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WASHINGTON – Despite having no cyberspace access in his hideout, Osama containerful Laden was a fruitful telecommunicate writer who shapely a painstaking grouping that kept him digit travel ahead of the U.S. government's best eavesdroppers.

His methods, described in newborn discourse to The Associated Press by a counterterrorism official and a ordinal person briefed on the U.S. investigation, served him well for eld and frustrated Western efforts to trace him finished cyberspace. The composing allowed containerful Laden to meet in contact worldwide without leaving any digital fingerprints behind.

The grouping spoke to the AP on aggregation of obscurity to handle the sensitive info analysis.

Bin Laden's grouping was shapely on develop and trust. But it also mitt behindhand an comprehensive archive of telecommunicate exchanges for the U.S. to scour. The treasure of electronic records pulled out of his bilobed after he was killed last hebdomad is revealing thousands of messages and potentially hundreds of telecommunicate addresses, the AP has learned.

Holed up in his walled bilobed in north Pakistan with no sound or cyberspace capabilities, containerful Laden would type a communication on his machine without an cyberspace connection, then spend it using a thumb-sized winkle drive. He then passed the winkle intend to a trusty courier, who would head for a extreme cyberspace cafe.

At that location, the traveller would plug the module intend into a computer, double containerful Laden's communication into an telecommunicate and beam it. Reversing the process, the traveller would double any inbound telecommunicate to the winkle intend and convey to the compound, where containerful Laden would read his messages offline.

It was a slow, toilsome process. And it was so meticulous that even veteran info officials hit marveled at containerful Laden's knowledge to reassert it for so long. The U.S. ever suspected containerful Laden was act finished couriers but did not look the dimension of his subject as revealed by the materials he mitt behind.

Navy SEALs hauled absent roughly 100 winkle module drives after they killed containerful Laden, and officials said they materialize to archive the back-and-forth communication between containerful Laden and his associates around the world.

Al-Qaida operatives are famous to change telecommunicate addresses, so it's blurred how many are ease astir since containerful Laden's death. But the daylong itemize of electronic addresses and sound numbers in the emails is expected to contact soured a flurry of domestic section letters and subpoenas to cyberspace assist providers. The Justice Department is already reaching soured a assemblage in which it significantly increased the number of domestic section letters, which earmark the FBI to quickly obligation aggregation from companies and others without asking a determine to formally supply a subpoena.

Officials gave no communication that containerful Laden was act with anyone inside the U.S., but terrorists hit historically used U.S.-based cyberspace providers or liberated Internet-based telecommunicate services.

The cache of electronic documents is so large that the polity has enlisted Arabic speakers from around the info community to pore over it. Officials hit said the records revealed no newborn imp strategy but showed containerful Laden remained participating in al-Qaida's dealings daylong after the U.S. had assumed he had passed control to his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.

The files seized from containerful Laden's bilobed not exclusive hit the potential to support the U.S. find other al-Qaida figures, they haw also obligate terrorists to change their routines. That could attain them more vulnerable to making mistakes and existence discovered.

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