A Networked World

Tell me this wasn't a bomb attempt

A Qantas plane carrying passengers from yesterday's mid-air ordeal, which saw a Boeing-747-400 make an emergency landing in the Phillipines, has touched down in Melbourne.

Passengers recalled their experience to the large media pack that greeted them at Melbourne airport this morning after their arrival from Manila.

"There was a bang and it felt like the air pressure in the aircraft had changed and all the air masks and everything came down," said Melbourne man Owen Phillips.

Look at the Photo Gallery - Qantas emergency landing. That was a detonation in a baggage container that also did some damage in the passenger cabin by the emergency door over the wing root leading edge.

No fire blackening which might indicate a TATP type detonation which does not, on its own, generate much heat. This may very well be what a "liquid explosive" event looks like. As predicted, the chances of using such a device to knock down a plane are slim to vanishing.

The real question is whether someone got it through the security theatre performance at Heathrow or Hong Kong because we have paid a lot in lost resources, time and freedom to prevent exactly this happening.

Cosmic Levels of Stupid

There is SO much about this story that beggars belief: Taliban issue ultimatum to Afghan mobile operators.

Taliban insurgents on Monday gave Afghan mobile phone operators three days to shut down their networks at night or face attack, as the rebels said international forces used the cellphones to track them down.

... Qari Mohammad Yousuf, a spokesman for the Taliban, told Reuters by mobile phone from an undisclosed location.

"Since the occupying forces stationed in Afghanistan usually at night use mobile phones for espionage to track down the mujahideen, the Islamic Emirate gave a three-day ultimatum to all mobile phone firms to switch off their phones from five in the afternoon until seven in the morning," Yousuf said.

If the mobile companies failed to follow the Taliban order, then the Taliban would target their towers and offices, he added.

Ousted from power in 2001, the Taliban themselves largely rely on mobile phones for communicating with each other and for passing their news to the media in Afghanistan.

So

1. These guys are too stupid to turn off their phones at night so they can't be tracked and
2. If the phone companies refuse to do it for them, they will blow up their OWN single communications tool.
3. They use a mobile phone to do it
4. From an undisclosed location that they claim can be tracked by the US
5. But only at night.

Right.

And the most appalling thing of all is that THESE guys are winning.

Do tell, How about that, wow

So, apparently: No evidence airport security make planes safer.

Airport security lines can annoy passengers, but there is no evidence that they make flying any safer, US researchers reported on Thursday.

A team at the Harvard School of Public Health could not find any studies showing whether the time-consuming process of X-raying carry-on luggage prevents hijackings or attacks.

They also found no evidence to suggest that making passengers take off their shoes and confiscating small items prevented any incidents.

The US Transportation Security Administration told research teams requesting information their need for quick new security measures trumped the usefulness of evaluating them, Eleni Linos, Elizabeth Linos, and Graham Colditz reported in the British Medical Journal.

... "Even without clear evidence of the accuracy of testing, the Transportation Security Administration defended its measures by reporting that more than 13 million prohibited items were intercepted in one year," the researchers added. "Most of these illegal items were lighters."

[...] "We'd like airport security screening to be of value. As passengers and members of the public we'd like to know the evidence and the reasoning behind these measures," Linos said in a telephone interview.

Fair point, good question, so friends, what might be the reasoning behind these measures? Oh, look, next sentence.

With US$5.6 billion ($7.47 billion) spent globally on airport protection each year,

Reasoning; "because you are stupid and terrified, we can make billions out of performing little witch doctor dances around you as you head for the plane".

the public should be encouraged to query some screening requirements - such as forcing passengers to remove their shoes, the researchers said.

Note to traveller, do not take up these issues with the overstressed, underpaid, often underqualified person performing these tasks, you will have your ass handed to you. I was told at Frankfurt airport a while ago to empty the breast pocket of my shirt because 'there was too much stuff in there". I thought of taking out individual items until I reached the European standard of "not too much", but I knew for certain that would get me wasting a LOT of time and may involve more intimate relationships just because they can.

"Can you hide anything in your shoes that you cannot hide in your underwear?" they asked.

A TSA spokesman was not immediately available to comment.

TSA and the rest don't comment, they don't explain, they don't justify and they wont tell you what the regulations ARE.

