Why Terror Financing is So Tough to Track Down

An anonymous reader writes "After a recent Slashdot story detailing the errant investigation into a credit card holder's dept payment, comes this article from the Christian Science Monitor discussing the commoditization of terrorism, its relationship to crime, and the difficulties encountered when trying to track "bad" money."

Comments

The source

[afaik_ianal]

For people who shuddered when they saw that the paper reporting this had "Christian Science" in the name like I did, it appears that the paper is not linked in any way with the Creation Science movement.

According to their site, the paper is largely secular (except for a single religious article each day). The paper just happens to be published by a church.

Re:Terrorrists or Freedom fighters ?

[hunterx11]

Some people fight for freedom. Some people use terror as a political tactic. Some freedom fighters use terrorism. Not all freedom fighters are terrorists. Not all terrorists are freedom fighters. Claiming that the two terms simply carry different connotations for the same meaning is not insightful.

Why is it so hard to track down?

[rob1980]

Just keep an eye out for the people who pay down the entire balance of their store credit card. Those people are obviously the terrorists!

Re:Christian Science Monitor?

[Lord Kano]

There is something utterly wrong about the words Christian and Science being next to each other.

Why? Because you don't understand the distinction between literalists and real intellectuals who also happen to be Christians?

LK

Why is it difficult to follow..

[freedom_india]

It is primarily difficult to follow, because our laws (like PATRIOT) are like HUGE trucks trying to drive through an increasingly smaller 2 lane highway.

Laws and law-enforcement officers are always lagging behind and will continue to do so. The degree to which they lag behind is what matters. If a dog starts running after you, and gets nearer to your heels you tend to speed up and ultimately lose focus and fall into the open manhole.

This is what law-enforcement should focus on, instead of trying to leapfrog over the terrorists.

PATRIOT act can't help much because it ends up harassing the normal people more than it can catch the bad guys.

Singapore's example is a good one. The whole system is completely integrated. My library card becomes invalid the moment my employment pass is canceled. Similarly, the credit card company automatically sends me a closure statement and the IRAS gets the remaining funds from my bank account.

However this does not hassle the common man in any way from buying beer in THailand or cigars in malaysia using his card.

Prepaying the card with a huge amount also does not trigger a warning flag because the whole system hinges on a high degree of cooperative automation.

However with disparate state laws, etc., it is difficult to enforce it in US.

Strangely i felt more under microscope in US than i did in singapore. Every time i visited BankAm in US to deposit my paycheck ($4000-$6000) i needed to provide TWO photo IDs to deposit and withdraw. Additionally i needed to fill in a few nasty forms for an amount beyond $5,000/-
In singapore since the system already has my photo and EP number and details, they don;t even bother asking. They took one good look at my face, compared it with record (seeing it was not canceled) and that's it.

Moral: Laws cannot prevent or catch criminals. Only vigilance can. Law can be used to charge criminals.

And GWB is making it worse for US agencies to get cooperation from other countries by kicking at their guts and laughing.

Power Of Nightmares

[drgonzo59]

A couple of days I watched the "Power of Nightmares" -- a British documentary. It talks about how both Islamic extremism and neo-conservatism both have a lot in common, especially in the fact that both have this absolutist, idealized view of the world. For ones like Osama, Islam is the answer to all, and the justification of all means, and for Bush, Cheney, Wolfowits and "gang" it is the "American Way" that has to be imposed over all countries. US is seen as the incarnation of pure good and its destiny is to fight and conquer evil. Anyway, another point of the movie is that al Qaeda doesn't really exist in the way we think it exists, there are no organized sleeper cells, Osama didn't even use the name until after 9/11 the Americans gave it to his organisation. The al Qaeda global super organization myth is actually serving the neo-conservatives in this country. Anyway, if you have time, watch the film: free on archive.org. It is about 3 hours long. It is very well done, not as heavy propaganda laden as the Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which I thought was as good of a documentary as "Mars Attacks".

Check out the Wiki page on it too...

Re:Power Of Nightmares

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd just point out that the documentary says that the name "Al Qaeda" was termed during the investigation of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, not after 9/11. However, it does say that the term was first coined in America and was later adopted by Bin Laden to describe his group.

