BBC Reports UK-U.S. Terror Plot Foiled

j823777 was one of several readers to point out a BBC report that "A terrorist plot to blow up planes in mid-flight from the UK to the U.S. has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said. It is thought the plan was to detonate up to three explosive devices smuggled on aircraft in hand luggage. Police have arrested 21 people in the London area after an anti-terrorist operation lasting several months. Security at all airports in the UK has been tightened and delays are reported. MI5 has raised the UK threat level to critical — the highest possible." spo0nman adds a link to the Associated Press's coverage. Update: 08/10 12:57 GMT by T : Several readers have pointed out new restrictions imposed as a result of this plot on passengers' carry-on luggage. In the UK, nearly all possession (including laptop computers) must be carried in the cargo hold; while their rules don't yet go quite as far, U.S. airlines are stepping up their enforcement of carry-on-restrictions, including banning substances like toothpaste.

Comments

Good work

[ManoSinistra]

Good work over there at Scotland Yard!

Re:Good work

[saintory]

I think it is time for a paradigm shift in travel.

Long security lines, sneakier ways to get harmful equipment on and off the plane, these could all be resolved by forcing all luggage, save for your id and boarding pass, through baggage checkin. This also alleviates the resources (personnel, scanning equipment) needed at the security checkpoints.

Getting on and off the plane would be faster, as there would never be another wait for the people in front of you to get their luggage and then get off the plane; they just stand and go. Not to mention the fact that you never have to worry again about foot- and head-room problems. And how about cabin turnaround? The faster people get off the plane the faster the crew can turn around the plane for another flight.

Since using this plan infrastructure and maintenance costs could be reduced at the checkpoints, this money could be diverted by the airport to better baggage check-in and claiming areas. Maybe more seats, an RFID tag within an airline attached, removeable tag to let you know when your baggage has come off the ramp and into the area?

"So what do we do on a flight if we cannot bring MP3/Laptop/videogame onboard?" Up to the airlines, although to make travel more appeasing on longer flights I would suggest they look at their entertainment infrastructure within the planes. You can already do video on demand, and some flights have video games on demand. There is also music on demand, mostly for all genre. Maybe they could start to offer entertainment on demand based on your input before the flight.

For example, when you book your flight you can go online to pick your seat. Choose nothing else and get the default entertainment selections. If you want to be more specific, you can also pick from a vast selection of electronically delivered movies, games or music you want available to you during your flight. You pay the small rental fee (US$0.99 per item?) and you then access it via the seatback video screen and embedded controller. Of course they pass out headsets for privacy; they already do this! Get the basic ones for free and charge a rental fee for premium ones. Now everybody has some entertainment and no one has nothing, unless of course they choose nothing (a nap, perhaps?).

Re:Good work

[finkployd]

If desiring to kill oneself and take out innocent people to make a political point about US presence in the middle east is not insane, I don't know what is. The part about the promised virgins in the afterlife does not help either.

They have sane goals, but their methods are not. Their methods are cowardly and counterproductive.

Finkployd

Re:Good work

[Tweekster]

Have you heard of Ramzi Yousef and the Bojinka plot which is the same plan was being implemented and hopefully stopped today.

He did exactly that, a trial run...

He was using a contact solution bottle (with liquid explosives) and a casio watch as the detonator. He did a trial run to see if it would work, it did.

His plan was to hit 13 (if i recall correctly) planes at once. It was a bit of dumb luck that the plot was exposed and luckily it was prevented.

Now you are correct no one would try now, but without the new security enforcement + the massive coverage, it is very possible someone would still give it a shot. Also they are not claiming they ABSOLUTELY foiled the plot, maybe the terrorists were gonna try some other method that may not be completely known which could be quite powerful from their perspective. "Even with all the security we still managed to attack..." Look at some of the major terrorist plans, you can stop part of it, or you can stop ALL of it, and that is the most difficult. If part of the people were gonna use xyz explosives disguised in one form, and the other was using explosives disguised as a pair of sunglasses, the plan could quite easily go ahead.

