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Flash Mobs a Threat to Security?
RawCode writes "News about a recent report released by the RCMP suggests that flash mobs could pose a future threat to security. 'Some are aimed at celebrities. Tech-savvy teenaged girls in Britain can quickly spread the word on the whereabouts of Prince William, surrounding him with hundreds of screaming fans. Some are political, organizing protests. Text-messaging was instrumental to organizing public demonstrations in the Phillippines that forced President Joseph Estrada from office'."
The other thing that occurs to me, unfortunately, is that this will lead us even more down the path of trying to prevent crimes rather than punish them. It sounds like a good idea - I mean, isn't it better to stop the Bad Thing from even happening? The problem with it, of course, is that the only way to prevent crime is to actually curtail the abilities of people to do things that could be criminal. Fundamentally, it's a tradeoff of liberty for security.
I'm not exactly a wild-haired anarchist, and I do believe that some tradeoffs of that nature are necessary given the amount of damage ten dedicated people can inflict (to paraphrase a quote that went something like "the progress of history can be measured by how many people a group of ten dedicated men can kill"...but I don't remember who said it. Help with attribution would be appreciated), but we (by which I mean the so-called first world) keep moving in only one direction: more security, less liberty. It's a cultural decision which is based on events like plane hijackings, car bombs and assasinations, but results in policies like the DMCA and the CBDTPA.
The article certainly comes across as a justification for engaging in yet more crime prevention. At some point, I can only hope that we turn around and realize that we can't prevent Bad Things from happening, so we're better off allowing liberty and punishing criminals than eliminating liberty and making criminals out of everyone.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Of course it is a threat... It's a threat because people are able to quickly organize and protest. That is a major threat to public officials that want to ignore the fact that there is dissention.
Afterall isn't that why we are "protecting" our President from those horrible demonstrators? They might actually show him that there is a percentage of the population that doesn't agree with him?
before they look out for us.
If it is lives they want to save, how about all the millions of working class people who die obesity, cancer, heart disease, etc? Instead we pay to make sure some elite figurehead won't have his hair rumpled by teenaged girls.
Typical of the human critter....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Right to Peaceably Assemble
The right to peacefully gather and parade or demonstrate to make one's views known or to support or oppose a public policy is based upon the twin guarantees of the freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble.
Practicing your right to assemble is NOT a security risk.
So what - ban text messaging to protect poor Britney Spears next time someone spots her getting married in a Vegas drive-thru chapel? I think it might be easier, and definitely preferable, to ban celebrities.
Wow, this isn't NEARLY as interesting as the "Flash" Mobs I was thinking of...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
you are living in the past. Have you not heard of Free Speech Zones?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Tech-savvy girls flashing for Prince William - :)
now THAT's a power to be reckoned with!
(Yeah yeah, and tell them they can have their joke back too)
Yes, I'm that old. This was around 1986 or so.
Anyway, one night there was a food run declared for midnight at the Lyons restaurant in Capitola. One hundred and ten students descended all at once on the otherwise empty restaurant, and all ordered coffee, some ice cream, and at the end asked for separate checks, each of which ranged from maybe one to five dollars.
There were only a couple employees on staff when we arrived. It took a long time to get served because they had to call off-duty employees on the phone, waking them out of bed to come work for the hour or two we were there.
As we prepared to depart, the restaurant manager sternly said "Don't ever do that again".
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Having a LUG meeting could be a security threat with the right type of people :)
I'm thinking more of a biohazard.
Yup,
RCMP == FBI
CSIS == CIA
CSE == NSA
Roughly speaking of course -- the exact details are framed in their separate charters and, of course, the constitution differs between our two countries.
...British Soccer fans? They show up at a predetermined time, riot, and then disperse to thier home country. And they've been known to cause injuries and death!
A soccer ball is the symbol of real terror!
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
...My first thought was that terrorists were contemplating using flash mobs to create an instant victim base...
Sure, you have security crawling all around a popular building - big deal. The terrorist, posing as a fan of say, Britney Spears, creates a flash mob two blocks away from the secured building claiming that she was spotted there - and shows up at that spot with a bomb. Voila, several hundred victims appearing of their own free will, close enough to the security site to create absolute chaos.
It didn't even occur to me that the Man considered flash mobs to be a threat in themselves... After all, there are certain Amendment rights to make this train of thought silly. I thought that the government was concerned about the public - not their right to assemble!
Civil disobedience is a very good idea in principle, and with the right enemy it can work wonders. But the WTO arrests, the RNC arrests, the willingness to shut down airplanes and whole airports because someone finds a piece of paper with "BOB" written on it, the mass detention of muslims in LA a few years back, the indisputed fact that the US has _by far_ the highest incarceration rate in the world, it's all indicative of guys in charge not really giving a shit about public perception and being more concerned with CYA and maintaining their own jobs.
Dyolf Knip
Certainly the war on drugs has its profiteers and mercenaries, but jails take years to build. It's easy to make money on a sustained growth in the prisoner population; it's hard to make money on a sudden growth in what is essentially petty crime.
