Passive E-Mail Monitoring Leads To Arrest 921
www.2advanced.net writes "The world's first arrest resulting from passive monitoring of electronic communications is being reported by Globe Technology. In the article, sources reveal that 'an e-mail message intercepted by NSA spies precipitated a massive investigation by intelligence officials in several countries that culminated in the arrest of nine men in Britain and one in suburban Orleans, Ont. -- 24-year-old software developer Mohammed Momin Khawaja, who has since been charged with facilitating a terrorist act and being part of a terrorist group.'"
Doh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Though it really surprises me that the NSA would actually take responsibility for passing along tips.
Generally they just pass stuff to the other three letter organizations and they take it from there.
Shouldn't this be YRO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah right... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice to hear (Score:3, Insightful)
Yay for passive! (Score:2, Insightful)
Hurray for the good guys! (Score:5, Insightful)
yuck (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doh... (Score:3, Insightful)
First terrorism, then porn, then what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Golly, headlines like these sure make me glad the United States is just as keen as ever on ensuring that every citizen is afforded due process, has equal access to the law, and that all of the constitutional safeguards protecting our civil liberties will remain in full force.
I know I'm relieved. This type of activity might be really dangerous in the hands of a government that didn't believe in its citizens rights and privacies.
The Dalai Llama
I know that I, for one, would certainly sleep better if Ashcroft were head of the NSA...
Re:Orleans (Score:1, Insightful)
You seem to be assuming that the Merkins would have known what "Ont." means.
Oh, good (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I'd say that it's a pretty reasonable bet that AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo are routinely monitored. They're easy to data-mine (heck, the commercial data from that *alone* is phenomenal -- if people hear on a show that "Debora Mullins and Sandra Walker will be possibly starring in 'Shredded Metal 2', and there's a mass of messages saying "Debora Mullins sucks", that'd be awfully useful to the production company.
As for the NSA/CIA/FBI, messaging services are frequently used, easy to log and data-mine (no speech recognition necessary) systems that provide no end-to-end encryption that pass through a single point -- in the United States.
Jabber is the only reasonably well-designed IM system I've seen, and nobody *uses* Jabber, sadly enough.
Re:Doh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally they just pass stuff to the other three letter organizations and they take it from there.
I suspect that with all the attention being paid to the traditional lack of cooperation between the various TLA orgs, they're probably falling all over themselves now to show how cooperative they can be. NSA has always been a little better than the others, as this is its primary function-- it doesn't use (ahem) "field operatives" to the same degree that the FBI and CIA does. The real head-butting goes on between the FBI and CIA. The culture of "cops" vs. that of "spooks" creates a lot of friction. They've never worked well together.
Re:Nice to hear (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mathematics.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
"'Foreign traffic that comes through the U.S. is subject to U.S. laws, and the NSA has a perfect right to monitor all Internet traffic,' said Mr. Farber, who has also been a technical adviser to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission."
I've never been under the illusion that internet traffic was private, but could someone tell me what law give them this power? I'm not being sarcastic here, I'd really like the information.
-
Re: Passive E-Mail Monitoring Leads To Arrest (Score:5, Insightful)
The article starts off with a diabolically, highlighting the boast of a mysterious hacker who works as NSA. No names are quoted. The whole thing is given a hollywood-esque charm (the hacker known only as "Mudhen" (mud hen? duh!), a charming pseudonym for NSA - Puzzle Palace).
After adding sufficient soundbites to attract reader's attention, besides making one thing is it one of those devious secrets about NSA, it suddenly changes tone and highlights the achievement of NSA "spies". Charming. Other gems:
"army of cryptographers, chaos theorists"
"that may have pulled in the first piece of evidence"
"massive investigation in several countries "
And then finally a quick rundown on TCP/IP.
One could almost mistake it for communistic propaganda, if only it hailed the fatherland (or the motherland) as well...
ps: don't forget, there are no facts or figures mentioned anywhere in it well.
The US should watch the Canadian border (Score:3, Insightful)
Our politicians still don't think we have a terrorist problem. Our politicians think the Americans are the cause of all their terrorist problems. Our politicians think that if the Americans would just be nice to everyone all the time, everything would be just fine.
