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Europe has money that is hard to conterfit, unlike some countries with paper money on the quality-level of 3rd world countries, like the US.

It was once thought impossible to counterfeit the Euro, but since then counterfeits are up (here is one example). With modern printing technology improving and becoming cheaper, the counterfeiters are becoming more and more sophisticated. Any security feature that is widely known can be copied.

Which is why both Europe and the US are constantly working to improve their currency. You apparently are not aware of that, but check out the latest security features. They are kind of cool.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! And wrong!

It's a common fallacy spouted by those who foist surveillance on us. See here, here, or any other of the many hits when you search for privacy "nothing to hide"

It goes right along with the "privacy and security are mutually exclusive" fallacy.

People like you that are trading your long-term liberty and privacy for a current sense of security are going to rue this day eventually. These essential freedoms need constant vigilance. Many of our forefathers died defending them. They're rolling in their graves now seeing how so many are nonchalantly pissing them away.

Here's your homework. Go read the Constitution of the United States of America. No, really. Read it line by line and understand why some say it's the most important and influential document created in the last 1000 years.

The story lists the tasks that might be taken over by private companies:

That seems like pretty much the entire job description short of actual Arrest. (The Detaining Suspects bit may mean running the jail, or arrest, its unclear).

The good side of this is you might have more luck suing a corporation than the constabulary. (No clue about UK law here, just a guess). And when the public becomes unsatisfied its much easier for city government to cancel the contract and find a new firm. The new guys will probably be on their best behavior for a few months at least.

Its not unheard of to find private police forces employed by some jurisdictions in the US. And its not unheard of the have entire companies fired. An incident in a Seattle transit hub eventually lead to fines and term termination of their contract.

Several points about the case you cite are of interest. As mentioned in TFA, the security company employees were following standing orders not to intervene, but merely to observe. These orders were issued at the behest of the Seattle City Council. As a result of the unfavorable publicity surrounding the event, however, the Council was left contemplating a change in policy amid some hand-wringing. Consider what would have happened if Seattle city police offers had responded in an inappropriate way: there would have been an actual political impact. City employees would have been fired and the City Council would have come under heavy criticism, leading to possible resignations. By hiring private security companies—no matter whether they are given police powers or not—governments themselves escape responsibility for the actions of those private corporations. If something goes wrong, then someone else is to blame, never the government.

The story lists the tasks that might be taken over by private companies:

The breathtaking list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions, such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources

That seems like pretty much the entire job description short of actual Arrest. (The Detaining Suspects bit may mean running the jail, or arrest, its unclear).

The good side of this is you might have more luck suing a corporation than the constabulary. (No clue about UK law here, just a guess). And when the public becomes unsatisfied its much easier for city government to cancel the contract and find a new firm. The new guys will probably be on their best behavior for a few months at least.

Its not unheard of to find private police forces employed by some jurisdictions in the US. And its not unheard of the have entire companies fired. An incident in a Seattle transit hub eventually lead to fines and term termination of their contract.

There's of course the tiny little issue :

a) you're right, there's no threat, and lifting security precautions won't change a thing b) you're wrong, there is a threat, and lifting security precautions means a weekly re-run of 9/11

If b) is true you're asking thousands of people to die just so you can have a little easier time at an airport. And, frankly, anyone reading the news knows perfectly well b) is true.

What you say isn't true, btw, you have the option of paying enough to charter a flight and avoid the continental U.S. altogether. The problem isn't what the sovereign united states do, the problem is that you are prepared to accept any amount of discomfort for a few bucks.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. You forgot option c): There is a threat, albeit not a statistically significant one, and the "security precautions" we are currently taking are little more than a sleight-of-hand intended to make the flying public feel (no pun intended) like the government is doing something to address their fears. If the threat were anywhere near as real as you imagined it to be, we would *still* have airplanes blowing up weekly. Remember the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber and Flight 93? Those were all thwarted by the actions of other passengers on the airplane, not the TSA. What we have right now is an out-of-control government bureaucracy trampling on our 4th Amendment rights, and still letting terrorists and entertainers smuggle contraband on board airplanes.

Regarding charter flights: c'mon, that's seriously disingenuous, not to mention one-sided. If you are that afraid of being blown up on an airliner, YOU could use charter flights rather than commercial airlines. "the problem is that you are prepared to violate others' civil rights for a few bucks." It's no less true when you say it than it is when I do. Just sayin. Furthermore, what you are saying isn't even true. TSA does require some screening, even for chartered aircraft, if the aircraft weighs more than 12,500 pounds (see here for details) and they were trying to expand that program to privately owned and operated aircraft in 2009, although that measure was dropped due to public outcry (see here and here). So no, you can't really take a charter flight without being screened, although for now you could fly in a private jet, if you can afford the cost (you probably can't, unless your last name is Pelosi, Clinton or Bush).