But its OK because SOMEBODY is making nearly $6 Billion out of this charade.

Two Words

will summarise this. The folks at Kos are spitting tacks over it : Pelosi Says She Miscalculated GOP Determination on Iraq.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., admitted Thursday that she had underestimated the willingness of Republicans to stand behind President Bush’s Iraq policy despite the drubbing the GOP took in the polls in 2006.

“The assumption I made was that the Republicans would soon see the light,” she said. Instead, the minority stuck to the president’s war policy in the face of unrelenting pressure from congressional Democrats and powerful lobbying campaigns by anti-war groups.

Bush has consistently refused to accept any limitations on his authority to direct military operations in Iraq, or on funds destined for the war effort. Democrats have been unable to muster enough votes to force him to accept a timetable for withdrawal of combat troops or a change in their mission in Iraq.

“That was a revelation to me, because I felt the American peoples’ voices were so strong and still are in this regard that I hoped that with some compromise and reaching out there might be some change in direction,” Pelosi said. “But they are sticking with the president on this.”

Suicidal naievety.

What would it take, what exactly would it take, to geta hamster to believe in the good will of the cobra?

Whatever it is, Pelosi has it in spades. But then she says

“The grassroots are justifiably disappointed and I am too that we have not done more to end this war,” Pelosi said.

Question; watcha gonna DO about it? Clap harder? THIS is what Weimar looks like in 2007. Holy cow we are all goners with people like this at the switch.

David isenberg on Torture Tapes

Trust David to find the biggest nails for the coffin: Another Reason Torture-tape-gate is Abhorent.

Suppose the torture victim says something useful, but mumbles, or uses disjointed syntax, or uses a language that the torturers don't know. Maybe the victim has a moment of weakness and then clams up again. Or maybe the victim utters the valuable information and dies. Or maybe the information needs to be translated by somebody who's not present. Or maybe it only gains value as it is subject to further analysis.

To NOT RECORD torture is to risk losing the very utility the perpetrators claim makes torture necessary. If they're risking loss of information to keep their own asses out of the fire, it's even worse. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Amen brother.

CIA destroys terror tapes

There is SO much wrong with this story it is hard to know where to start: CIA destroys terror tapes.

The CIA videotaped its interrogations of terror suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the identities of United States questioners, the director of the agency told employees yesterday.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said House of Representatives and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA's intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA's internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal.

He said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President George W Bush authorised the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said.

"The agency was determined that it proceed in accord with established legal and policy guidelines. So, on its own, CIA began to videotape interrogations," Hayden said in a written message to CIA employees, obtained by The Associated Press.

Just WHO were they afraid would release the tapes to the public? The only people who would have access to them would be the top dogs in the CIA with the highest clearances.

OR

They started taping the sessions because they knew that what they were doing was torture and they needed to be able to point the finger upstairs.

THEN they realised that they would not be protected from investigation because, "I was just following orders" has not flown since Nuremberg and as far as the White House is concerned, everyone else is expendable. That and the fact that they were sitting on a room full of smoking guns.

SO they destroyed evidence that might get them slammed away as war criminals. In the process perverting the course of justice.

Its interesting how all totalitarian organisations take such care in documenting their atrocities, and get so twitchy about destroying the evidence when the shutters start falling off.

Facebook Deathwatch

Tell me why (by the current fevered definitions) this isn't terrorism. : Facebook's Beacon more intrusive than previously thought.

A CA security researcher is sounding the alarm that Facebook's controversial Beacon online ad system goes much further than anyone has imagined in tracking people's Web activities outside the popular social networking site.

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.

That's the finding published on Friday by Stefan Berteau, senior research engineer at CA's Threat Research Group in a note summarizing tests he conducted.

Of particular concern is that users aren't informed that data on their activities at these sites is flowing back to Facebook, nor given the option to block that information from being transmitted, Berteau said in an interview.

"It can happen completely without their knowledge, unless they are examining their network traffic at a very low level," Berteau said.

[...] Berteau's investigation reveals that Beacon is more intrusive and stealthy than anyone had imagined. ... he explains that he created an account on Conde Nast's food site Epicurious.com, a site participating in Beacon, and saved three recipes as favorites.