It does seem like the govts are going full disclosure, particularly in the banned items and what is now gonna have to be in the cargo hold, because you cant keep those a secret and still be effective.

So hopefully they manage to get everyone that was going to be involved.

Re:Good work

[finkployd]

It is easy to call someone insane if you get to make up the proof yourself. But even then, your proof of "insanity" sure is close to western ideals. Consider all the honor reserved for "fallen heroes" who "gave their lives defending their country." It's the same damn thing, just with an ameliorative spin instead of pejorative.

I admit the concept is similar, but western heroes are generally considered to be those who gave their lives fighting against an enemy who wanted to kill them (us). No matter how you stretch it, women and children on a plane are no threat whatsoever to the Islamic nations or their people. So perhaps insane is not the right label, but certainly their is a demonstration here of utter disregard for any life (including their own) to achieve their means. We are certainly not celebrating the disgraced soldiers who murdered and raped Iraq women, while it seems in Islam they would be revered as heroes for the cause.

Furthermore, there is an effort to downplay any religious "jihad" reasoning that may be behind these attacks and portray them as intelligent and subtle masterminds of global policy. That argument flies in the face of the sectarian violence occurring in Iraq right now, where they are killing each other randomly not for worshiping the wrong god, but for belonging to the wrong subtle subgroup within Islam. It is not hard for Joe Six-pack to just assume "them islams" are just attacking us for religious reasons as well.

Sure. Seems to me their methods work exceptionally well. The response to 9/11 has been to cause self-inflicted economic wounds in the trillions of dollars. The US military doesn't call terrorism "asymmetric warfare" for nothing, its a war and so far we are losing big time. Calling the enemy insane just plays into their hands.

I would make the argument that it is hurting the regular people of the middle east more, the ones the terrorists are supposedly fighting for. Since you have obviously thought about this, what do you feel the end goal of the terrorists are? Realistically, not "eradication of America" because that is simply not going to happen with a couple of AK47s and IEDs. I have a few theories, but they lend themselves to the "insane" theory which probably does stem from my western bias. I can imagine them wanting to draw the US into full scale nuclear war where they all die in a glorious stand against the west. Or wear us down to where we say "fuck it" and leave Israel and Iraq to their own devices, but the best way to do that would be to stop the terror attacks against civilians completely and let people ask why they hell we are still fighting when they have stopped. Actions like this most recent one just play right into Bush's hands (and approval rating) by reminding people we are fighting an enemy that wants you dead for no reason other than to make a statement.

Finkployd

Re:Good work

[BalanceOfJudgement]

And yet they have in no way improved their own lot. You would think there would be some "try to improve the situation for ourselves" angle but they seem perfectly happy to kill themselves, draw their enemies into conflicts where their homes are destroyed, and alienate those who would have otherwise supported their cause. Just exerting the effort to try and target only military targets would gain them widespread support in the world, and even quite a bit in the US. If it is a war of attrition, they are in a very bad position to last that out. Even if their goal was to turn public world opinion against the US and have us pull out on peer (and local US) pressure alone, continuing the terrorist attacks on innocent people (like this last attempt) is short circuiting that.

The first rule of chess is this:

Learn to think like your opponent, or you will be defeated every time.

You're still thinking like a Westerner - you still look at behavior and expect to see behind it, the attempt to gain something or improve one's position.

Let's try thinking about it another way.

Imagine for a moment that you live in a country filled with impoverished people, a country whose only natural resource is owned by foreign corporations and protected by foreign militaries. Recall that your region of the world has been sliced, colonized, re-sliced, and re-colonized by those same foreigners more times than you can count.

Now imagine that every attempt your government has made to carve itself out a small piece of the world's ever-shrinking pie of resources and wealth, has failed miserably, that you are surrounded by poverty and misery everywhere and have absolutely no confidence that your life, or the life of anyone you know and care about, will ever be any better.

Anyone's worst enemy is a person who has nothing left to lose.

There's such a thing as a point of no return, where one's lot is concerned - where you no longer care about your life, or the lives of those you care about, being better - you want only to take mete out justice [or vengeance] to those who made it this way. The saying, "I don't care if I die, so long as I take you with me" applies.