There is also the ability to force an unjust government to face uncomfortable political realities. Who wants to first on the boat back to mother England with the news the practitioners of violent uncivil disobedience aren't being prosecuted because judges have 100s of cases of 'possession of salt with intent to season'?
Likewise, how many politicians will run on the 'I let a serial rapist go free to make room for johnny pot-smoker' platform? Not many. You can clog up the courts with petty criminals and force politicians to choose between pot smokers and violent criminals. Witness the current debate in Chicago. I don't see legalization around the corner, but I do see more localities coming to the realization pot smokers are not public enemy # 1 and just cost too damn much to prosecute.
To many, the benefit of the war on drugs is money. But for those who have allowed this war to escalate, and have the power to stop it, the benefit is political clout. Force the hand of the police with what is essentially a DoS attack on the court system, and the politicians will have some 'splaining to do.
What do you do as the "swift law n order" guy when you as a prosecutor or jury turn out to have convicted the wrong guy? We see articles about it all the time now, some poor schmoo in prison for years, turns out the prosecutors surpressed evidence or their main witness recants and admits they were lying, or new DNA evidence clears someone, etc. What then? Are you prepared to take their place in the criminal justice enforcement provisions, and take jail time or execution or castration for making a drastic mistake? Or is saying "whoops, sorry 'bout that" enough? What amount of "sorry" cash will bring someone back from the beyond, or restore your nads? How do you give back the time taken from someone who's spent years in jail?
.00001% (whatever, some small number) of the cases out there, the rest are too random in their details to really classify easily, because the system is so broken now. But it's not "justice", it's something else, but not that word, not anymore.
The problem with extremely "swift justice" is that in a lot of cases it leaves out the "justice" part and concentrates on the "swift" part. And in our society now it all boils down to cash, the more you got, the more you can get away with, and the least likely you may even be charged. The less you got, the more likely it is you WILL esperience capital S swift and not really get any small j justice.
You ever been in a courtroom for something serious where the prosecutor and cop get on the stand and lie to the judge about events they claim transpired, with you as who they want to prosecute, and you know they are lying, and that you are 100% innocent? I have, and I tell you, it is about one of the most depressing and dismal and hopless scenes you can imagine, you just get devastated. It's in my top ten list for being such an anti corrupt government agitator, been there, done that, it HAPPENS to people, either individually, or in the case of big crimes like illegal wars, it happens to everyone. Justice? Where is it, not seeing it much, I see a prison/lawyer/government 3 million laws on the books and climbing racket, but not seeing much in the way of "justice". Isee a system where eventually you won't ever be innocent, because they could find something you are guilty of. I bet it's there now for the bulk of the population.
"Justice" to me is-say, one example-a potential rape victim HASN'T been disarmed in advance by society, and when a rape is attempted, the raper gets popped by the rapee. When joe sixpack has some burglar break into his house, the same, bang, end of story, obvious evidence, burglar on floor in living room. That's "justice". Anything else is a convulted melodrama conducted in a foreign language most people don't speak with the winners usually determined by who has the most cash or the most "power" in the situation. Not in all cases, but in most of them.
What we have now is the criminal justice "system" which is more of a perpetual jobs racket for some folks then anything else. Do we have crime? Sure! There's still a lot of legit crime, theft, murder, etc, but a LOT of what we have now is artificially produced pseudo crime, introduced by the state and legislators who's only job is to write more laws, never to REMOVE laws that have been proven to be a disaster. A lot of the so-called "crimes" on the books are merely a way for the state to seize command and control and to take property. I would say almost all asset forfeiture laws are scams, most drug laws are a waste of time (alcohol prohibition proved that) and so on. The tax codes are criminal in nature from top to bottom, not a dang thing about them is even close to being lawful, either by design or by implementation.
In addition, our society *rewards* extremely high level criminals, calls them CEOs and distinguished politicians, it's really in most cases petty ante crime that gets prosecuted. Joe haliburton can "lose" a million here or there and not much happens, joe six pack can "lose" a few thousand on taxes and get his life devastated. The big cases make headlines, but that's only
What were the WTC attacks genuine retaliation for? "Offences" against the Muslim people which Bin Laden never cared about until he needed justification for terrorist attacks
Actually, Bin Laden has been clear about this. He has 3 main grievances. (this is unlike the old Ayatollahs of Iran who considered the west "the great satan"). OBL is upset about:
1) Sanctions on Iraq, which he claims killed millions and caused starvation and malnourshment.
2) Near-unequivocal support of Israel and what he sees as oppression of the Palestinian people.
3) Placement of US troops and bases in Saudi Arabia and the US's support for what he says is a corrupt un-Islamic dictatorship.
Osama's a nasty SOB and deserves a shit-storm in hell, but let's not ignore that he has rational reasons for what he did. They were at least rational from his point of view, and his power grew because there were a lot of people who agreed with his issues.
Not liking him, or the fact that he committed heinous crimes, does not invalidate his initial complaints.