So, while we raise taxes for 'anti-terrorism' the money actually goes into a big pot and is spent on anything but solutions that the government finds unnecessary.
I'd ask anyone outside our borders who actually cares to forgive the average Canadian - we currently don't have a viable center or right-of-center party for whom to vote. Ostriches on the left, and book-burning, bible-thumping fanatics on the right.
In the meantime, the US shouldn't trust any person or vehicle coming across their northern border.
Re:yuck (Score:3, Insightful)
So this is the first thing we need. You want privacy? I want security more...
NSA is not the enemy - they are protectors. A bunch of dedicated professionals, even IF some of them need to get out into the sun more often...
Re:Somebody forgot to use encryption! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:US Law? (Score:2, Insightful)
They get around the restrictions on monitoring US-US communications by having the Brits monitor our comms, and we return the favor for them.
Re:Yeah right... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing they're not quite to the place where they are cracking codes on the fly... yet.
Re:Yeah right... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah right... (Score:3, Insightful)
Jedidiah.
obligatory quote (Score:3, Insightful)
-- Ben Franklin
Foil head gear on (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if they can't break the encryption, the traffic analysis allows them to figure out who is talking to whom, and that allows them to direct other forms of intelligence gathering.
I've heard of small efforts to confuse and annoy the NSA by the regular use of encrypted email by people with nothing to hide, but such things are difficult to use at the moment, what with the key exchanges, the requirements to use particular mailers, and the fact that many people don't particularly want to participate in that little game, especially since it does leave you open to scrutiny.
Combine that with a previous poster's observation that terrorists are more thugs than criminal masterminds, and yeah, I suspect that most of these efforts (at least at the low levels) do in fact use plaintext email.
Not that that makes the NSA's life easy. There's an awful lot of email out there, and just looking for words like "bomb" in an email is going to be worthless.
This case, I suspect, probably started with one email address that they suspected to be used by a terrorist through some other form of intelligence. That allows them to narrow down the search space.
In other words, I doubt they have any techniques that allow them to take the entire firehose of email and sip out a manageable amount based just on the text. Which means that they're almost certainly not really reading your email, and you can include "I'm going to blow up the President" all you like without incurring the slightest notice, unless they've got some other bead on you already.
Which doesn't mean that they couldn't read your email, if they so chose. They're not allowed to, if you're in the United States, but the capability certainly exists. Which is the remarkable part of this story: them admitting the capability. I really don't know why.
Re:I don't give a shit. (Score:3, Insightful)
They came for the blahs, but I'm not a blah so I did nothing.
They came for the foos, but I'm not a foo so I said nothing.
Then they came for me, and no one was left to do anything.
Or something along those lines.
So yeah, terrorists today, guys named Jason Straight tomorrow.
You've been warned.
Re:US Law? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember Richard Reid, he of the explosive footwear? Caught when a passenger noticed him trying to set light to his shoes? Anyone with intelligence greater than or equal to that of a bag of hammers would have gone to the toilet and THEN tried to detonate their payload...
The people who plan the operations might be smart, as may the people who instruct the bombers. But sooner or later you've got to communicate with the moron you're exploiting and persuading to blow himself up. At that point you're vulnerable, because he's stupid and easily led and all in all a liability.
Apathetic... (Score:3, Insightful)
Apathetic Canadians are no worse than apathetic US Citizens. US politicians have no problem with terrorists, as it only creates more jobs (defense spending == jobs). More jobs means less to complain about, and (finally) less to complain about leads to apathetic citizens. The US voting system allows far more control and granularity on whom we put in office, and frankly I think US citizens (in general) are far less likely to pay attention to important issues and vote along issue lines.
Already the US presidential race is about taxes. What makes taxes more important than international policy? And if someone starts talking about international policy, someone else will start bringing up the abortion debate again. (( Note Ralph Nader, while not officially running, is trying to talk about international policy, but is doing it in such a confrontational way, that he is easily marginalized as a zealot. )).How are Canadian polititicans different? Less population to try to lull into a sense of contentment / less active military force in countries where people feel they need to retaliate? Basically the same issues on a slightly smaller scale, with a higher per-person tax base. Oh, yeah, and they have to know two languages.