It also goes on to say that, for example, Bin Laden had to hire stand-ins to represent his personal guard on camera, since there were so few people actually allying with him. The documentary goes on to compare our fear of terrorism to the fear of the USSR in the cold war - showing, for example, a completely nondescript sattelite photo of a Russian city and an American saying "there are weapons here so insidious that our cameras can't even detect them." It gives pretty good insight into the history of the players in this conflict, and how this war is similar to the things that have happened in the past. Definitely worth a watch.

Re:Power Of Nightmares

[TomRitchford]

You are quite right about the fear.

The rest of the world doesn't understand why American conservatives aren't frightened about what's happening.

We're in the middle of two endless wars which have killed tens of thousands and crippled hundreds of thousands. Americans are dying every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn't that frighten you?

We've blown one trillion dollars on the war in Iraq. One trillion dollars -- do you have any idea how much that is? Think how much you could do with a million dollars. Now imagine getting a thousand times as much. You could give a million dollars to everyone you knew and still be staggeringly rich. Now imagine a thousand times more than that.

How are we going to *pay* for this trillion dollars? Most of these expenses haven't even hit us yet and come from decades of caring for the tens of thousands of young men and women that have been crippled by this pointless war. We've written a trillion dollars in bad checks -- doesn't that frighten you?

We have a President that has failed at every single thing he's done. We've gone from disaster to disaster, we lost the World Trade Center, we lost New Orleans, we lost Bin Laden, we are losing every day in Iraq. We watched over days while Katrina slowly destroyed New Orleans and, just like on 9/11, he did nothing, nothing at all -- but this time we could see him caught like a deer in the headlights. Perhaps New Orleans was beyond saving, but we'll never know because Bush didn't even try -- he didn't even pretend to try.

So we have a President who gathers disaster around him like flies to honey and then is incapable of acting competently.

And there are three more years of this to go.

To the "rest of the world" -- "liberals", "socialists", and pretty well every single non-American -- conservative America is like a bus driven at high speed by a madman, and we are terrified that it will take a lot of us out with it when it finally crashes and burns.

And we think the reason that the few of you aren't frightened is that you're also mad, and blind to boot.

Re:Why is it difficult to LEARN FROM MISTAKES ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember in the 70's and early 80's when West Germany was fighting the Red Army Fraction and collaborating palestinian terrorists? Maybe not, since nobody called it global war on terrorism. Anyway, the federal government tried the same techniques (Rasterfahndung, dragnet investigation). They checked every bank account, every lease, harassed innocent people at every second intersection. The bottom line is these measures were unsuccessful and people did mistrust their government more than they did before. The worst case scenario! Free people should be able to trust their government. What did make the difference was a totally different tactic. Teams of few well trained police officers and agents tried to understand how the terrorists operated. One team would pursue one target. These teams were damn successful, and I am very glad. They big question is, why repeat mistakes?

Re:Stupid Terrorists.

[TubeSteak]

The head terrorists aren't as stupid as people would like to think.

A lot of what they do is a "reach out and touch somebody" kind of terrorism.

They aren't blowing up shit willy nilly in 99% of countries, because it doesn't suite their purposes. Israel has been a relatively safer place since Hamas agreed to a cease fire about a year ago.

If you hit up the Wikipedia page on terrorism their first sentance is:

The term terrorism is largely synonymous with "political violence," and refers to a strategy of using coordinated attacks that typically fall within the time, manner of conduct, and place commonly understood as unconventional warfare.

Emphasis mine, because terrorism has rarely been about killing people, in the same way that war has rarely been about killing people.

War and terrorism have almost always been extensions of politics. Even Osama Bin Laden's original stated goals were (are?) that the US withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia and support from Israel.

To directly answer your question: We don't know how hard is it to blow up a building, because either we haven't tried or because we don't know the failure:success ratio. (If you have tried to blow up a building, I hope you work in demolitions and that you succeeded.)

The latter...

[drgonzo59]

I already mentioned this in a post above, but I'll say it again. Watch the Power Of Nightmares movie. It is a 3 hour British documentary. Very well done. Get it at archive.org, just search for it, it is also probably in the "top 3 dowloaded" box.

