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Slovak Police Planted Explosives On Air Travelers
Entropy98 writes "Slovakian Police have planted explosives on 8 unsuspecting air travelers. Seven were stopped by airport security, including one man arrested and held upon arriving at a Dublin airport. Unbelievably, one innocent traveler made it home with 90 grams of explosives, and had his flat surrounded by the police and bomb squad."
Here in the USA, only the TSA may try to test TSA security. Some reporters tried shortly after the agency was established, and they were all told their reports couldn't air.
TFA doesn't explain why the explosives were planted. One obvious reason is to test security but in that case you would have a "wicket keeper" to catch the undetected explosives.
I recall reading about police in (I think) Japan who were doing this with drugs. Planting the stuff on people then testing their inspectors. One sample got away I believe.
I expected security tests with planted explosives to come at some point, but I assumed that they would use undercover agents to test security, not innocent bystanders. However, I'd assumed the same would have happened for something like the described drug operation in Japan. I don't see how any government could do something so reckless.
I suspect that's not so.
I don't know that the typical "let's blow up a plane!" sort of terrorist we've run into of late is all that worried about getting away without trouble if they're caught. I mean, they're willing to die.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Well, I'd say that deserves a +5, insightful. What say you, knee-jerk moderators?
TFA doesn't explain why the explosives were planted. One obvious reason is to test security but in that case you would have a "wicket keeper" to catch the undetected explosives.
I recall reading about police in (I think) Japan who were doing this with drugs. Planting the stuff on people then testing their inspectors. One sample got away I believe.
I expected security tests with planted explosives to come at some point, but I assumed that they would use undercover agents to test security, not innocent bystanders. However, I'd assumed the same would have happened for something like the described drug operation in Japan. I don't see how any government could do something so reckless.
They are doing a proper double blind test. The Undercover agents would give away their special status. A lot of the work of security is watching the behaviour of the travelling public. Does this person think like a bored traveller?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
In 1997 in Galway, Ireland I watched the Army deliver money to a bank. They don't use security guards for that in Ireland. Or didn't, anyway. They had three guys in good positions with self loading rifles triangulated on the entrance to the bank. There were hundreds of people in the street and if they had opened up with the guns many people would have died.
Money and explosives are taken very seriously in Ireland.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
One problem with this whole thing is that if the luggage owner doesn't know there is contraband in it, they will act differently than someone who knows what they're carrying.
Observing "suspicious behavior" is a big part of picking this stuff out.
I think this should be enough to invalidate their test unless they were intentionally isolating the behavior observation methods out.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
So do they also do this with drugs? You hear about it all the time.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
And also when they do get proper equipment in, various airports will have already been contaminated.
Kind of like how all US money (100 dollar bills anyway) has traces of cocaine in it.
1. We ask for a certain amount of money to do some job assigned to our agency. We base our request on our previous experience and come up with usually reasonable estimates given our past experience.
2. Congress then gives us much less than we said it would cost (I recall one budget allocation for an operation that came in at just over half of what we requested).
3. We try to do our best with the limited funds - and I know I'll get laughed at for this, but everyone I know there wants to do a great job and wants the operation they work on to succeed.
4. However, due to a lack of funds, and despite our best efforts, the job fails to accomplish some goals, or fails spectacularly in one way or another.
5. The press and Congress ream the agency a new one. The lack of funding is never a decent excuse - we're told, "You should have done it THIS way," but the suggested method never would have worked within budget, and sometimes the suggested method is plainly idiotic and comes from people who clearly have no experience in the type of work we do.
6. Because of the problems, later operations end up costing MORE than they would've spent to do the first operation right.
Hell, what am I talking about? Even when the operation is successful despite all the obstacles, we get reamed out. Fortunately, we - the employees - actually like what we do, and we usually do a pretty decent job - but of course the successful operations never get reported anywhere.
So, basically, I have trouble blaming the people in the FBI or CIA or whatever for not putting the clues together. They probably requested a certain number of analysts in their budget and got half of that, so things get missed. It's inevitable.
How about we realize that we are far more likely to be killed by our car or the food we eat then by terrorists?
How about we quit giving away all of our hard won freedoms like a bunch of scared pussies?
'Cause the people who would read your comment and mod it +5 insightful aren't the problem.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose now and then, maybe your should go home and hide under your bed." -- Q, Star Trek: TNG
Edit: - HA! The are-you-human word for this post is 'fascism.'
Back that up.
Past frequency does not tell us much about future frequency when the context changes. For example, if a terrorist group has a nuke, will previous frequency data still apply?
I think not.
Airport screening won't stop them from getting nukes. Neither will it prevent them from releasing nerve gas in a subway (a la Tokyo). Police work and HUMINT will help.
Flying 10,000+ feet in the air has risk, so does most other activities. Grow a pair and deal with it. This mickey mouse BS of "security" is not helping and is just pissing people off.
You can stop worrying when people stop suing. If it can be generally agreed upon that it is OK if an airplane blows up, then great. But if the families of he dead passengers are going to sue someone, it stops being OK.