• He saved the first recipe while logged in to Facebook, and he opted out of having it broadcast to his friends on Facebook.
• He saved the second recipe after closing the Facebook window, but without logging off from Epicurious or ending the browser session, and again declined broadcasting it to his friends.
• Then he logged out of Facebook and saved the third recipe. This time, no Facebook alert appeared asking if he wanted the information displayed to his friends.

After checking his network traffic logs, Berteau saw that in all three cases, information about his activities was reported back to Facebook, although not to his friends. That information included where he was on Epicurious, the action he had just taken and his Facebook account name.

"The first two cases involve the transmission of user data despite 'No thanks' having been selected on the opt-out dialog, and are causes for deep concern.

They pale, however, in comparison to the third case, where Facebook was receiving data about my online habits while I was not logged in, and was doing so silently without even alerting me to the cross-site communication," he wrote in the research note.

The reason its not terrorism is because it is fascism. Was it always there or is it only since Microsoft bought it?

Oh, and put Beacon;'s clients on suicide watch as well.

Official Britain to be Paralysed by fear

This is very sad: Fortress Britain: Brown unveils tough new laws.

Mr Brown conjured up visions of "Fortress Britain" as he unveiled measures covering the transport network, sports venues and other public places in a speech to the House of Commons on Wednesday.

More than 250 stations, airports and seaports, plus 100 "sensitive" installations such as power stations and electricity substations, will be given extra security.

There will be an increase in armed police patrols at high-profile targets such as the new Eurostar station at St Pancras.

More buildings will have barriers to repel car bombs, with extra blast-proofing, vehicle exclusion zones and metal detectors.

Under plans to control borders through electronic checks, travellers will have to provide up to 90 pieces of information, including credit card details, travel plans, email addresses and contact telephone numbers. Police, customs, immigration and security services will have access to the information, requested when travellers buy tickets.

Looks like holidays in Britain will go to hell then doesn't it?

NINETY!

For EVERY traveller. Clogging up their systems for what? Will a terrorist, of, you know, LIE? Have their story clear?

And has anyone noticed that there have been no (as in ZERO) foreign based attacks on British soil since WW2?

Mr Brown said Britain was now spending more than £2.5 billion ($5.7 billion) annually on security, triple the amount spent in 2001.

So its working then. All they have managed to do is FAIL to prevent the subway bombers, FAIL to anticipate the 4 stooges with their Mercedes car bombs and shoot an innocent man, Jean Paul de Menezes 8 times in the face.

Spending more billions supporting the same kind of dumb thinking that lead to those fiascos will produce about the same; only bigger. Meanwhile British society is being robbed of many billions that it will need to deal with Peak Oil, climate change and H5N1, which isn't going that well either.

But he said he was revoking one highly unpopular security measure - the one carry-on bag rule on flights taking off from Britain. The policy, imposed after police uncovered an alleged plot in 2006 to blow up trans-Atlantic aircraft, will be lifted in January.

So that's alright then. All will be forgiven because we can take an extra bag on a plane? yoohhoo! Anyone home?

Holy cow, this is a country that managed to be bombed to pieces in 1940 and survived, that withstood the IRA bombing campaigns for years without batting an eyelid. And it has come to this; Fortress Britain.

Or more probably, Prison Britain.

But wait, there's more.

As part of the £400 million crackdown, there will be a "hearts and minds" drive to divert young Muslims away from the influence of fanatics.

Notice? "hearts and minds" as part of the "crackdown". 

That is the language you use when talking about an enemy. The fear and hatred are encoded in the very language he is using to "reach out".

Lets see, competition between "fanatic" who preaches self sacrifice, pride and the rejection of a system that denigrates you and "tremble-knees" who is "cracking down" on you while wanting to occupy your heart and your mind and turn your island home into a prison for all.

Ummmmmm.

When Laws become Babbling Idiots

I'm proud of my native land for many reasons, one of which is that the rule of law is sstill pretty well in force, the whole rule of law, not just legislation drafted by people wetting their pants in fear: MPs should apologise.

Solicitor General Solicitor-General David Collins yesterday refused to allow police to bring terrorism charges against 12 people arrested in police raids last month.

He said the legislation was "incoherent" and recommended the legislation should be reviewed by the Law Commission yesterday.

His decision prompted immediate calls for police to pay a price for the controversial raids.

