Banks Accept Dubai Assassins' Stolen IDs 291
schliz writes "Public scrutiny did more harm than good last week, after Australian police and the media released details of three stolen passports allegedly used in the assasination of a senior Hamas member in Dubai. As if having their identities stolen for an assassination wasn't enough, it turns out the victims' passports had not been cancelled by the government, so the details that were published by the media in fact could be used to open fraudulent bank accounts."
I've lost my idenity, can I have a new one? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like every government in the world has something equal to our Social Security Number being used for national identification... and no way to scrub your permanent record of what they want to record about you, or even an easy way toget your record cleaned if somebody should take your identity and uses it. Lifelock is basically selling insurance that if your ID is stolen, they'll do the legwork up to $1 Million in filing paperwork and making calls on your behalf to get things back to normal.
Israel basically doesn't care about what they've done to these people because for them their war against Hamas justifies anything... they've been doing War on Terror since day one of their existence. The least these people should be able to expect is that their government would cancel their stolen passports... but apparently that's too much to ask.
Re:I've lost my idenity, can I have a new one? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've lost my idenity, can I have a new one? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's actually not that hard to get a new Australian passport issued, especially if you have as good a reason as these people. It's not even slightly analogous to the American SSN.
The big problem here is that the relevant authorities simply didn't think to cancel and re-issue before publishing the details to the world.
Re:It's this kind thing.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Assissinations on foreign soil, using an identity of a citizen of a yet another country (possibly ruining their lives in the process) is something to be cheered?
I think not. That is not to say I'm somehow sad for his passing, just for this rampant lawlessness.
Re:I've lost my idenity, can I have a new one? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is not the issuance of a government ID, the problem is that businesses are allowed to ask for it and use it as a form of ID.
I don't recall telling banks in the UK any government-issued ID numbers, but I haven't opened a bank account there recently.
Re:I've lost my idenity, can I have a new one? (Score:3, Insightful)
But they're your government. They can send you a new one rather quickly.
Wanna bet?
Bureaucracy knows no bound, especially if your passport has been used by someone to assassinate a terrorist.
Re:It's this kind thing.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, .... aw heck, I got karma to burn. I'm pretty sure not too many would care about their struggle, just wake us when one of you remains and have at it. What bothers most of the world is just that they can't keep to themselves and pull us into their struggle. It's a bit like two kids fighting in the sand pit under your window. Would you care if they didn't scream louder than you can turn your TV set?
Re:Not Israel (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, stop trying to distort the situation.
Hamas has its own particular ideology and I want to make it clear I don't support their methods.
But to say that their basis for attacking Israel is merely its existence is a distortion. There is legitimate beef on the part of the Palestinians against Israel for the loss of land and livelihood under the Israeli occupation. You and I can sit here and debate whether or not their actions are appropriate or understandable, but it boils down to an entire population of people who live under the rule of a foreign occupier and it is quite clear that the occupation has not had a positive impact on them.
We talk righteously about Jews who were forced into ghettos and then violently rebelled against their oppressors but then on the other hand when it involves Arabs against Jewish occupiers, its all of the sudden an immoral thing to resist that oppression.
Re:I've lost my idenity, can I have a new one? (Score:1, Insightful)
Your statement should read,
"Actually, people have been at war with everyone from day one, in later years settling down a bit and narrowing it to a smaller group"
Re:Sound familiar? (Score:3, Insightful)
I got into a heated argument with my bank's "phone assistant" a while ago. You see, to ensure that I'm really me, they ask some "additional information" about my account when I phone in to make a transfer. Actually a quite convenient service when their webpage is down, as usual.
The security questions include such things as telling them some of my recent withdrawals or a certain regular payment (like phone bill or such), or my personal bank adviser (well, as personal as "the guy who created my account" can be...). The only problem: All those informations can be gained from a bank statement. Which I could get printed at any time with nothing but my ATM card, without additional security pin.