Today, the way it works is the government says nothing bad is going to happen. When something does, it isn't the airline's fault - the government said so - so the insurance company has to pay. If the government were to stop saying nothing bad can happen, well then it has to be someone's fault. If it is the airline, then no insurance and one less airline is flying.
You see, they can't say it is the terrorist's fault - he is (a) dead, and (b) has no money. Someone must be found with enough money to pay off the families. As it stands today, it is the airline insurance company. Take that way, and maybe no more airlines at all. Most businesses would pretty much just shut down if they were faced with that kind of potential liability and no way to do anything about the risk.
Past frequency does not tell us much about future frequency when the context changes. For example, if a terrorist group has a nuke, will previous frequency data still apply?
Show that the context has changed. As you said, back that up. Fear mongers like to throw around the phrase "everything changed with 9/11." Yet in the past 8 years, the statistics have barely moved a blip. Sure - we see more attacks. We get more news stories going over every detail of the newest failed attempt. But the statistics are still pretty solidly in your favor for avoiding a terrorist attack.
This is what it is to be white in America.
No, more correctly put, that's what it is to be not obviously Muslim in America. I've seen black people, Oriental people, people from all kinds of countries not normally associated with terrorism pass similar situations with equal ease. But if you have a Middle Eastern look about you (even if you're a true-blue dyed-in-the-wool Honest-to-God AMERICAN) you will likely be hassled with extreme prejudice. And that's the way the majority want it, because everyone knows that you can pick out the terrorists just by looking.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yeah, everyone is scared a terrorist group may have a nuke. And no, there is very little reliable data to show it has a nuke. It is a lot more reasonable to say that Iraq, with a simi-legitimate government, large area, and somewhat rich would have WMDs. Oh wait... when we invaded Iraq... they had no WMDs. If Iraq, a nation with many people couldn't get a WMD (or managed to turn these WMDs into ninjas so the US/UN/etc couldn't find them...)
It's very well-documented that in the past Iraq most certainly had been able to obtain WMDs (in particular chemical weapons) ... because they have used them to suppress uprisings. There are mass dead bodies to prove that they once did obtain WMDs. The issue before the invasion was whether they still had them, or whether the UN inspections had succeeded in making Iraq get rid of them. (Turns out, Blair and Bush were wrong and they had got rid of them -- though there's some likelihood they got rid of them by giving them away to Syria)
The "fear of a terrorist group getting a nuke", now, is pretty much that Pakistan most definitely does have nukes and is in danger of instability because of the problems in Afghanistan having pretty much crossed the border into Pakistan now. If the Pakistan government were to fail, and Pakistan became a failed state (like Afghanistan or Somalia), then it's not beyond belief that an extremist militia would not only be able to obtain a nuclear device, but a whole dang nuclear missile facility. The reason your aeroplane is unlikely to miss the runway is simply because the pilots, air-traffic controllers, and system designers are very intently working to make sure it doesn't. Similarly, the reason that the terrorists are unlikely to obtain a WMD is because there are thousands of people working very intently to make sure they don't. It is precisely because people are worrying about this sort of thing (and indeed are employed to worry about this sort of thing) that ensures that you don't need to worry about it.
since when is a nuke hard to create?
You find me some decent u235 and I'll make you a nuke.
I can source *everything else* easily.
I can do the machining.
I also will take your nuke and give it to the fishes over by Bikini Atol and set it off rather than let you use it on a civilian population. Ironically that would likely scare the US a lot more.
[oh shit mode]
They just proved they have NUKES!!!!111~
[/oh shit mode]
Anyway, nukes are not hard. High yield and/or "clean" nukes are hard, but a terrorist likely cares only a bit about the first and likely wants to avoid the second. Frankly, I can think of literally 5 or 6 ways to actively attack the infrastructure (planes fall out of the sky at random, certain other vehicles with certain payloads have interesting failures, etc.) that would be nearly impossible to avoid against. and if you want to actually go BOOM then just load up with nails and dynamite and stand in line to get on a plane. When you're in the middle of the security queue push the button...
I'm more afraid they get their hands on smallpox either by a plant here at the CDC (they seem to be able to recruit some pretty smart people / doctors...) or by bribe to someone in Moscow. That would truly suck.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
. We need to fix the social problems that cause terrorism before that happens. In real terms, that involves raising the level of education and the quality of life in all parts of the globe to the point where there are no large groups of people who are still so poor that they have nothing to lose, or so ignorant that they have nothing to believe in beyond what their local preacher tells them. Iraq didn't have WMDs because it didn't want them.
First of all, Iraq had WMDs at one point because they used them against their own people. Saddam Hussein used poison gas (a WMD) against the Kurds in 1988.
You appear to think that terrorists come from people who are poor and uneducated. The Christmas Day Underwear Bomber was the son of one of the leading bankers in Africa, his last known address was a $3 million dollar apartment in London (the source I saw it in listed it converted to dollars, not in Pounds or Euros) and he spent three years at a London University (I don't remember the specific name and don't feel like taking the time to look it up at the moment). He was not an exception, but more or less typical.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
you cannot deny that hate is taught by religion...Few religions have any tolerance for gays, different religious people, atheists, women who want equality, etc.
