northeastern Somalia passed a landmark sexual-offenses law to widespread international acclaim.

The law — the first of its kind in the region — criminalized all forms of sexual violence. It banned gang rape, sexual exploitation and harassment.
The result of many years of hard work, it had support from Puntland’s Ministries of Women, Development and Family Affairs, Justice and Religious Affairs, as well as from parliamentarians and religious and community leaders. There were predictions that it might serve as a guide for the rest of the region. When it was enacted, women like me who’d fought so hard for its passage were filled with a new sense of hope.

Slightly over one year later, things have turned out far worse than we could have ever expected.

Not only have there been few signs that sexual violence has decreased, but in the past two months in particular, cases of rape in Puntland appear to have spiked. And incredibly, in a majority of the cases that my organization, the Galkayo Center, has worked on, the men accused of rape have been members of the police force, military or marines.

Instead of serving as enforcers of the new law, these officials are actually perpetrators. They knew that they would not face repercussions, and some did not even bother changing out of their uniforms before committing their assaults.

One of the most high-profile cases I worked on took place just after 2 a.m. on Jan. 10. Eight armed men invaded the Bulo Bacley settlement in Galkayo, kidnapped four women and raped two of them, and tried to drag other women from their homes.
Some of the men were recognized as members of the local police force. Despite efforts by my organization and others to ensure sufficient evidence is gathered, including the in-depth testimonies of the survivors themselves, only one suspect was brought into custody and then was released soon afterward under suspicious circumstances. The lack of basics such as forensics facilities and a qualified team of investigators means that the case is likely to be dropped soon.

Other, less-noticed cases have been equally egregious. In mid-December, a 16-year-old girl with mental disabilities was raped by a group of marines in the town of Garacad. She had been on her way to collect firewood. Four men were arrested but were freed shortly after they swore on the Quran that they were innocent. The victim was told that she would need to provide four witnesses — an effectively impossible task.

Those are just two of over a dozen recent cases in which we were able to step in to provide urgent medical, psychological, legal and financial support for the survivors. It’s hard to get accurate statistics on the prevalence of rape in Puntland or in Somalia in general, but anecdotally, the law appears to have had little impact.

That the law has not had the results we expected is not entirely surprising, even though Puntland’s institutional capacity compared with that of the southern part of Somalia is relatively strong. Policemen are often unaware that the law against sexual violence even exists. Even when officials are aware, they can be hesitant to enforce it. A judge recently told me that since the law was not agreed upon by everyone, not everyone would use it — a shocking statement from somebody who is representing our government.

More often than not, the police are unable to properly carry out investigations and collect reliable evidence.

The police may have no means of transport available to travel to a crime scene, or they may not be able to provide meals to suspects while they are in custody, so they are let go. (Incredibly, as a common practice, victims are often required to pay for their assailants’ food while they are detained, which, understandably, can cause many to drop their cases.) Medical reports often disappear, and the lack of forensics facilities in some parts of Puntland makes it very difficult to gather DNA evidence.

Another major hurdle to prosecuting rapists is that most judges are more used to nonstatutory laws than the official legal system. For Puntland this means Shariah law and customary law, which are often employed alongside formal law.

Our Constitution states that when formal law such as the Sexual Offenses Act does exist — and when a case is heard in a formal court, as opposed to an informal traditional court — only the formal law should be used. In practice, though, this is not what usually happens.

Despite all the hurdles in bringing rapists to justice, we could still, as a society, punish sexual violence if we wanted to: We could use other methods of gathering evidence; we could ensure security for any women who are put at risk for speaking out about abuse; we could make sure that there was a clear message from the top to enforce the law.

But the lesson from the sad story of Puntland’s Sexual Offenses Act is that while formal laws can be vital in influencing attitudes, attitudes and behavior also influence how a law is enforced.

The passage of the law was a great start. But what the past year has made clear is that we also need to start changing attitudes in Puntland and the region more broadly, or else these much-celebrated legal advances for women will be rendered meaningless.