I feel for you, but your problems are not unique - after all, you are in North America, too.
I'm Allen Zadr, and I approved this messageencryption probably makes it easier (Score:3, Insightful)
And if that message is routed from an IP address in England to a cybercafe in Pakistan then so much the better. And if mail from the same address was sent to a known bad-guy last week then better still -- and before you know it, your door gets kicked in and several burly men are asking you questions about the half-tonne of fertilizer you just purchased.
Scary (Score:2, Insightful)
Does this scare anyone else? Who determines if the group I belong to is a terrorist group?
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Tricksy hobbitses tries to takes away our privacies! Must protect the precious...
Media coverage (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the media coverage of the whole thing sucks.
His father, Mahboob A. Khawaja, has been detained in Saudi Arabia, where he is a professor at some university. The media reports that the father wrote articles critical of the West's meddling with the Muslim World's affairs. He wrote a book called Muslims and the West [amazon.com].
How is that relevant to anything? Is it an attempt to tie genuine legitimate criticism to terrorism somehow?
I did some searching [google.ca] on the father, and found quite a few articles, most of it critical to the Arab rulers than anything else. Seems he places blame where it belongs, whether in the West or in the Arab world.
This reminds me of the terms "terrorism", "anti-Americanism",
This whole thing about "guilt by association" got to stop.
Re:spies? (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.nsa.gov/sigint/sigin00003.cfm
Re:Sigh (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, if what you're transmitting is encrypted data, it becomes harder to figure out what you're up to. If your encryption is based on keys that only you and the recipient have, it becomes nearly impossible. Which is exactly why you should be doing that with any data more personal than, well, a post on slashdot.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure which part is worse, email monitoring (sure, they SAY it's passive...) or the terrorist activities.
You're not sure? I am. Terrorism is worse than reading someone else's email.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Before putting on your tinfoil hat... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that's a great comfort to the people living in England, France, China, Japan, Israel, Italy, Macedonia, Comoros, The Philippines, Cyprus, Antigua, Nicaragua, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Germany, Serbia, Cuba, Belize, Peru, Lesotho, Hungary, Barbados, Mali, Ecuador, Chile, Romania, Gabon, Mauritania, Greece, Laos, Seychelles, Korea, Tanzania, Russia, Argentina, Tunisia, Yemen, Georgia, Denmark, Fiji, Croatia, Thailand, Sweden, Jamaica, Australia, Malta, Uganda, Iceland, Cambodia, Namibia, Barbuda, Guatemala, Myanmar, Maldives, Austria, Burundi, Finland, Poland, Ghana, Norway, Congo, Dominica, Somalia, Egypt, Benin, Uruguay, Palau, Congo, East Timor, Slovakia, Sudan, Rwanda, Tuvalu, Latvia, Mauritius, Yugoslavia, Suriname, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Syria, Iran, Oman, The Bahamas, Iraq, Portugal, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Zambia, Vietnam, Cameroon, Canada, Mozambique, Malawi, Pakistan, Lebanon, Gambia, Bhutan, Vanuatu, Turkey, Taiwan, Brazil, Afghanistan, Madagascar, Turkmenistan, Guyana, Mexico, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Andorra, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Chad, Tajikistan, Grenada, Morocco, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Togo, Guinea, The Netherlands, Paraguay, Armenia, Slovenia, The Czech Republic, Honduras, India, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Swaziland, Ukraine, Kiribati, Angola, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Liberia, Zaire, Spain, Bosnia, Monaco, Botswana, Nigeria, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Belgium, Singapore, Albania, Micronesia, Nauru, Eritrea, El Salvador, Belarus, Panama, Nepal, Libya, Samoa, Moldova, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Algeria, Burma, Kenya, Tonga, Qatar, Indonesia, Jordan, Lithuania, and the other countries of the world.
-- this is not a
Re:New Spam Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
opensource this- a program designed to pass messages via spam, undetectable without the key...if 50,000 people get the message, and only one can read it....
release it.. BAM! the government (homeland security) will suddenly find a way to stop spam.
For my own edification... (Score:2, Insightful)
See, not all Muslims have been rounded up. You can even preach militant islam in the US. Had plenty of time. Not a whole lot of goodwill towards Islam standing in the way. And yet it isn't done.