So if you steal a wallet and find an ATM card... I think you can take it from here.
Re:I've lost my idenity, can I have a new one? (Score:1, Insightful)
Israel basically doesn't care about what they've done to these people because for them their war against Hamas justifies anything...........UN report on jewish terrorism in Palestine 1945-48
http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-terrorists-timeline-1945-1948.html [jewwatch.com].
And the fuckers try and come across holier than the terrorists. Israel is a terrorist nation of thieves.
Forgetting about the sense of anti-Zonist hated in your previous post.
Truth be told Israel is a state sponsor of terror and it was founded on terrorism.
The same can be said of the Palestinians.
What does not get mentioned is each sides, Palestinian and Israeli, views are valid and neither peoples are willing to compromise.
With compromise will come peace.
Re:I've lost my idenity, can I have a new one? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not Israel (Score:3, Insightful)
you can't claim the moral high ground while using military ordinance against occupied residential structures.
I have seen photos of the damage caused by each sides weapons, a qassam rocket will typically blow a hole in a wall and hurt or kill anyone nearby in that room, while an israeli airstrike will level an apartment complex.
Re:It's this kind thing.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting tired of kdawsons scaremongering bullshit.
Can we have it corrected please, the headline reads like it has already happened ?
"Banks Could Conceivably Accept Dubai Assassins' Stolen IDs"
(And then only if they'd been living under a rock).
Before we get into this too deep... (Score:1, Insightful)
...let us not forget that there is no actual *evidence* to indicate that this was actually an action of the Israeli gov't. There's just been a lot of hot wind coming out of Dubai, and a bunch of finger pointing going on in the world. So until there is some evidences, let's not let this spin out of control into a pro-zionist vs. anti-zionist flamewar.
Re:I've lost my idenity, can I have a new one? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, the Palestinians didn't wipe out Jewish villages, conquered neighboring countries territory, maintain a racist state, try to fabricate a Jewish past in Palestine or fully annex it while pretending to be interested in a peace treaty. And they don't have AIPAC.
The only way Israeli views are valid is considering the fact that to set things straight, a lot of people would have to be moved in/out of the Israeli territory, not to mention the (internationally illegal) settlements.
The fact is that the Israelis are not interested in peace. They want the full of Palestine and that's it. The hold they have on the U.S. Congress and Senate through lobbying organizations like AIPAC and the Counsel of Presidents grants them carte blanche to do whatever they want. It's kinda funny that the world's most powerful superpower is little more than a sock puppet of a little east mediterranean state in what concerns it's foreign policy on the Middle East...
Re:Not Israel (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why does the Hammas have Israel's entire land on its flag? Why does it continuously call for Israel's full destruction?
You have a valid point, there is a very justified side to the Palestinian struggle for independence. Only problem is that organizations like the Hammas deliberately blur the line between the bits that are justified, and the bits that are hate-mongering, impossible loony ideas (entirely displace a 7-million modern nation with access to money, all the technology it needs a big army? yeh, right) that are entirely outside any acceptable modern ethics/morals profile.
Re:It's this kind thing.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I assume then that you are cheering for elimination of most of those active in the Israeli political scene, since most of them are Hell-bent on starving and beating the denizens of the West Bank and Gaza Ghettos into obedient submission, no?
I have news for you, Skippy: we in the rest of the world (excepting some parts of the US where they expect Second Coming on the next Tuesday at the latest) have looooong since stopped buying the Pure-as-a-driven-snow Eternal Victimhood crap Israelis are peddling, quite a few "preemptive" wars and "collective punishment" campaigns back. The only reason that Israel is still supplied with vast no-questions-asked transfers of wealth and arms from the unwitting US taxpayers is because Israelis have a strangle-hold on US politics (along with gigantic corporations and other related wannabe global feudal aristocracy). And anyone can already sense that it is only a matter of time until something is going to give, rather violently, if this trend towards neo-feudalism continues unabated.
