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FBI Foils Attack by Monitoring Chat Rooms
An anonymous reader writes "A planned terrorist attack on New York City was reportedly foiled by FBI agents who monitored chat rooms frequented by extremists. Lebanese authorities captured an Al Qaeda member who confessed to the plot, and stated that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had pledged financial and other support for the operation. Although the planning for the operation was not far along, according to U.S. officials, they had already been monitoring the plot for a year." From the article: "A government official with knowledge of the investigation said the alleged plot did focus on New York's transport system, but did not target the Holland Tunnel. New York senator Charles Schumer said: 'This is one instance where intelligence was on top of its game and discovered the plot when it was just in the talking phase.' The Holland Tunnel is protected not just by bedrock, but also by concrete and cast-iron steel. One counter-terrorism source told the Daily News it was doubtful a plot to blow it up would be feasible, saying huge amounts of explosives and a detailed knowledge of blast effect would be necessary."
The government's watching. I'm glad they actually did something useful, though. There's been a lot of spying for the sake of privacy violation. It's nice to get results once in a while.
First post?
But please note that as the elections of 2006 get closer --- we are being bombarded with more and more of these "attempted attacks" - just like that one in Liberty City section of Miami (you know, the one where those street punks didn't even have enough money for busfare to get to North Miami...).
Extremists? Wow. I sure am glad they caught those extremists. Just one quick question: what sort of extremists are we talking about here? Extremist Buddhists? Confucianists? Taoists? Shintoists? Zoroastrians? Hellenic Polytheists? Liberals? Classical Liberals? Neoliberals? Libertarians? Inquiring minds want to know...
P.S. I am always intrigued by the sort of information that is omitted and the sort of nomenclature selected and used to frame issues.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
So let me get this straight, Canada's CT Intel busts like half a dozen terrorists before they do anything bad and America tells us our borders aren't secure enough and that we suck. America's CT intel klines a chat group and are commended for a job well done. Dare I ask, WTF?
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
We cooked up one of those to look for some of our IP's / hostnames on undernet. Its really, really easy to code, the trick is keeping your bot connected, and not bringing a DOS attack on yourself by trying to monitor for eminent DOS attacks.
.. and I'm beginning to think .. yeah, well the truth is stranger than fiction. I find it easier to believe a few dumbasses were trying to cook something up in open chat (something incredibly stupid at that) than the FBI is drumming up successes for an upcoming election.
:)
So you really need like 20 or 30 of them, and a wide range of class C IP's that aren't swip'ed to you.
But yeah, quite easy to do. We even had one watching Yahoo rooms with a skinny text / Linux client for Y! chats, when the user rooms still existed.
After a few months it was really obvious that trying to monitor rooms to anticpate hassles caused more hassles than we were preventing.
But for something like the FBI would use it for, I guess its worth the hassles.
Really and honestly, I'm glad they do it. I only bitch when they cross the line of what I would consider to be a reasonable expectation of privacy. Eavesdropping on an open chat is much different than broad logging and analysis of bank transactions, phone conversations, etc.
I think (lately) anyway, they're realizing the latter is causing more hassles than it prevents.
I was thinking 'now this was obviously staged' when reading TFA, but then I thought about how stupid the plot uncovered was
So - good catch
Now, for the explosion in a tunnel. I understand how they make tunnels. Those are called controlled blasts. They do a little at a time for a reason. It's called, "Creating something not destroying something." Someone who wanted to destroy the tunnell would only have to create a huge explosion that couldn't vent out the tunnel's two ends. By doing so, force from the blast would damage rock. That is when Gravity would come into effect.
You can't compare controlled blasts to someone trying to blow up something like that Holland Tunnel. Two different animals.
"Snatching defeat from the mouth of victory on a daily basis."
Breaching the lining and knocking out the pumps will flood the tunnel, drowning everybody inside it, and probably putting it out of commission for months or years.
Scarier still is they get to send the poor souls off to Guantanamo, never to be heard from again. Be sure to let all your friends know if you're plotting against the government, because you will be disappeared and they'll be the only ones left to vouch for you to the press.
When I say "plotting against the government," it could be anything. Something innocuous, like running for office. Or trying to change the law. Or circumventing the stamp tax by communicating over the internet.
These truly are interesting times. If you told me that the US would become a dictatorship in under 8 years, I'd have laughed at you 9 years ago. Even 5 years ago. Now, be very careful what you say. (Geesh, and I'm violating my stated principles by posting this...)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
A lot more than you think - the OKC building wasn't lined with steel sections that are probably half a foot thick, held in compression by the surrounding rock. That's not to say that an explosion in the tunnel would be a minor event - the blast itself would kill or injure a lot of people in the tunnel, plus critical systems like ventilation and pumps would be gutted. This isn't even mentioning the shock and disruptive value of the event: who would want to use any of the tunnels into NYC afterwards?
-b.