Paris attacks show U.S. surveillance of Islamic State may be ‘going dark’

By: American Decency Staff

The Islamic State’s claim of responsibility for the Paris attacks that killed 129 people — including one American college student — has the potential to dramatically alter U.S. intelligence assessments of the group’s capabilities to carry off well-orchestrated, mass casualty attacks.

At the same time, the attacks underscore the mounting difficulties U.S. and Western intelligence agencies are having in tracking the terror group, resulting in repeated warnings that their efforts to conduct surveillance of Islamic State suspects were “going dark.”  

Over the past year, current and former intelligence officials tell Yahoo News, IS terror suspects have moved to increasingly sophisticated methods of encrypted communications, using new software such as Tor, that intelligence agencies are having difficulty penetrating — a switch that some officials say was accelerated by the disclosures of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The result played out in deadly fashion in Paris: At least eight terrorists, armed with heavy weaponry and suicide vests, and most likely aided by a support network, plotted and executed a highly elaborate mass casualty attack on multiple targets without the French or any other Western intelligence agency having a clue.

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