The funny thing is when you say everything is the begining of the end of freedom, who's going to believe you if you happen to be right. Dial down the hyperbole.
Re:Sigh (Score:2, Insightful)
That's easy, if you're an ACLU member, the e-mail monitoring is much worse. Everyone knows we should let people commit the murders, then arrest them. This is because no government official would ever act in the public interest. They're all nefarious little people hell-bent on harrassing innocents. After all, if you're trying to be safe, you don't deserve liberty. I think Bob Dylan said that.
Yeah, mod me troll -- I just couldn't resist the beautiful sarcasm.
Re:Apathetic... (Score:1, Insightful)
1) It was expected that the US would have a recession before 9/11.
2) In the economy, such effects are not immediate. It takes more than a few months for the economy to react to official policies.
Making an example of them... (Score:2, Insightful)
I got a better idea. How about we stop terrorism by fixing the problems that cause it? Turning the world into a police state is obviously not the solution anyone wants and, so far, has only led to more terrorism. People are not born wanting to fly planes into buildings, so what has driven these people to such a level of desperation that they're willing to sacrifice their lives to kill thousands of innocent people?
net rules. (Score:3, Insightful)
2.) expect weak encryption to be easily broken--it's prettymuch a given that the NSA has hardware *specifically designed* to break or brute force crypto. they employ many of the worlds greatest mathmatic savants out there, do not underestimate their capabilities.
3.) All your base ae belong to U.S.
Re:Apathetic... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't this be YRO? (Score:2, Insightful)
However, fighting spam doesn't just result in science that's strictly applicable to fighting spam. The same tech for fighting (detecting) spam might be useful for detecting other info -- like terrorist communications, or drug communication, or revolutionary communications. Detecting spam requires the computer to recognise certain information, even when it's been obscured. So spammers might be helping the cops or big brother (depending on your point of view and metallic content of your hat).
Re:Mathematics is generally no guarantee. (Score:3, Insightful)
However, what makes you think that terrorists would use public key encryption? Presumably, these people meet in person, in secret, to discuss illegal activities. In such a scenario, they could give each other their passphrase by word of mouth. Public key encryption is only relevant when the medium for transmitting your keys is insecure.
If I remember rightly, there are other encryption schemes which are not public key, that have been mathematically proven to be secure.
As for quantum computing; I think you're giving the RSA a bit too much credit. Quantum computing is quite far off; all the current methods we know of can only handle a handle of qubits.
Re:Come on now dude. (Score:3, Insightful)
Would it change the discussion (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all well and good when the bad guys get caught...right up until the definition of "bad guys" gets changed. Yesterday there was an article about the DOJ labeling pornographers as "bad guys." There's no logical end. What's to stop someone being labeled as a bad guy for not going to church, or not supporting the government, or not going along with whatever intrusion-of-the-day on your privacy? It's not that big of a change from where we are now.
Jobs (Score:2, Insightful)
You have to dump the bombs in storage before you order new ones. And the amount of weapons being built and ordered is generating revenue - and jobs - more in some sectors than others.
Why does the senate refuse to Ratify the Land Mine Treaty? Jobs in the Land Mine manufacturing facilities.
Why does the senate refuse to Retify the Kyoto accord? Because companies threaten that they would close or have to lay off workers if they had to pay for the environmental protections being requested.
Yes, I know that this is a simplistic view - but I believe it makes a valid point. Apathy is bred through contentment.
Suicide bombers are not stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there are stupid ones as well but that's true for everything.
Re:The US should watch the Canadian border (Score:4, Insightful)
It is impossible. A weak country can do this. A strong country can not. Sooner or later someone will ask for help against someone else. A weak country can say: "We can't". A strong one will have to take sides...
You can't be nice to Palestinians and Israelis at once, for example -- the want each other dead. Even a weaker country like Canada can't do so honestly...
The hatred started well before "Bush and his lunacy". Your trolling flamebait conveniently forgets, that "9/11" happened only 9 months into Bush's presidency -- after 8 years under Clinton...
According to bin Laden's ravings, "9/11" was our punishment for deploying in the holy land of Saudi Arabia, which we did to protect Kuwait -- a Muslim nation, BTW. Was that war also "a lunacy" to you?
