Entries Tagged "terrorism"

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Australia's New Anti-Terrorism Legislation

There’s a new Australian anti-terrorism law in the works. It includes such things as:

  • 14-day secret detention without arrest by security services
  • Shoot-to-kill “on suspicion” powers for police
  • Imprisonment and fines for revealing an individual has been the subject of an investigation

News reports are pretty bad.

This draft legislation was not supposed to be public yet, but the Chief Minister of the ACT revealed it on his website last week in defiance of a federal government request not to do so.

Posted on October 27, 2005 at 1:10 PM • View Comments

A "Typical" Terrorist

A simply horrible lead sentence in a Manila Times story:

If you see a man aged 17 to 35, wearing a ball cap, carrying a backpack, clutching a cellular phone and acting uneasily, chances are he is a terrorist.

Let’s see: Approximately 4.5 million people use the New York City subway every day. Assume that the above profile fits 1% of them. Does that mean that there are 25,000 terrorists riding the New York City subways every single day? Seems unlikely.

The rest of the article gets better, but still….

At least that is how the National Capital Regional Police Office (NCRPO) has “profiled” a terrorist.

Sr. Supt. Felipe Rojas Jr., chief of the NCRPO Regional Intelligence and Investigation Division (RIID), said Friday that his group came up with the profile based on the descriptions of witnesses in previous bombings.

Rojas said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has a similar terrorist profile.

But a source in the intelligence community derided the profile, calling it stereotyped and inaccurate.

The police profile does not apply to the female bombers who the military said were being trained for suicide missions in Metro Manila.

Posted on October 20, 2005 at 11:47 AM • View Comments

UK Terrorism Law Used for Non-Terrorism Purposes

The U.K. has used terrorism laws to stifle free speech; now it’s using them to keep pedestrians off bicycle paths.

With her year-round tan, long blonde hair and designer clothes, Sally Cameron does not look like a threat to national security.

But the 34-year-old property developer has joined the ranks of Britain’s most unlikely terrorist suspects after being held for hours for trespassing on a cycle path.

And also to prevent people from taking pictures of motorways:

A Hampshire student was stopped and warned by police under new anti-terror laws—for taking pictures of the M3.

Matthew Curtis had been gathering images for the website of a design company where he works part-time when he was stopped, searched and cautioned.

The 21-year-old was told that he was in a “vulnerable area” as he snapped pictures of the M3 and was made to account for his actions before he was issued with a warning and told not to do it again.

Officers, who had quoted the Prevention of Terrorism Act, today apologised for causing concern but say they were just being vigilant.

I get that terrorism is the threat of the moment, and that all sorts of government actions are being justified with terrorism. But this is ridiculous.

Posted on October 19, 2005 at 12:04 PM • View Comments

Chemical Trace Screening

New advances in technology:

“Mass spectrometry is one of the most sensitive methods for finding drugs, chemicals, pollutants and disease, but the problem is that you have to extract a sample and treat that sample before you can analyze it,” said Evan Williams, a chemistry professor at UC Berkeley.

That process can take anywhere from two to 15 minutes for each sample. Multiply that by the number of people in line at airport security at JFK the day before Thanksgiving, and you’ve got a logistical nightmare on your hands.

The research from Purdue, led by analytical chemistry professor Graham Cooks, developed a technique called desorption electrospray ionization, or DESI, that eliminates a part of the mass spectrometry process, and thus speeds up the detection of substances to less than 10 seconds, said Williams.

To use it, law enforcement officials and security screeners will spray methanol or a water and salt mixture on the surface of an object, or a person’s clothing or skin, and test immediately for microscopic traces of chemical compounds.

As this kind of technology gets better, the problems of false alarms becomes greater. We already know that a large percentage of U.S. currency bears traces of cocaine, but can a low-budget terrorist close down an airport by spraying trace chemicals randomly at passengers’ luggage when they’re not looking?

Posted on October 14, 2005 at 1:56 PM • View Comments

Domestic Spying in the U.S.

There are two bills in Congress that would grant the Pentagon greater rights to spy on Americans in the U.S.:

The Pentagon would be granted new powers to conduct undercover intelligence gathering inside the United States—and then withhold any information about it from the public—under a series of little noticed provisions now winding their way through Congress.