As in the Haneef case in Australia, those who decided to use these laws have been bitten in the ass by them. This is good. They should have refused to apply laws that they should have known to be "incoherent", and if they didn't understand that, they shouldn't be in the job.

Terrorism has become the default option in too many anglophone societies, I think its what happens when people with pretty dour ancestries are forced to imagine what "might" happen. They aren't good at it.

That a piece of such important law managed to get right through the process and still be "incoherent" is a testament to the success of a strategy by unknown people in a country a long way from anywhere and under no actual threat from anyone, and tio the failure of courage in parliament.

Their greatest fear is that "something bad will happen" and we will not have passed a law to stop it.

Here's the news. Bad stuff happens and laws don't stop it, and pre-emptive laws are the worst of all. Most countries like mine have enough laws to prosecute people who do bad stuff, although perhaps not enough laws to stop the people doing REALLY bad stuff like screwing our environment or making us dependent on a finite resource and having no substitutes etc.

The day you wake up afraid is the day you have lost, never mind who wins. Fortunately, David Collins did not wake up afraid, he looked at the evidence and the law and tried to apply the law to the evidence and failed. Then he looked at the law to find out why and discovered a babbling idiot. So he threw it out.

Phil and Luike at Pacific Empire have a handy list of actual bombings in New Zealand, none of which needed special legislation to deal with.

Terrorism is not a crime, we have no actual right not to be afraid, but we do have rights not to be assaulted, attacked, shot, blown up and so forth, lets focus on those and not the state of mind of the people.

Some people, are afraid of women, black people, gypsies, cats, spiders and thunder, my mother was terrified (no, really, really afraid, quivered in terror) by thunder. I have a mate who is afraid of standing at the edge of a balcony in case he jumps off. Its sad, its debilitating, but no amount of legislation is going to change that, and nobody should try.

In free societies we are exposed to occasional, and sometimes fatal risk. But if you don't like that, go live in Pakistan or Iran or Burma or Zimbabwe, or the US, for a while; long enough to disagree with the government or one of its officials on some point. When you've recovered, if you recover, come and talk to me about more legislation against terrorism.

Till then, suck it up.
And come live in NZ, where at least someone remembers how its supposed to work.

Another MASSIVE Surprise

Man, I never saw THIS coming: We got it wrong on Haneef: DPP chief.

MOHAMED HANEEF should never have been charged, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, Damian Bugg, QC, admitted last night when releasing details of a report into the role his office played in the case.

The review, conducted by an unnamed private barrister, concluded the DPP's office had not properly appreciated the evidence against Dr Haneef and had not given appropriate advice before he was charged.

Mr Bugg concluded: "The DPP has learnt from this matter and will take further steps to ensure that advice is provided in accordance with the role of the DPP in situations such as this."

Yeah, see, the nation's safety is SO important that failing to follow procedure becomes the MO. So we can ALL feel safe about that right?

Dr Haneef was charged in July with recklessly assisting a terrorist organisation said to consist of his cousins Sabeel and Kafeel Ahmed. Dr Haneef had left an old SIM card with Sabeel in Liverpool, England. A year later, Kafeel rammed a burning Jeep into a Glasgow airport terminal.

At first, it was believed the SIM card was found at the scene of the crime. Then it was learnt the card was still in Liverpool.

The review concluded: "That change was not appreciated by the prosecutor at the time."

Mr Bugg said the DPP is supposed to ask "whether the evidence establishes reasonable prospects of conviction" but the review found "the advice in this case did not address that test".

So, we know what the DPP is SUPPOSED to do, the question is why they failed at damned near every step on the way, including engaging any level at all of critical thinking.

The review confirmed other errors in the evidence were the fault of the Federal Police.

Good. So the failures were pretty well universal when it comes to dealing with potential terrorist threats. But don't worry, they are LEARNING from those failures, yep, boy we wont do that again, we'll go on to even bigger failures.

The unaddressed problem here is that it is obvious that as soon as the security apparatus goes under pressure, it runs about with its hair on fire and loses any semblance of rationality or respect for the rule of law.

This is not a function of its structure or its formal processes, I'll bet they are ALL "best practise" based; it is a function of the people who have been appointed to the job and the culture they have established.

Those problems will NOT be touched by reviews, investigations or "lessons learned'" reports, that will only come when these people get over their fear. We'll be waiting a while for that.