Devastate that economy? I think, again, that's a very hard point to argue.

Actually, I've seen quite a few sources talk about al qaeda's goal of destroying our economy. They know they don't have the means to destroy our army, or our people, or our institutions directly, but they can convince us to waste our own money. And if that forces us to retreat from the areas they want to control, then that's good enough for them. For the most part, they just want us out of the way so they can wage their real war, with their neighbors: secular-muslim states.

One sample: al Qaeda and other jihadists increasingly wage econo-jihad, study finds

Another, from Al Qaeda's grand strategy (summary of a lecture given by Michael Doran, Asst. Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton):

So where does the war stand now, according to al Qaeda? A leading al Qaeda operative has written a book, the title of which translates loosely to “The Management of Chaos.” According to al Qaeda, the current stage of revolution is the stage of “vexation and exhaustion” of the enemy. They have a notion of how to do this to the Americans and to their 'puppets'.

You vex and exhaust the Americans, according to al Qaeda, by making them spend a lot of money. The United States is a materialist society, and if forced to spend too much money it will “cut and run.”

The means to this end is to force the Americans to spread themselves thinly. Al Qaeda wants to strike everywhere, not just spectacular high value attacks. This will cause the Americans to defend a lot of places at high cost.

The Department of Homeland Security only gives the kiss of death to public works projects. Here's what's going to happen; A bunch of committees will be called, and they're going to make a whole bunch of suggestions about what it "should" do. Each organization will want to have at least one feature included, a vote, etc. Tens (possibly hundreds) of millions will be lost doing this. It'll be filed under "R&D costs". At least a third of those suggestions will be crap or impossible/unfeasible to implement. It'll be recycled a few times on the General Schedule before some hapless corporation wins the contract. Then all hell breaks loose as delays in the project force reductions in scope, and the process of defining "core features" begins. By this point, everyone will be pointing fingers, and it'll be half-implemented and broken in many places. The project's surviving assets will be quietly transferred after a GAO inquiry regarding cost overruns and lack of deliverables -- just ahead of a congressional committee being called on the matter. Two years later, someone gets the idea that the US should have a multi-band radio project...

I only say this, because they've tried it with different scopes over and over and over and over again. Their technology department is understaffed due to high turnover and leadership problems.

Fundamentally, these things never leave the pilot phase, or if they do, they face deployment problems because the requirements are so obtuse and ambitious that existing technology can't adapt. Even if it can, bureaucratic problems usually end a project before it sees wide-scale deployment due to reluctance to adopt new technology and failures in leadership -- namely, not communicating with people in the field before trying to put something there.

Wait! before I thought only the NSA by statute and Google (because Google is truly eViL by supplying the NSA (& NASA!) with technology & staff), could listen to my phone calls, transcribe, translate, & index them into perpetuity. But now I'm reading the Italian mafia can listen in too?

Of course this explains why the Italian mafia learned awhile ago to encrypt their own calls. On the job training if you ask me.

FWIW, there's an asterisk module for pretty good privacy: http://www.zfoneproject.com/prod_asterisk.html

http://www.securitymanagement.com/article/new-voip-encryption-challenges-005680

Why not?

Well one aspect that has been mostly ignored in this conversation is that it is normally NOT the police that are watching you (in the UK). Even on just official (i.e. not business owned) cameras then it is normally local Council employees viewing them. (see http://www.islington.gov.uk/Council/CouncilNews/Pr essOffice/2006/07/2562.asp and http://www.broxtowe.gov.uk/crime_cctv.htm) Even worse these may be a private company hired in (see "because this is a drain on police resources, many city councils have maintained ownership of the systems themselves, hiring private security companies to monitor the cameras" http://www.securitymanagement.com/library/000138.h tml which seems to be a PRO-camera piece!)

In the USA you might like to consider the fact that you have nothing like our Data Protection Act so any footage that they record can be used for ANY purpose what so ever. (IANAL and IIRC this has already been tested in your courts, think Police Camera shows, but of private and legal actions, or candid camera without the need to get permission)

I would also point out that you can normally SEE that you are being watched by a person, and then choose not to, say adjust your clothing, but you can often not tell if a camera is even present, let alone if anyone is watching its output.

People are the problem. What's needed is for people to get off their butt and learn to exploit the technology to it's full capability. These people could learn how to use Google more efficiently if they read something like Johnny Long's Google Hacking. Link: http://www.securitymanagement.com/library/Google_H acker0704.pdf

However this will never happen because the average joe is inherently lazy so we'll have to spoonfeed all the techno-numpty's with technological updates until they stop complaining.

