links.lmorchard.com - #terrorism

Turning Everyday Gadgets into Bombs is a Bad Idea « bunnie's blog

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 18:11:36 +0000

The reason we don’t see exploding battery attacks more often is not because it’s technically hard, it’s because the erosion of public trust in everyday things isn’t worth it. The current discourse around the potential reach of such explosive devices is clouded by the assumption that it’s technically difficult to implement and thus unlikely to find its way to our front door.That assumption is wrong. It is both surprisingly easy to do, and could be nearly impossible to detect. After I read about the attack, it took half an hour to combine fairly common supply chain knowledge with Wikipedia queries to propose the mechanism detailed below.

Tags: #electronics #gadgets #terrorism #war

Underwear Bomber 2.0 was CIA double agent - Boing Boing

Wed, 09 May 2012 04:22:44 +0000

Scott Shane and Eric Schmitt in The New York Times dig deeper into yesterday's news of a new would-be Al Qaeda underwear bomber, "dispatched by the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda last month to blow up a United States-bound airliner." He was a double agent for the CIA who infiltrated Al Qaeda, and "volunteered for the suicide mission." He also provided intelligence that led to Sunday's drone strike killing a USS Cole bombing suspect. Snip:

Tags: #imported:pinboard #intelligence #terrorism #to:fb

Does Airport Security Really Make Us Safer? | Culture | Vanity Fair

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:39:25 +0000

The best memorial to the victims of 9/11, in Schneier’s view, would be to forget most of the “lessons” of 9/11. “It’s infuriating,” he said, waving my fraudulent boarding pass to indicate the mass of waiting passengers, the humming X-ray machines, the piles of unloaded computers and cell phones on the conveyor belts, the uniformed T.S.A. officers instructing people to remove their shoes and take loose change from their pockets. “We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars doing this—and it is almost entirely pointless. Not only is it not done right, but even if it was done right it would be the wrong thing to do.”

Tags: #911 #flight #security #terror #terrorism #travel

U.S. Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners - ProPublica

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:33:03 +0000

A ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation of how this decision was made shows that in post-9/11 America, security issues can trump even long-established medical conventions. The final call to deploy the X-ray machines was made not by the FDA, which regulates drugs and medical devices, but by the TSA, an agency whose primary mission is to prevent terrorist attacks.

Tags: #airport #cancer #health #radiation #terror #terrorism #travel #tsa

Daily Kos: Another incident of domestic terrorism thwarted; another Fox News connection

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:48:07 +0000

Yes, yes. All these plots are "unrelated." We can't possibly blame them on a right-wing ideology that revels in paranoid claims about the future of the country and how extraordinary measures are required to save it from whatever the latest bogeyman is (usually, revolving around some not-conservative figure being the ideological equivalent of Stalin, for reasons that are, shall we say, never well explained), because that would be mean. We can't blame the authors and promoters of far-right fantasias (the men in this story were inspired by a fictional novel about murdering government workers fer freedomz, etc) because that would be "persecuting" them or some such, and heaven knows the right wing feels "persecuted" enough already. And heaven forfend anyone point out how very, very often these stories have a Fox News connection or find that the alleged terrorist had written long, rambling messages on some well-known conservative blog.

Tags: #extremists #foxnews #politics #terrorism

Undressing the Terror Threat - WSJ.com

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 05:04:10 +0000

"No amount of statistical evidence, however, will make any difference to those who give themselves over to almost completely irrational fears. Such people, and there are apparently a lot of them in America right now, are in fact real victims of terrorism. They also make possible the current ascendancy of the politics of cowardice—the cynical exploitation of fear for political gain. ... It's a remarkable fact that a nation founded, fought for, built by, and transformed through the extraordinary courage of figures such as George Washington, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. now often seems reduced to a pitiful whimpering giant by a handful of mostly incompetent criminals, whose main weapons consist of scary-sounding Web sites and shoe- and underwear-concealed bombs that fail to detonate."

Tags: #america #cowardice #fear #politics #risk #security #terror #terrorism

What Airline Passengers Can Learn - TIME

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:02:10 +0000

"This now familiar ritual distracts us from the real lesson, which is that we are not helpless. And since regular people will always be first on the scene of terrorist attacks, we should perhaps prioritize the public's antiterrorism capability — above and beyond the fancy technology that will never be foolproof. By definition, terrorism succeeds by making us feel powerless. It is more often a psychological threat than an existential one"

Tags: #helplessness #homelandsecurity #security #terror #terrorism #travel

thestar.com iPhone : The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:29:27 +0000

""Do you know why Israelis are so calm? We have brutal terror attacks on our civilians and still, life in Israel is pretty good. The reason is that people trust their defence forces, their police, their response teams and the security agencies. They know they're doing a good job. You can't say the same thing about Americans and Canadians. They don't trust anybody," Sela said. "But they say, 'So far, so good'. Then if something happens, all hell breaks loose and you've spent eight hours in an airport. Which is ridiculous. Not justifiable"

Tags: #air #israel #security #terrorism #travel

The Same Old Washington Blame Game | The White House

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:01:35 +0000

"President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered."

Tags: #obama #politics #terror #terrorism

The Raw Story | Obama fires back at Cheney on 60 Minutes

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:29:56 +0000

Tags: #cheney #guantanamo #obama #terror #terrorism

Homeland Security: Rethinking What Works : NPR

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:58:24 +0000

Tags: #homeland #law #politics #security #terrorism #us

Terrorist 'tweets'? US Army warns of Twitter dangers - Yahoo! News

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:09:26 +0000

Tags: #freedom #microblogging #morons #terrorism #twitter

McCain's attacks fuel dangerous hatred -- baltimoresun.com

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:01:11 +0000

Tags: #gop #hatred #mccain #palin #politics #race #racism #republicans #terrorism #violence

Dan Simmons - Author's Official Web Site

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:26:58 +0000

"Athens failed in Syracuse – and doomed their democracy – not because they fought in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but because they weren’t ruthless enough."

Tags: #america #fiction #future #iraq #islam #scifi #terrorism #timetravel #war

Bruce Schneier: Are photographers really a threat? | Technology | The Guardian

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 01:43:28 +0000

"Why are our fears so great that we have no choice but to be suspicious of any photographer? Because it's a movie-plot threat."

Tags: #photography #terror #terrorism