And now examine the actions and behaviors of so many thousands of people and groups in the Middle East. So many have given up hope of life there ever being better, that their only resort is to destruction.

The terrorists are NOT trying to make their lives better, nor get anything in return for their efforts (claims to the contrary notwithstanding) - from their position, it makes sense simply to inflict as much damage as possible, because there's little else left for them to do.

I am neither advocating nor decrying that belief, state of mind, or behavior. I am only saying that that is what happens to humans who have been oppressed and who have suffered for too long and have no confidence that life will ever be different.

Re:Good work

[Jim_Maryland]

My baggage is missing so all I have are the gadgets (including laptop) cloths (Hains Tagless shirts fold real small) and toothpaste, toothbrush, comb etc... that I carried in my hand luggage.

I was just chatting with some of my co-workers who are heading out of country soon on business travel about having to check laptops. In our case, the laptops go through an export control process both from the US side and the country we travel too. We're supposed to be in control of the laptops in order to comply with the export license so I wonder how this change in carry on luggage affects export control.

I can't recall the specific Star Trek Voyager episode to link it but what happens when we start finding explosives surgically embedded into the terrorist? If terrorist are already willing to give their lives, they are just as likely to embed the explosive compounds into their body.

Not foiled - disrupted

[akadruid]

Please note that MI5 said 'disrupted', not 'foiled'. The impact that this event has caused can definitely be considered a significant success by the planning organisation or anyone aligned with their goals, if not as much as they wished.

Mind you, it might actually serve some interests better for tens of millions of people to be worried, inconvienced, or annoyed than for airliners to explode.

So, for several months...

[91degrees]

We've known about a likely plot to blow up several planes.

Now, the perpetrators have been arrested, and anyone else who may have been involved is potentially compromised, so will probsbly not risk carrying it out. As a result, an attack is less likely. So the alert level has gone up.

Blanket Measures. I'd get smothered.

[TiggsPanther]

Unless these restrictions are lifted, I don't think I'll ever be able to fly anywhere. Yes, I understand the need to a sensible level of security, but I see this as going too far.

I used to suffer from depression, and it has left me with the remnants of social anxiety. I can function out and about quite easily, but with very definite limits. Crowds still mess my head up. Queues fill me with dread. I need to travel with something to take my mind of things - often to shut out the world and people around me.
I also have a fair bit of not-exactly-cheap equipment that goes with me everywhere. There are things that do not get let out of my site. My laptop, for example, comes to work with me when I have a house-inspection. I trust my colleagues more than an inspector I've never met. Yet I'd be expected to fly long-haul without carrying it in my arms?

Yes, I know I'm probably slightly paranoid. But for one thing I've had things broken before when they were with people I didn't know or trust. And secondly, it's another holdover from my depression.

And right this very minute I feel extremely uncomfortable. I see an all-too-possible threat of increased security measures invading our lives to a greater extent, where the existing ones already feel too much.
Plus the idea of being stuck taking my holidays without ever leaving the UK[*] kinda fill me with dread.

[*] 'Cos I can't see these measures not spreading to Eurostar, somehow.

Re:Why oh why

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Actually, they "hate" (i.e. target) those that can afford to fly. Do you think the hype would fly that high if they targeted, say, Greyhound?

That's not why they don't target Greyhound. They don't target Greyhound because we haven't made it fun yet. Blowing up an airplane is a game. We gave it rules. If you can get a bomb on without the screeners finding it, you win. And it's not that hard of a game to win if you're not an idiot and haven't already lost from the start by virtue of having talked to the wrong person while someone was watching, so they get the satisfaction of both crippling us and beating us at our game. It's not a conscious thing, but we gave them something to fixate on and obsess about, and that's not good.

Unfortunately, there's no going back. If we make flying like riding a bus now, the game doesn't just end. We lose 15 or 20 planes in the free-for-all before it gets boring for them, and obviously that can't happen. So we're screwed.

We might as well just move to the end right now: Everyone wears paper hospital gowns with no underwear on planes after having changed in front of an official, and all cargo is shipped seperately via UPS.