You can not justify this hatred and you can not negotiate with such people.
So stop your pitiful preaching -- there are better ways to attack Bush.
BTW, Clinton/Gore did not get the majority vote either, AFAIK.
Re:Hurray for the good guys! (Score:3, Insightful)
So, how is this analogous to a cop "BEATING UP" a criminal? Bottom line: The good guys got the bad guys.
Alternate explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
- Suspected terrorist, who's been watched by UK anti-terrorists for months, buys hundreds of kilograms of Ammonium Nitrate
- Task force raids suspect's home
- Suspect's computer found on premises
- Task force opens Outlook, looks in Inbox, Sent Items
- Incriminating email to or from Mohammed_Momin_Khawaja@?????.ca discovered.
Sounds to me like someone is trying to spin this as justification for email surveilance.So what did he plan to do? (Score:5, Insightful)
These days, planning a street party can be a 'terrorist act'. Handing out pamphlets in Washington, despicting GWB as a sheep, explaining why he's such a nut, could be a terrorist act.
Mooning the traffic on an interstate could be a terrorist act.
Anybody know?
Re:The US should watch the Canadian border (Score:3, Insightful)
It has more to do with when to provide help rather than helping or not. In this case, I supported not helping. The supposed reasons for going to Iraq were all bull. This is why the UN would not agree to it. There were no WMD, and Iraq was not related to the 9/11 terrorists. In fact, I think Saddam and Bin Laden hated one another.
You can't be nice to Palestinians and Israelis at once, for example -- the want each other dead. Even a weaker country like Canada can't do so honestly...
Sure, you can tell them both to stop. That's very honest. Certainly blatently supporting (and giving weapons) to the main agressor is not *helping* the situation any.
Your trolling flamebait conveniently forgets, that "9/11" happened only 9 months into Bush's presidency -- after 8 years under Clinton...
I never claimed 9/11 happend because of Bush. But given recent evidence it does look like Bush is at some fault for not stopping it. Many previous presidents, while much better than Bush, still supported some really immoral and nasty foreign policy. The US has a wonderful habit of appointing or helping get appointed brutal dictators in other countries. Seriously, go read up on the darker sides of US foreign policy sometime.
According to bin Laden's ravings, "9/11" was our punishment for deploying in the holy land of Saudi Arabia, which we did to protect Kuwait -- a Muslim nation, BTW. Was that war also "a lunacy" to you?
If you recall, the UN was involved in that. There was, however, an unrelated war in Afganistan against the Soviets. In this war, the CIA trained Bin Laden so he could fight against the Soviets. They no doubt funneled him money and weapons as well.
You can not justify this hatred and you can not negotiate with such people.
Some of this hatred will be there, but the US just throws fuel on to the fire. Negotiate with such people? Why does the US have such a wonderful history of working with such people before they suddenely become *evil*? The US also worked with Saddam you know. Those chemical weapons? Where do you think Saddam got them from? It was only under UN pressure that the US finally decided to turn on Saddam.
So stop your pitiful preaching -- there are better ways to attack Bush.
I'm not just attacking bush, he does a pretty good job of getting people to dislike him on his own. I'm attacking US foreign policy in general.
Re:Sigh (Score:3, Insightful)
Sad that you don't understand what it really means. What you are doing is giving extraordinary powers to a government whose motives in ten or twenty years time are completely unknown to you. Just think about that for a while. Or are you really naive enough to believe that the US government not only currently has only pure motives, but always will, for hundreds of years to come, long after you've already given them the powers to prevent you from doing against their interests? You'd have to be clueless about the history of man's activities on this planet to really believe that is a good idea.
+1 Ane (Score:3, Insightful)
"The ship of the Sun is steered by the Grateful Dead."
Re:The US should watch the Canadian border (Score:3, Insightful)
Ho Chi Minh
Khadaffi
Hussein
bin Laden
Noriega
The US government helps create monsters, then takes away the rights of US citizens via conscription and "anti-terror laws" just so they can fight the very problem they created.
It seems to be a cycle that repeats itself with some regularity. Meanwhile American men and women (and their allies) die each day trying to clean up these messes.
