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Liquid Terror Charges Dropped
A Pakistani judge has decided to drop terrorism charges against the man described as a "key figure" in the alleged plan to blow up flights out of London using liquid explosives. Instead of facing charges of terrorism for the plot, which forced many travelers to follow strict guidelines with respect to liquids, Rashid Raud now faces charges such as forgery. From the article: "Several commentators said the threat was deliberately exaggerated to bolster the anti-terror credentials of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and that it helped to demonise British Muslims of Pakistani origin. The Crown Prosecution Service in the UK said the dropping of charges against Mr Rauf in Pakistan would "make no difference" to the case against the men charged in Britain."
The shoes were an entirely separate incident.
Unless there has been an imposter or misattribution, at least one highly respected "expert" but from a non-traditional background has said that it was definitely possible:
m ail428.html#Carmack
http://www.pournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/
The expert? John Carmack.
His qualifications? Mixing easily available chemicals into rocket propellants.
Diclosure of Bias:
I happen to respect both Jerry Pournelle and John Carmack. And I happen to think the register is a lousy "publication".
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I call bullshit. He didn't mix the chemicals onboard, all he did was take some wires hidden in his shoe, hook them up to his watch and some explosive he brought with him. Hardly a case of "inert liquids being a threat when mixed together" as is implied by this case.
The videos were from Brainiac, and if you look carefully in the slow motion of the first bathtub they blow up, you can see the wire that leads over the size to the charge they set off. I've worked with cesium and rubidium, and they're not too much stronger than potassium- not enough that such a small amount would blow it up, anyway. Simply put, they fudged it with a small charge to wow the audience. Some great science going on there.
As for the "new terrorist binary explosive" video, that's simply a small demo charge in the post used to support the melon. The shower of sparks pretty much gives it away. No tiny amount of chemical exposives can cause that much damage. Moreover, if it were that strong, the author whipped up a massive batch of the stuff (in relative terms)- an explosive sufficiently sensitive to shock initiation that mixing it the wrong way would have killed him, when he could have made a much smaller batch. It's just silliness. It also seems the sky is a bit darker after the "explosion," as if the melon were removed and a small pyro charge was set off and spliced in there. The quantity of explosives used is far too small, even for the most powerful of primary explosives.
Disclaimer: I am, in fact, an explosives chemist with extensive experience with primary, secondary, and blasting explosives, including terrorist "improvised" explosives and devices.
Numerous experts have said there's no practical or safe way to make a bomb from separate liquids onboard an airplane.
Eh, perhaps...but this was awfully close, and was perpetrated by Al-Qaeda, no less.
The way they are commonly stored is in a jar immersed in an oil it won't react with. I'm sure that security would question anyone with such a jar, but as you say, it would not be hard to figure out a way to smuggle in some elemental cesium that wouldn't draw any attention.
There was an article in the science section of NRC Handelsblad a couple of weeks ago on interrogation techniques. The article was written because the whole torture discussion so far is about the morality of torture, not about the effectiveness.
What research done so far on interrogation techniques shows, is that the more pressure you put on people, the more they say the things they think the interrogator wants to hear. Which might or might not be the truth. So if you want that people to confirm the image you have in your mind, go ahead and put them under pressure, or even torture them when you are morally challenged. You will hear a lot, but most of it will be noise, not useful information. Hard interrogation techniques quite plainly cannot be used for truth finding.
On the other hand, if you want information, you have to make use of humans natural weakness: we all like to chat. If people feel comfortable, they start talking, and will sooner or later tell more than they planned to. Which is of course, I must admit, a difficult strategy to follow with suspects that do not speak your language, do not share your cultural values, and might have planted a bomb somewhere that could kill your friends any time.
The scary thing is that these so-called intelligence agencies have gathered tons and tons of noise over the past years, and that this noise will be used to base our domestic and foreign policies on. This won't be the last scaremonging incident that will have a lasting impact on our lives.