It turns out that "fear mongering" is what the neo-conservatives now in power in Washington DC need to do what they do. The most interesting conclusion of the film is that al Qaeda isn't this all global organization with thousands of sleeper cells ready to commit attrocities. That is what people like Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz want us to believe. To find out why, whatch the move...

because we're in a war, but don't act that way

[jonniesmokes]

Terrorism financing is so hard to track down because terrorism doesn't exist until its labelled as such. The actual distinction between terrorism and war is nada (both require a lawmaker's stamp). Its obvious 9/11 was nasty, clearly characterizable as warfare. Think of the organized crime wars of past eras or the Janjaweed in Sudan now. What makes terrorism even more difficult to detect is that people who are not criminal, are sympathetic to the enemy. Bush says over and over that the US is not at war with Iraq, but that's just not true. The real Iraq is still there, and those people hate the US and want us out. Really, we're at war with all those people - right or wrong. I'm not very sympathetic to them, because I don't know many. I just don't think its a war worth winning. That's because I would do OK with expensive oil and a nervous Israel. I'd probably do better since there'd be less cars trying to run me over on my bike. And my Israeli friends would probably spend more time here in the US instead of Tel Aviv and I'd get to see them more.

The US tries to sell this as a war on terror when its really just a war on Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon to be Iran. But by trying to not be at war when you are, you create this confusion. Why did I say Saudi Arabia? Because they're a monarchy chiefly supported by the US and Britain (a puppet dicatorship if you will - watch 'Lawrence of Arabia' that's the Sauds). That's why so many of the 9/11 hijackers were from there.

The same thing happened back in the 1980's with Northern Ireland. Plenty of donation money for poor Irish made its way to violent means back in the 80's. I lived in Boston back then and the level of conspiracy was intense. Donate to a good Irish cause - some of the money found its way to the IRA. I remember the winks and nods at Southie day in 1984. The British and Irish were at war, but the Irish couldn't fight against a nuclear power with conventional means. The Irish didn't want to take over Britain, they just wanted to kick them out of Northern Ireland (or least stop the paramilitary Protestant death squads). But in the end the British drew a truce reigned in the death squads and none of those terrorists is in a place like gitmo. That's because the British didn't have the heart for decimating the Northern Irish Catholics, which is what they would've had to do to win. I'll give the British props for not being as inhuman as the US is now.

Maybe eventually, Americans will realize you can't have a war on terror because terror is a form of war. In fact it was originally coined by the French as a form of warfare on their own population. They had to keep all those citizens in line after the revolution and so they did some pretty terrible (terrorizing) things.

To win this war, you need to rephrase the whole thing. Define your enemy. In this case it would be Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, maybe Syria soon too. But since the US population isn't ready to accept that this country is an imperialist on the scale of the Roman Empire, we have this stupid 'war on terror' confusion. If you want to win, you need to get everyone on board and lock up or kill every possible enemy and bomb them into oblivion. Think Dresden in WW2 or Nagasaki. That's how you break the enemy's morale. You have to decimate them. Think hundreds of Gitmo's. That's how you win a war. You kill them.

I personally don't have the stomach for it, and I think its a stupid gamble that only people who havn't read their history would make.

The Government Is Not Trying To Catch Terrorists!

[Milton Waddams]

I know that this sounds like an off the wall conspiracy theory but when you think about it, it's true.

Methods that peek into people's credit card transactions won't find terrorists. Terrorists are, as much as people might not want to admit, intelligent people. They are not going to do anything that gets them noticed. This includes buying semtex with their credit cards.

I'm pretty sure that the Government knows this obvious truth. So if they are not using the PATRIOT Act to spy on terrorists (since things like the PATRIOT Act is useless in finding terrorists), then who are they spying on? You of course!

The whole idea of a 'war on terror' is not a new one. Various Governments have used the same scare mongering tactics to try and control their populations. I know I'm not saying anything here that people don't already know but I feel it has to be said until people actually listen.

Re:There are other reasons too...

[supersnail]

I have to second this.

As much as people don't want to hear it terrorists, whether they
are IRA, UDA, Hammas, Shining Light etc. etc., tend to be the
brightest and best that there society can offer.

The maze prison in Nothern Ireland was full of bright young
men from good families with above average educational acheivement.

And to being the discussion a bit more on Topic most of these people
are either self funding or funded by handing round the collection plate.

Although the IRA got more into organised crime twoards the end of its
tenure the majority of funding still came from passing around buckets
in the Irish bars of Boston and NewYork.
Yes private US citizens were the major source of funds for a
terrorist organisation. So why is it so hard to believe that private
citizens are the major source of funding for Islamic terrorists?