You do know that Jesus hung around some of the lowest-class and most sinful people, right? The analog to our contemporary trailer trash. He challenged them about their sins, but he certainly didn't berate them. Read John 4, and Jesus's interaction with the woman at the well in Samaria.
Just because many of the followers of the religion take its teachings incorrectly, does NOT mean that it is endorsed by the religion. And I say as a Christian, that goes for most other religions as well.
>How about we realize that we are far more likely to be killed by our car or the food we eat then by terrorists?
That's hardly the point. Terrorism, as the name implies, is all about terror.. It's largely inconsequential to terrorists if they pile up a body count or not, it's the fear even aborted or foiled attempts instill that matters. So, the actual chance of being killed by terrorists is irrelevant really.
INS, as it was called back then, was so incompetent that it issued the dead hijackers visas after 9/11. It then promoted the people responsible for the fuckup into positions of non-responsibility.
INS was always the most dysfunctional of the Federal bureaucracies, and splitting it into ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the beating-up-Mexicans side) and CIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services, who is in charge of issuing visas to dead hijackers, while simultaneously ensuring that it takes 5-10 years for a dude with a Ph.D to get a green card) is no different.
As the old Soviet/Russian joke about the GRU/KGB/FSB goes: Old bureaucracies never die, they just change their names.
("In Post-9/11 America, old bureacracies change their names, but they never die! Whatta country!")
This is what it is to be white in America.
Unless of course you are Michael Yon ( http://biggovernment.com/2010/01/05/exclusive-interview-military-blogger-michael-yon-detained-by-tsa-in-seattle-airport/ ). While I have not yet seen this confirmed in another source, it is consistent with other stories I have seen of the TSA harassing its critics (or even those who do not voluntarily give them information they request that has nothing to do with airline security).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
What if terrorists use Linux
If they are not using Linux, Microsoft and Apple would probably be fined and/or investigated by the CIA/NSA/TLA (Three Letter Agency).
Linux is often the only viable choice for any terrorist of importance, because of the trade embargoes against terrorist countries (as decided by some random "we don't like this country" rules).
c++;
Actually the plastic explosives are good fire source like charcoal. US Service members use those to start a camp fire during Vietnam. You need a higher density of energy source than a small fire to make it explode. Otherwise it simply burns with no spectacular fireworks.
What if there really are no Al-Qaeda Terrorists? What if, our government and others are just paying some poor saps lots of money or promising to take care of their families or even extorting them into "being" terrorists so they can exploit the world? What if the U.S. , England and most of the western parties have a greater goal in mind, and that goal involves compliance from most if not all of the human race? Is that so hard to imagine? If we are to believe there are terrorists that want us dead, then why is it so hard to believe that our government wants to control and run our lives? Terrorists create a paranoia induced by our government's failures. Any government who fails at securing a nation against people who blatantly brag and tell everyone about killing them, are really terrorists themselves. If one official receives an intelligence report from someone stating so and so could be planning to bomb something, then one should take it seriously, as is standard protocol anywhere. For example. If someone says there may be a bomb or someone has a gun in a mall and may shoot people, then the police are called and there is a huge frenzy, yet for some reason, our CIA, HS, and Military lack the capability to process intel properly and refuse to 100% take every threat seriously, and we all blame it on the dems or Repubs. It seems to me like they do it intentionally, and it is all a ruse. But what do I know. If you dare go against what is said on the news, then risk being a "conspiracy lunatic". Pardon me for not believing for one minute that Uncle Sam lacks the capability of preventing terrorist attacks when they get direct intelligence, on 3 different occasions. Smells like rotten fish to me.
The inquest determined that the police did not identify themselves before shooting, essentially he stood up, was tackled, and shot before he knew anything was going on. They did this at point blank range, according to eyewitness reports, after having subdued him.
This was an example of where the Police got it very, very wrong, and killed an innocent man for no reason other than they were scared. They did not even give him fair warning, they simply killed him almost execution style.
You are wrong. They weren't scared and they didn't mistakenly killed him (although, apparently they mistook him for a terrorist). They followed the procedure, that has been in effect for quite some time (long before 9/11), "by the book": You don't take terrorists alive. The rationale is that alive incarcerated terrorists will be a reason for their comrades to perform more hostage takings to force their release and laws make it complicated to execute them later on, in custody. That's why the police kills terrorists on the street, it is easier to excuse it that way. ...). However, if there is a will to ever end this conflict, most precious piece of information is how it all started for the captive - what made him or her feel that something needs to be done and what was the straw that broke the camel's back. If that issue is not addressed, then this may prolong into decades and even ages.
However, that worked well for old, political, not religiously-inspired terrorist organizations which drew their cohesion from camaraderie and devotion to their leaders. These contemporary terrorists on the other hand are martyr wannabes. They don't care too much for each other, they sacrifice themselves from essentially selfish reason - to earn divine reward in heaven for themselves. IMHO, killing them off on the spot doesn't make sense as it did for "old school" ones. At the very least, captured ones might perhaps spill their guts to investigators and reveal their contacts in "support network" as well as agitators among respected clerics (who may subsequently have an unfortunate accident or fall victim to a sudden illness