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One point I have to disagree with is the complexity of transmission. We are not talking about a cousin that is not expecting to hear from me for another decade.

One point I have to disagree with is the complexity of transmission. We are not talking about a cousin that is not expecting to hear from me for another decade. Likely, there are in person communications and some pre-agreed upon methods. One immediate "throw-away" method could be just doing a point-to-point WebRTC chat. Google prototyped a super simplistic method using AppEngine and some public STUN servers to get the link going. Security by obscurity, but that's what the article is claiming. Also, there are a bunch of other services that offer communications. Even something like Twilio/Tropo/Plivo can be leveraged using their WebRTC clients and calling inside their own networks (as opposed to hitting PSTN). A FreeSWITCH server will get you similar capabilities between extensions and you can spin one up in minutes on a VPS and then just as quickly throw it away.

JamisonM 13y ago
Sure, but look at the complexity of just describing this stuff. But I think the issue even with a good system is that even the pros will screw up all the time. Sending every message via throwaway accounts, from a different location, with a different computer, from a non-fixed radius from your residence is technically possible but humanly unsustainable and logistically expensive. I could only imagine how exhausting it would be. Most humans with this level of competence simply have better things to do than be terrorists. The argument in the article is that you will only catch the stupid ones with this big drag net, it is reasonable to make the reverse argument - it is very important to catch the stupid ones because if stupid people can easily coordinate terrorist activities, anyone can.