Way back when in the thread, an AC wrote:

there was a case in wisconsin, a majority of guns used in murders in the states came from one single store. (and it isnt a major store either, big, but not that big).

The question here is whether the shop owner knows if his customers intend to use weapons for criminal purposes. Given the lack of motion on these "problem" gun shops, the ATF clearly didn't have proof. So I'll grant that there doesn't seem to be a clear cut example of the kind bandied about.

I realize that's how the law is now. And it is silly. You can pay someone to do a hit for you and they could even take the money. Must they still carry out the hit? Or do they still have the choice of walking off with your money and not committing murder?

So if I pay someone $10,000 to kill you and they do, then I'm free and clear in your opinion? After all, odds are that person wouldn't ever have run into you much less killed you, if it wasn't for my incentives.

Its the person who's willing to kill for money we should be careful of, not the one that is willing only to pay someone else to. You pay someone else to do it because you can't do it yourself.

Well, it seems to me that if you make murder illegal, then a natural consequence is that you make paying for murder illegal as well.

A Remote Threat

This past June, quoting a German intelligence official, the Reuters news agency reported that al Qaeda might be planning to attack passenger aircraft using model airplanes. Some have dismissed this threat as unlikely or fanciful, but other terrorism experts foresee terrorist groups' using remote-control planes, boats, helicopters, and other delivery devices to attack people and sites without sacrificing any of their members.

Is the time ripe for such attacks? With the Western world hardening its defenses after 9-11, terrorists will be looking for creative ways to get past security, says Louis R. Mizell, a private security expert and ex-U.S. intelligence officer.

Mizell, who gathers data on security and terrorist incidents, says precedent for such attacks exists. He has recorded 43 cases involving 14 terrorist groups in which remote-control delivery systems were "either threatened, developed, or actually utilized." Only last year it was reported, for example, that Osama bin Laden considered using remote-control airplanes packed with explosives to kill President George W. Bush and other heads of state at the G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy. In 1995, reports indicated that Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese terrorist group that attacked the Tokyo subway with sarin gas, planned to use remote-control helicopters to spray dangerous chemicals from the air. The helicopters crashed during testing. In the 1980s, the Basque separatist group ETA tried to blow up a Spanish patrol ship using a four-foot remote-control boat packed with explosives.

The U.S. military is devoting considerable resources to its own remote-control delivery systems. For example, engineers are working on enhancing pilotless "drones" to make them effective means of attack without putting a flight crew at risk.

Critics have downplayed this threat because of the relatively small payloads that such devices can deliver. But some remote-control devices on the market can hold large amounts of explosives. A Mississippi company called Bergen R/C Helicopters, for example, advertises over the Internet a five-foot-long remote-control helicopter, costing $4,000, that can carry a 20 kg (44 lb) payload for 30 minutes without needing to refuel. Yamaha Motor Co. markets over the Internet a remote-control helicopter with a 20 kg payload as a pilotless crop duster. And, Mizell points out, terrorists could use many vehicles with smaller payloads en masse to create the same effect.

Other experts agree that the threat is legitimate. "Do you want to know if this is a real threat?" asks Gary Richter, a systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories who evaluates the goals and capabilities of terrorist groups. "The answer is an unequivocal yes."

Robert Blitzer, a former chief of the Domestic Terrorism/Counterterrorism Planning Section in the FBI's National Security Division, said he hadn't personally encountered that threat while with the FBI but conceded that it was viable. "I wouldn't be at all surprised that al Qaeda would have the wherewithal to do something like that," Blitzer says.

"Remote-control vehicles of various sorts do have to be considered," agrees RAND analyst Brian Jenkins, "but they have a limited spectrum in terms of utility." He points out that remote-control bombs "would barely dent a skyscraper" and wouldn't compromise the dome of a nuclear reactor. Jenkins adds that remote-control delivery devices would be unnecessary in situations where terrorists could simply plant a bomb and walk away--in Times Square, for example.

But Mizell sees a much broader scope of potential applications, such as boat attacks on maritime vessels and littoral utilities, as well as plane, helicopter, or car attacks on targeted VIPs' vehicles. "Real-life analogous situations show us what could be done," he says. For example, in 1998, a radio-control model airplane forced the pilot of a DC-9 to change his approach to Dulles International Airport.

source

this is coming from a country which has surveillance cameras placed everywhere on the streets, something called closed circuit television (or cctv). the police use this to monitor all the streets and respond, something that feels like it's straight out of 1984.

but there is a big distinction between public streets and private homes/internet. well, i suppose that's the whole point, they don't want the internet to be considered private. they're scared.

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