We'll still lose 2 planes to poison gas being blown into pilots' faces from regurgitated containers, but at some point you have to just say, "Meh." Of course, if it were me, that point would have been a long time ago.

I felt... naked

[ShootThemLater]

I arrived at Heathrow for an early flight to Frankfurt just as news was breaking for this at about 06:00. It was a tough decision to part with my laptop, PDA and mobile but I decided to take my chances. It only really then dawned on me the extent to which I depend on these items when I was waiting for hours to clear security... While I could have found a public payphone, all my phone numbers are stored in my mobile & PDA and I actually remember very few of them. I could speak to people, after somehow getting their numbers, but they could not call me back. All the usual channels that are normally avalable to me to get information about a delay were unavailable to me - no web access or even SMS messages to friends with access. You just have to stand in a queue like a sheep.

I didn't take my flight in the end, despite it being one of the few that wasn't cancelled - when I finally got to the gate they still had an additional delay of over an hour and I was only due to be there one day. With half of it gone, and the prospects of being able to fly back to the UK this evening looking distinctly dubuious, I offloaded myself.

This was obviously an inconvenience for me, but I have nothing but praise for our security services who foiled this and the airport staff who managed to handle the whole thing pretty well, considering.

As has been reported, items allowed were limited to wallets/travel documents and baby/health-specific products. However, many of us brought books and papers with us also. Interestingly, Duty Free shops were open airside - although I didn't see if any electronics shops were. The focus this morning was really on what can be brought from landside to airside and they didn't seem to have thought about what you buy airside so much (although I would speculate that electronic items bought airside do not pose such a threat in that trrrsts would use pre-modified devices to detonate explosives). The search at security was a remove shoes, belts etc. job - rather like being in the US :)

It will be very interesting if this policy is made permanent. Like many companies mine has a policy of not putting laptops into checked luggage - for good reason. And when you are on the move much of the time you need your tools to keep productive - I've previously found time in the lounge or on board to be really valuable sometimes. However, I think in light of all the other ways that security can be compromised this can't continue as an indefinite measure - the risk:hassle/cost ratio is all wrong.

No, it's a good thing (for us)

[ScentCone]

Mind you, it might actually serve some interests better for tens of millions of people to be worried, inconvienced, or annoyed than for airliners to explode.

Nah. They'd rather that the planes had exploded. That plays much, much better on Al Jazeera. This cannot be cited as a "victory" by the jihaddis backing it, and if they had knocked the planes down, they'd also have the extra inconvenience and worry, as frosting on that cake. No... this is a win for the good guys, and probably really frustrating to the backers that obviously put a lot of time and effort into recruiting all of these would-be suicide bombers, training them, supplying them, etc. You can bet that there are some pre-recorded Zawahiri video tapes that will now not be seeing airtime since this attack was stopped.

Re:TSA just anounced the new restrictions on

[scorpionsoft.be]

From the report: "Baby food is allowed IF the mother tastes some of it" Assuming you don't get killed immediatly by eating (half)liquid explosives, why would someone that is willing to blow herself up be afraid to eat some explosives?

Re:Election Time? convenient

[ScentCone]

Gotta love it.. absofreakinglutely nothing happens until election time. Whatever happened to the Florida terrorist group that made headlines last time the prezs numbers were hitting the floor?

Has it ever occurred to you that election time is exactly when these clowns would deliberately seek to launch such an attack? Have you completely forgotten how Al Qaeda directly, and in their own favor, manipulated Spanish elections by being willing to slaughter Spaniards?

Re:Just in time for U.S. Mid-Term Elections

[advocate_one]

The explosives would be detonated over the atlantic (to ensure maximum fatalities).

actually, it's far more effective to detonate them over land when they are at cruising altitude... remember Lockerbie... I certainly do... I did not enjoy my Christmas that year as I was a member of the search parties for the bodies... a right mess that was... spread over hundreds of square miles...

Re:I'm sorry I'll have to say this but...

[unity100]

Actually what i think is there is a great deal of difference between plots being fabricated or not.

