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292 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS

November, they made online bookings for quarters in Paris for the
nine attackers. Even though Abaaoud was well-known to Western
intelligence services, none of the communications surrounding the
preparations for the attack came to the attention of the NSA or its
allied services in Europe. A critical find for the investigators enabled
them to unravel the chain that eventually led them to the perpe-
trators, but it had nothing to do with electronic surveillance. A cell
phone belonging to one of them was found by the security forces,
following a broad search they conducted, which included trash cans
situated in the vicinity of the concert halls. So this breakthrough in
the investigation had nothing to do with systematic data analysis
conducted prior to the attack.
Indeed, in the sequence of the Paris events, as in other terror
events, the challenge is not just bringing culprits to justice. It is pre-
venting the terrorists from carrying out their attack to begin with.
Police cannot constantly protect “soft targets” such as restaurants,
cafés, theaters, and street gatherings. The only practical means by
which a government can prevent such attacks is to learn in advance
their planning and preparations. One means of acquiring this infor-
mation is by listening in on the channels through which members
of loosely knit terrorist organizations, such as ISIS, communicate.
This form of intelligence gathering obviously works best so long
as the terrorists remain unaware that the communication channels
they are using are being monitored. Once they find out that their
messages and conversations are being intercepted, they will likely
find a safer means to communicate important information. For that
reason, communications intelligence organizations keep the sources
and methods they employ for monitoring these channels in a tightly
sealed envelope of secrecy.
Yet, in June 2013, the NSA found that envelope had been breached
by Snowden, who knowingly compromised three programs that it
used to keep track of terrorist organizations around the world. The
first system he divulged, and the one that received the most public
attention, was what the NSA called the “215” program because it
had been authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act of 2001. This
program compiled the billing records of every phone call made in
America. The data included the number called and the duration of

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