Citing in part the need for “greater latitude” in the war on terror, the Senate Intelligence Committee recently approved broad-ranging legislation that gives the Defense Department a long sought and potentially crucial waiver: it would permit its intelligence agents, such as those working for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), to covertly approach and cultivate “U.S. persons” and even recruit them as informants—without disclosing they are doing so on behalf of the U.S. government.

[…]

At the same time, the Senate intelligence panel also included in the bill two other potentially controversial amendments—one that would allow the Pentagon and other U.S. intelligence agencies greater access to federal government databases on U.S. citizens, and another granting the DIA new exemptions from disclosing any “operational files” under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Posted on October 13, 2005 at 11:47 AM • View Comments

$5M Bank Con

Great crime story:

An ingenious fraudster is believed to be sunning himself on a beach after persuading leading banks to pay him more than €5 million (£3.5 million) in the belief that he was a secret service agent engaged in the fight against terrorist money-laundering.

The man, described by detectives as the greatest conman they had encountered, convinced one bank manager to leave him €358,000 in the lavatories of a Parisian bar. “This man is going to become a hero if he isn’t caught quickly,” an officer said. “The case is exceptional, perfectly unbelievable and surreal.”

Moral: Security is a people problem, not a technology problem

Posted on October 12, 2005 at 7:15 AM • View Comments

Exploding Baby Carriages in Subways

This is a great example of a movie-plot threat.

A terrorist plot to attack the subways with bomb-laden baby carriages and briefcases—the most specific threat ever made against the city—triggered a massive security crackdown yesterday.

This is not to say that there isn’t a real plot that was uncovered, but the specificity of the threat seems a bit ridiculous.

And if we ban baby carriages from the subways, and the terrorists put their bombs in duffel bags instead, have we really won anything?

EDITED TO ADD: The threat was a hoax.

Posted on October 11, 2005 at 8:12 AM • View Comments

Terrorism Laws Used to Stifle Political Speech

Walter Wolfgang, an 82-year-old political veteran, was forcefully removed from the UK Labour party conference for calling a speaker, Jack Straw, a liar. (Opinions on whether Jack Straw is or is not a liar are irrelevant here.) He was later denied access to the conference on basis of anti-terror laws. Keep in mind that as recently as the 1980s, Labour Party conferences were heated affairs compared with today’s media shows.

From The London Times:

A police spokeswoman said that Mr Wolfgang had not been arrested but detained because his security accreditation had been cancelled by Labour officials when he was ejected. She said: “The delegate asked the police officer what powers he was using. The police officer responded that he was using his powers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act to confirm the delegate’s details.”

Also this:

More than 600 people were detained under the Terrorism Act during the Labour party conference, it was reported yesterday.

Anti-Iraq war protesters, anti-Blairite OAPs and conference delegates were all detained by police under legislation that was designed to combat violent fanatics and bombers – even though none of them was suspected of terrorist links. None of those detained under Section 44 stop-and-search rules in the 2000 Terrorism Act was arrested and no-one was charged under the terrorism laws.

Walter Wolfgang, an 82-year-old Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, was thrown out of the conference hall by Labour heavies after heckling the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw.

When he tried to get back in, he was detained under Section 44 and questioned by police. The party later apologised.

But the Home Office has refused to apologise for heavy-handed tactics used at this year’s conference.

A spokesman insisted: “Stop and search under Section 44 is an important tool in the on-going fight against terrorism.

“The powers help to deter terrorist activity by creating a hostile environment for terrorists.”

He added that the justification for authorising the use of the powers was “intelligence-led and based on an assessment of the threat against the UK.”

The shadow home secretary, David Davis, said: “Laws that are designed to fight terrorism should only be used against terrorism.”

Posted on October 10, 2005 at 8:13 AM • View Comments

Jamming Aircraft Navigation Near Nuclear Power Plants

The German government want to jam aircraft navigation equipment near nuclear power plants.

This certainly could help if terrorists want to fly an airplane into a nuclear power plant, but it feels like a movie-plot threat to me. On the other hand, this could make things significantly worse if an airplane flies near the nuclear power plant by accident. My guess is that the latter happens far more often than the former.

Posted on September 29, 2005 at 6:40 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.