In case they are fabricated, it means that there is a group of people with access to power in the country, the likes of people that can do anything to do what is in their and their supporting circle's best interests, no matter what and how it is being done or who gets harmed.

this is way more dangerous than external terrorist threat, which can be avoided with adequate security.

It is much harder to get rid of the 'terrorists' at home.

that is silly

[r00t]

If you're blowing yourself up anyway, you don't give a damn about long-term poisonous effects.

I think you could make an explosive that is not a fast poison. If it is foul-tasting and you make a funny face, oh well... people do that with baby formula and saved breast milk too.

Basically: suspend a powdered high-explosive in something thick and colorless, like glycerin. (a powdered oxidizer should work well too, but I can't think of one that wouldn't be a fast-acting poison)

Sheesh... how hard is that?

Probably you could make an explosive mouse pad or keyboard rest.

Re:Propaganda

[plasmacutter]

2800 dead is less than the number of fatal accidents each month on americas highways, maybe we should start banning cars too?

The whole reason we have a government with checks and balances is because the framers knew there will be issues with people correctly interpretign and applying laws...as well as abusing power.

and it's failed,
-lobbyists have infiltrated our government on all levels
-because our system only allows 2 parties to exist, the current 2 parties have so locked out the potential of any third party that several candidates in the last elected were arrested

also consider that most of the "abuses" you THINK you know about are part of the FUD spread by meembers of the press (and the legislature) with an agenda.

No, the media does not have a "liberal bias". Those accusations come from right wing extremists who consider the center to be "left".
The best example would be the 2000 election. Gore got WAY more negative press than bush did, and bush got more positive press than gore did. Yep, that dirty liberal media really were exercising an agenda of getting gore into office nitpicking him for things like taking credit for pushing to fund the development of the internet while refusing to scrutinize bush's many more serious flaws.

Re:Just in time for U.S. Mid-Term Elections

[twifosp]

I'm a bit shaky on my chemical engineering and what liquid explosives could have been used. But let's take an average 16oz bottle of liquid explosives. How much damage could that actually do? Liquid explosives are a lot less explosive than solid ones. Sure a couple oz of the plastic variety, centex / c4, would blow the plane to bits. But what liquid explosives in that quantity could blow a sizable hole in an airliner? Liquid explosives burn slow, they don't punch with a lot of force. At least ones stable enough to consider transporting on to a plane. Not that the terrorists care, but whats the point of the plan if it blows up in the car on the way to the airport.

And why wouldn't these have been caught by the chemical sniffers in the security check points? The hidden drug/bomb dogs in the airport? Why all the new security? Why wouldn't our normal airport security have caught these guys in the airport?

Note: You need a sizable hole punched in a plane to make it break up. An entire chunk of the fuselage needs to be removed. Explosive decompression doesn't occur from small basketball sized holes.

Re:completely secure!

[kalidasa]

Depends upon how toxic it is. If it will burn their esophagus out on the spot and cause them to cough up blood on the screener, that might just be a clue for the screeners that the substance isn't really toothpaste.

Re:Snakes on a Plane

[kz45]

"You are ignorant. You methods breed new fundamentist muslim terrorists."

if you do nothing, there will still be new fundamentilist muslim terrorists. So why not at least try to do something? It's foolish to sit back and let someone attack you.

"The correct way is not using any force at all. If you know where they are, send that region economic help. Do everything to increase happiness in that region, and take no violent action whatsoever. If they blow up a plane, just shrug and say "losers", then move one. Don't pay alot of attention to it, they are, just losers after all."

Hehe, you're funny. Take a look at all the countries that did that during WW2. Hitler rolled his tanks in and the US ended up having to use force to bail them out. The world does not work the way you think. Leaders and extremists are not rational and they will not listen.

"Unless you take away the reasons they exist, they will exist. Violence can only take away these reasons by killing everyone, innocent civilians included. And that is not an expectable way."

The reason goes beyond the US. Their religion has existed for thousands of years. This is their reason, which may not stop until the entire world is muslim and under their control. Would that satisfy you?