The main problems here is that if you are in a government department
responsable for say seat belt standards in automobiles and you want a
bigger budget, you can get your hands on some "Homeland Security" dollars
by pointing out that most of the 9/11 terroists were known seat belt
wearers and reasearch into seat belts could help identify future terrorists.

No we're not.

[Fantastic Lad]

To win this war, you need to rephrase the whole thing. Define your enemy. In this case it would be Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, maybe Syria soon too. But since the US population isn't ready to accept that this country is an imperialist on the scale of the Roman Empire, we have this stupid 'war on terror' confusion.

What if things are going just peachy?

What if the main objective is not to win the war, but to maintain a state of constant war? If this were the case, then it would achieve several things. . .

1. It would keep the American Public in a state of perpetual fear. When people are scared, they don't think rationally. They don't mind having their freedoms revoked, they are much easier to herd like cattle. They do as they are told. The upshot being that the dictator gets to bend rules and stay in power for as long as he can maintain the state of 'war'.

2. It keeps money flowing in huge amounts from the public coffers to the pockets of oil men and weapons salesmen, (both of which Bush is). His fellow staff share this trait. Peace is not profitable.

Oil was selling at around $13 per barrel before the first Gulf War. When bombs started dropping in the desert, oil jumped to $40 per barrel. --A few people made a lot of money overnight. The brokers were wetting themselves. And they couldn't wait for it to happen again, which it has.

I think the 'war on terror' confusion has more to do with deliberate marketing than with error.

-FL

Re:Yes! New Orleans == Rural Mississippi!

[Anonymous Coward]

As Senator Kucinich said, I think we see a pattern here. But the problem is not Republican or Democrat - it's that our government is fundamentally broken. I'm voting straight down the line this year - voting out every single incumbant, regardless of how much I hate the alternative.

The alternative? You're smart enough to recognize the incumbants suck. Why do you fail to recognize that the guy on the other side of the aisle is just the same guy wearing a different suit? You're right: The problem is not Republican or Democrat - it's Republican and Democrat.

Vote for a third party, even if its not mine, please.

Re:perhaps not

[grimwell]

The 9/11 Commission was a bipartisan effort initiated not from Congress but from the families of 9/11 victims. Where is the evidence that they covered up or lied about this particular story?

The Families of 9/11 victims are still looking for answers.
Press Release from 10/26/2004 demanding a better investigation Note: the 9/11 Commission was published July of 2004
The top 15 reasons to doubt the official story of Sept. 11, 2001 Number 1: Conflict of interest of those on the commission.

Conspiracy theories are very tempting, but sometimes more logical explanations exist.

And the logical explanation for WTC7 collopse is?
And how is it the ASTM E119 certified steel in the World Trade Towers weaken/melt after exposure to an uncontrolled & undirected jet fuel fire?

See Letter from Underwriters Laboratories(UL) to NIST

snip
We know that the steel components were certified to ASTM E119. The time temperature curves for this standard require the samples to be exposed to temperatures around 2000F for several hours. And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications. Additionally, I think we can all agree that even un-fireproofed steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000F (2). Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000F would melt the high-grade steel used in those buildings makes no sense at all. /snip

If the buildings collapsed because fire weaken the steel support, then there are some serious safety issues that need to be addressed. But no one has really bothered with this. At the very least you would think building codes would have been updated to mandate better steel and UL would have to update it testing&certification process. Because clearly their certification that the steel used in the World Trade Towers was not up to snuff. Gee, that kinda smells like a lawsuit... but I haven't heard of one.

Don't forget that the Commission was opposed by the Bush Administration every step of the way!

And when W did final give testimony to the commission it wasn't under oath, it was behind closed doors and his vice-president was there to help him.

What kind of "War President" needs his vice president to help him testify?
Why wasn't his testimony under oath and public? (we can't handle the truth?)

But hey the gov't put out a report, so that must be the end of it. Nothing to see here, move along. Oooo look over there the Vice President was out hunting, had a few beers and shot someone. What were we talking about?

This current administration is the most blantly & openly corrupt administration ever. Nixon was almost impeached(his resigned before they could impeach him) for bugging the DNC. Bush admits to illegal wiretaps on untold thousands of Americans on national TV and Congress has to have a meeting to decide if they even want to question Bush about it. WTF?!?!