It's a damn shame.
Re:Apathetic... (Score:0, Insightful)
US politicians have no problem with terrorists, as it only creates more jobs (defense spending == jobs).
get modded insightful. unbelievable, but true, politicians are human beings - and I'm sure not one of them looked upon 911 as a job generator (even if events eventaully bore that out as a result).
I'm Allen Zadr, and I approved this message
Put down the Reynolds Wrap and let the conspiracy theories go, sparky.
Re:The US should watch the Canadian border (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like to add a comment though. During the looting of Baghdad, the US did not protect hospitals and museums. They did not protect anything in fact, except for one thing, the oil offices. Yes yes, oil can help rebuild Iraq, but it's important to have people be alive to rebuild it for. Surely they could have also spared troops to protect at least one hospital?
Re:Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Land Mines have a military use. Did you forget that? Until there is a reliable method for smart mine or other area suppresion weapon like FireStorm, they are the most effective way to prevent an adversary from moving across land.
The idea that politicians want to keep land mines to ensure jobs is ridiculous. Upon what facts do you base that statement? Do you have any idea how few people are actually employed making them?
Regarding the Kyoto treaty, have you ever read it? American factories were to be restricted with regard to their emissions yet Chinese, Indian and Eastern European factories were not. When was the last time you visited an industrial complex in one of those areas? They're horrible with all kinds of unfiltered liquid and gaseous emissions. How long have you been reading Slashdot? Haven't you ever seen the articles about disassembly of circuit boards in China?
Kyoto hid under the cloak of global warming which is really just a political thing. Sure, people can affect the environment to some extent but thinking we are destroying the environment is not only scientifically invalid, it's almost unspeakably arrogant and naive. We live in the middle of a planet-sized filter which recycles virtually everything within itself. We can't predict the weather 5 days in advance yet global warming zealots claim to understand environmental cycles?!?! Riiiight.
The Kyoto accord was NOT ratified by the non-U.S. countries who tried to get the U.S. to commit to follow it. Would American companies have been forced to shut down or move operations overseas? Yes. Think, where would they have moved manufacturing? Probably to countries which were exempted from the accord. How, exactly, would moving production from the U.S. to areas which were to be exempt from environmental limitations contribute to a cleaner environment?
The Kyoto accord was an attempt to hobble American industry by countries which are not able to match the U.S. level of productivity because of their political environments.
As much as possible, producers of any product or service want to be as physically close to their customers as possible. Transportation and time differences cost money, real money.
Your comments were pure socialist rhetoric. THey have no basis in the reality of our physical world which is subject to the law of diminishing returns.
can't hide under a falling US (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Suicide bombers are not stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plently of well-educated idiots all over the place. Some even graduate from Ivy League colleges and get elected to public office.
This takes as much intelligence as any good spy in a foreign country. To hide your true self, blend in, become one of the enemy.
Get real. There's a big difference between doing things that any member of the public may legally do in a free society and infiltrating an actively secretive organization.
A suicide bomber has to be smart to succeed. They have to be someone who can act on their own.
Nope. An eight-year-old video-gamer could probably have done what they did.
Once they are set loose they are on their own. They have to negotiate their way to the target.
So they have to walk down the street towards a crowd of people, or maybe board a plane. Not exactly difficult tasks.
They have to be able to act well enough to blend in to the crowd to do the maximum damage.
That's just absolutely stupid. All they have to do is not wave the bomb around in the air.
If something goes wrong they have to negotiate the obstacles by themselves with no one to help them.
Which they usually FAIL at because they're idiots.
Of course there is a lot of psychological preparation as well (brainwashing) but that's nowhere near the same thing as stupidity.
So letting someone else convince you to kill yourself and a bunch of civilians is a SMART thing to do?
Of course there are stupid ones as well but that's true for everything.
The MAJORITY are stupid. Very stupid.
Suicide bombers are nothing but a bunch of moronic, easily-led sheep. They deserve absolutely no respect. There is nothing smart about what they do. It's not "clever". It not "good strategy". It's just a filthy disgusting waste of life.
You have to have a truely perverted mind to believe that killing a bunch of civilians to get you point across is ok.
These people are absolute scum and they aren't any smarter than the average crackhead robbing a liquor store.
