3 August 2013 — Moon of Alabama

After weeks  under heavy pressure for limitless spying on people everywhere the U.S. intelligence services conveniently detect a “threat” of some undefined future attacks. The “detection”, we are of course told, was only possible because of limitless spying on people everywhere:

The United States intercepted electronic communications this week among senior operatives of Al Qaeda, in which the terrorists discussed attacks against American interests in the Middle East and North Africa, American officials said Friday.

The intercepts and a subsequent analysis of them by American intelligence agencies prompted the United States to issue an unusual global travel alert to American citizens on Friday, warning of the potential for terrorist attacks by operatives of Al Qaeda and their associates beginning Sunday through the end of August.

Just a month ago we were told that the “terrorists” are changing their communication because of the NSA snooping leaks:

The Al-Qaeda and other terrorist are reportedly changing their communication methods in light of the revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden about US led NSA ‘surveillance programme’. 
…
US officials said that virtually every terrorist organization including Al-Qaeda is changing the way they communicate to hide from the US surveillance after the revelations about the leaks were reported in the media. 
…
Private analysis firm IntelCenter’s Ben Venzke said that the leaks by Snowden serve as a wake-up call to extremists and other hostile actors to analyse how they are working and improve their security.

Is it not a bit weird that just a month after that “wake-up call” and the “changed communications” talks between “senior operatives of Al Qaeda” are now easily detectable by the same intelligence services that warned of those changes?

And what is it about these “terrorists” that the “threat” from them ends after August 31?

Even some “analysts and Congressional officials” the NYT mentions in one short paragraph find this somewhat suspicious:

Some analysts and Congressional officials suggested Friday that emphasizing a terrorist threat now was a good way to divert attention from the uproar over the N.S.A.’s data-collection programs, …

Ahh – you don’t say …

But the sentence continues:

… and that if it showed the intercepts had uncovered a possible plot, even better.

So it would be even better if now, as a warning has been given, something would happen to some U.S. embassy in the Middle East. That then would justify the warning and of course also justify the intelligence services NSA’s limitless spying on people everywhere that made the warning possible.

Hmm – how much does it cost, let’s say in Yemen, to have some guys on a motorcycle fire a few shots at an embassy guard?