So I would suggest that pull your heads out of your apartheid asses and do something actually constructive to resolve the problem, beginning with massive reparations for all the land and property you've stolen (incidentally, and quite ironically, a process not much different from that relating to Jewish Nazi-confiscated property).
Re:Before we get into this too deep... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it's not like Israel has ever been caught red-handed doing this before, is it?
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-751918.html [encyclopedia.com]
Re:It's this kind thing.. (Score:4, Insightful)
You've confused propaganda about Mossad activities spread by Israel and US-dwelling Israeli citizens (many of them in positions of great power in US media and entertainment industries) which was until not so long ago the "dominant" view in the absence of the Internet and ubiquitous digital cameras, with reality.
The truth is that Mossad (and most other intelligence agencies) was always this sloppy, but they operated in a very forgiving environment, where all the successes could be safely exaggerated and all the screw-ups completely swept under the carpet.
The Dubai situation is simply what happens when the terrain on which Mossad had chosen to operate differs significantly from a typical impoverished, inept, technologically in the dark-ages back-water where they usually do their dirty deeds.
And it is a sign of things to come. Mossad is being put on notice: your usual shit will not fly anymore and no amount of selective propaganda will compensate for the realities of the digital age and Orwellian police-state mass digital surveillance that is becoming the norm in the Gulf states.
Re:Not Israel (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I've lost my idenity, can I have a new one? (Score:1, Insightful)
"The British left due to a Jewish terror campaign also known as the Jewish Revolt."
That's WHAT THE JEWS SAY. In fact, most colonies were granted independence after WWII, about the same time frame.
What is the Jewish mandate if not a British colony? it is WWI booty from the Turkish empire, the division of the spoils (with France for example) that drew the political lines of the middle east.
The Jews had changed the ethnic composition of the country, and created the institutions that meant they have a de-facto state.
The Brits basically left Jews & Arabs to fight in a civil war. Better organized Jews had the upper hand.
Re:Not Israel (Score:1, Insightful)
What part of "foreign occupation" don't you understand?
Re:It's this kind thing.. (Score:3, Insightful)
And Israels build cities near military bases. So?
You don't see a moral difference between troops stationed near a city and "troops" stationed in a school, weapons caches and all, while there are actually children there and classes going on? Come on.
Re:It's this kind thing.. (Score:3, Insightful)
HAMAS says that since everyone in Israel must serve in military, killing children is OK - it's just premature military action.
As horrible as it sounds, I've heard the exact same statements from Israels. And actions of Israel military seem to follow exactly this statement.
By now I don't see the difference between Palestine and Israel. Frankly, I think there'll be peace in Middle East only when Arabs kill all Jews or Jews kill all Arabs. I'm a pessimist.
Re:It's this kind thing.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you are stretching to create moral equivalence in two situations that are not equivalent. They have similar outcomes (death of civilians) and that is what you are building your case on, but you are ignoring all morality in what produces those outcomes. That's fair if you really are a strict consequentialist, but most people tend to back away from that in other situations (e.g. self-defense vs. accidental death vs. murder).
Re:Not Israel (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I don't think that's much of an argument, but there is a much better one. Really, I don't think it matters who lived there once, or when, or whatever. What matters is who's making their homes there now. I'm American, and technically, my land was once brutally stolen from one tribe or another of Native Americans. If one of them now showed up at my doorstep and demanded his land beck, I'll tell him to bugger off, and if he took violent action against me I'd be well within my right to defend myself, because regardless of how things went down in the past, this is my home now. I think same applies to Israel. I don't know much about the formation of Israel, and I don't quite buy those stories about unprovoked land grabs and stealing homes from Palestinians, but either way, people are living and dying and making their home there now. It's hard to argue that that doesn't make it their home now.
I'm not saying that Israel is perfect of that the Palestinians are all bad or anything like that, but before any other issues can be addressed, the assholes need to accept that the country and people of Israel have a right to be there & defend themselves if need be and stop with the offensives.