Michael Yon on how social networking can make you easy to target. (Or as Glenn Reynolds titles his link, "How to Get Tracked Down and Killed."
Unfortunately, the targets of most recent U.S. strategic manhunts have already learned this lesson. Bin Laden’s “voice-print” was on file in the NSA’s massive computers, and satellites scanned cellular and satellite phone calls originating from Afghanistan in the 1990s for a match. Yet these technologies were rendered useless when bin Laden stopped using these devices in 1998, relying exclusively on face-to-face meetings and couriers to transmit orders to his minions.
Saddam and his sons were extremely careful not to use phones or other communications equipment that might give their positions away. Other than the single phone call intercepted during the raid that killed his sons, there were reportedly few, if any, direct intercepts of Saddam available. Similarly, Zarqawi “knew well how much the Americans relied on high technology to track down suspects: he and his men refrained from using cell phones, knowing how easily they could be tracked.”
Even Pablo Escobar warned his son "Stay away from the phone. The phone is death," advice he ignored himself to his detriment.
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