Re:Apathetic... (Score:2, Insightful)
I assume you've gotten so saturated by the year-long barrage of Iraq news that you just filter it out?
I hear ten times as much crap about whether Bush's policies in Iraq are idiotic, or whether Kerry opposes Bush's policies in Iraq enough, as I hear about taxes. Iraq, which is actually not part of the USA, is "international policy"
My real perception is that this election is about who can whip up their base the most. The margin of undecideds is tiny, and neither candidate is really making much effort to woo moderates.
And as for "Less population to try to lull into a sense of contentment", I don't see this as representative of the US either. I see both the politicians and the media in a great effort to scare the crap out of the public, so that we're convinced that we have to vote for Bush/Kerry or else the terrorists will get us. Neither seems to me to be lulling anyone into contentment.
Re:The US should watch the Canadian border (Score:4, Insightful)
Further, it has greatly reinforced perceptions that the US invaded a muslim country for oil, and that the US does not care about the lives of anyone other than it's own citizens. This is exactly what terrorist leaders have been saying about the US for years. Now they have proof, and as a result, far more support.
From a World Islamic Front statement [fas.org], 1998:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic...
Probably the worst thing I've ever seen a US leader do on an international stage was when Bush painted the war on terror as good versus evil. By doing this he did not have to examine the motivation behind the "evildoers", and he could simply say that they are evil and are attacking the US because the US is "good". This is exactly the same mindset that terrorists have, and exactly the same mindset that has led to some of the worst atrocities that human beings have ever committed.Re:The US should watch the Canadian border (Score:5, Insightful)
-PCB
Re:yuck (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:+1 Ane (Score:5, Insightful)
The phrase usually means "people who are seeking employment but haven't found it." That is a very useful number. Those who aren't seeking, don't get counted. If you want to be counted, show up where they're counting.
Re:antijobs (Score:3, Insightful)
The military is valuable, despite (and because of) its destructive utility. But it is a jobs program out of necessity, not out of its utility. I'd be safer if you'd been trained in a civilian university or corporation to learn you nonmilitary skills. The military skills, of course, including those you apply later, are best trained by, and in, the military. But the military's focus on defense would be better preserved by focusing its training there, and leaving the base technology to academia which is focused on that. And our economy, and maybe even your sense of responsiblity, would be be better developed with your training oriented in/to the private sector, with a maybe something like a "master's" degree from the military.
Re:The US should watch the Canadian border (Score:5, Insightful)
What he is suggesting is don't be surprised that groups of people around the world grow to hate the US so much that they WILL fly airplanes into buildings. Not because of the actions of individual Americans, but because of the ongoing actions of every American Government for 50 years. How many despots do they have to put in power (or return to power, like in Iran) before the common people of the country start hating them? How many death squads and murderous rebel groups should they support and fund (Nicaragua and El Salvador) before the regular folks stop believing the "peace and freedom" tripe they claim to espouse.
Do you know what day today is, sparky? It is the 10th anniversary of the start of the genocide in Rawanda. 800 000 people killed in 100 days. That's faster than the Nazis did it at Auchwitz and Treblinka. You know what else? Canadian General Romeo Dalaire had been begging the UN, the US and the other major powers for more troops and more equipment for 3 months prior to this infamous date because he had been tipped off of the impending genocide. He was even forbidden to use the troops and equipment he had to confiscate the weapons he had found, which probably would have prevented the genocide. And do you know what the US did to help? They (along with Britain and France) VETOED a UN Security Council resolution that would have sent the troops and equipment to Rawanda and allowed General Dalaire to conduct opperations. The US signed the death warrant of 800 000 innocent civilians, because preventing genocide is not in the best interests of the US. Why aren't you crying for them? They most certainly did not diserve to die. Too bad there wasn't oil in Kigali, the 1st Marine Expiditionary Force would have been in there in a heart beat....
It is the selfish actions of your government that make people hate the US so much they want to fly planes into buildings. The policies of the US government kill and enslave far more people on a daily basis than all the terrorist attacks they have ever suffered combined. Why aren't you upset by that?
