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(S) Using SIGINT to Sniff Out Phony Passports (and Other Persona
Identifiers)
FROM:
Counterintelligence and HUMINT Support (S2D)
Run Date: 08/02/2005
(S) Team looks at ways to single out suspicious travelers.
(S) Have you gone through passport control recently and wondered what flags might have
alerted security officials to single out a person for further questioning? Since September 11
various elements throughout the intelligence and law enforcement communities have worked
together to provide border officials with the necessary tools to identify false passports without
compromising sensitive intelligence information. Something as simple as the date or place the
passport was issued can indicate that a passport is fraudulent or altered, alerting immigration
officials that they are dealing with an individual who warrants greater scrutiny.
(S//SI) The Counterintelligence and HUMINT Support Product Line's Persona Analysis Team
(PAT) was formed to explore ways that SIGINT could further contribute to this effort. Some
work had already been accomplished on the issue of passports, including the development of
new tools to parse travel-related information. SIGINT was also used to identify irregular travel
documents.
(S//SI) One line of reporting focused on Pakistani passports used by people traveling between
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Other reports alerted border guards to the use of Iranian passports
that did not fit the Iranian national passport model, alerting border officials to suspicious
travelers.
(S//SI) Recognizing the potential of using SIGINT to identify networks and individuals who
create and use fraudulent persona identifiers - like passports and national identification cards -the PAT's goals are to explore and develop persona identifiers as SIGINT targets and
encourage collaboration among Intelligence Community analysts. The team's first target is
Venezuela, a country demonstrating much corruption (including in its passport issuance
authority) has close ties to Cuba, and a prominent Ba'athist element within its government.
(S//SI) The effort involves research of open-source material and Anchory, the use of new tools
such as FASTSCOPE to identify patterns, organizations and individuals of interest, the
development of key terms for query and collection efforts, and collaboration with other product
lines, directorates and members throughout the Intelligence Community.
(S//SI) One example of such collaboration can be seen in the effort to identify passport
checksums. Some countries issue passport serial numbers that contain a checksum, so when
certain mathematical calculations are done against a portion of the number, the result
corresponds to another part of the serial number. Collaboration between the CIA, NSA's PAT and
S3T, and mathematicians from IDA/CCR-Princeton* have helped to identify checksums used by
various countries, which can then be used to scrutinize passports issued by those countries to
determine validity. By comparing identified checksums against passport numbers appearing in
traffic, NSA can then alert law enforcement officials to suspicious travelers.
(S//SI) The team's efforts have already shown promise. In four months, when the team
provides a second SITR brief to Gen Quirk, it is likely that not only will the recommendation be
to continue the tiger team's work but to make it part of an expanded target tracking effort
integrating persona analysis tools with Social Network Analysis, geolocation, SITA travel data,
and contact chaining for a truly robust, multidiscipline, cross-organizational capability to track
targets.
*(U) Notes:
IDA/CCR = Institute for Defense Analyses/Center for Communications Research (see further info
)
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)."
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DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108