No one deserves to die like your friend Amy. Nor do they deserve to be hacked to death with machetes, or murdered and dumped at El Playon because the voted for the wrong party. Don't pretend that the US government condoning the latter has nothing to do with the former. Until you realize that, expect a lot more 9/11-type attacks in your future.
Re:+1 Ane (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:more help from the good guys! (Score:2, Insightful)
BTW, received is spelled with the 'e' before the 'i'.
Re:Today it's a different Story (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad I was wrong. "'That's the first admission I've actually seen that they [NSA] actually monitor Internet traffic. I assumed they did, but no one ever admitted it,' Mr. Farber [an Internet pioneer and computer-science professor at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh] said." So, did the NSA have a warrant for this? If not, why won't these arrests be thrown out of court? Or don't Canadian and Brittish courts care about search warrants? Or don't warrants apply in international law?
Re:+1 Ane (Score:1, Insightful)
nor the 1M military staff, who produce very little (and destroy a lot)
As in the destruction of Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, and the Soviet Union produced very little?
Re:The US should watch the Canadian border (Score:4, Insightful)
The Baltics - by this you mean Kosovo, of course, where the US had to be convinced to do anything by the NATO allies - the US was almost dragged kicking and screaming into that one, so I wouldn't hold it up as an example of the US doing the right thing of it's own accord. Did you know that the Serbs had been doing the same nasty things that they were doing in Kosovo to deserve getting bombed in places like Bosnia and Croatia for about 6 years before Kosovo? Ever heard of Srebeniza? Did you miss all the rape camps and mass graves in Bosnia long before Kosovo? The US role in Kosovo is a matter of "about time" in the rest of the world.
Haiti - amazing how fast the US will react when something is close to home. Personally I'm glad they are there. They should do more of this. Maybe they sent troops to Haiti so thousands of Haitians wouldn't show up on the shores of Florida AGAIN. The only diffeence between Haiti and Rawanda is about 5000 km. So tell me again why they didn't react when they knew a genocide was about to take place?
As for my "whining" well you are entitled to your opinion. Just remember, when it comes to Saddam, who gave him the money, who sold him the weapons and who is on film shaking his hand. If Iraq didn't have oil, the US wouldn't be anywhere near the place, and it is just that simple. If Iraq didn't have oil, Saddam would not have become the butcher he was, since he wouldn't had all those US dollars to by the weapons with.
I will "whine" about the selfish and inconsistant way the US acts in the world all I want, thank you. They invade Iraq to free the people from a vicious dictator, yet let 800 000 die in a preventable genocide. They push China to respect human rights, yet help overthrow a democratically elected leader and replace him with military despot who killed thousands (Chile - the Other September 11). They install puppet regimes all over the world because they will be their "friends" against the Soviets, or Al Queda, or whomever is the enemy du jour, rather than trusting the people of those countries decide for themselves.
They claim to be about justice, yet opt out of the world criminal court in the Hague. You know, the ones trying war crimes and crimes against humanity committed Bosnia, Kosovo and Rawanda.
But of course, don't listen to me. I'm just a whiner. No one else in the world could possibly share these opinions. All that terrorism is just the result of "evil" or jealousy or something...
Re:Suicide bombers are not stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
As for "outsmarting" the FBI, they didn't outsmart them anymore than I outsmart my local police by running a stoplight at 3am.
Heck, even that isn't a fair comparison because I would actually get away with running a stoplight at 3am.
Bottom line, it doesn't take a lot of brainpower to kill people. If I blow up some woman who was out getting groceries, it didn't "outsmart" her, I murdered her.
If I were to go buy a gun at Walmart, come to your house and kill you, then myself, I'm not "outsmarting" Walmart, you, or the police. I'm making a stupid, short-sighted decision that doesn't help anybody.
You seem to have a naive view of suicide bombers in that they get someone off the street, give them a bomb and send them off the next day.
And you seem to think they have to go to four years of "Suicide Bomber School" and graduate first in their class.
These people are nothing but a bunch of crazy jackasses.
They're destroying their own lives and those of others over a bunch of lies. It's pretty much THE stupidest thing you can do. It unrecoverably stupid.
Re:Suicide bombers are not stupid (Score:1, Insightful)
Sounds like the USA to me... or indeed any nation-state in human history.