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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."
My farts are more explosive than 90 grams of semtex
What the crap, man?
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
WTF?!
To the Slovakian Minister of the Interior,
I wish to express profound regret on the part of the US for failing to categorize and properly label DVDs obviously sold to your country. Odd as it may seem, the "Police Academy" video series was never intended as instructional.
Sincerest apologies,
I. M. Spending
President of Physics
9/11 was engineered by the authorities!
They must have had CIA assistance.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
In Slovakia they only plant explosives in your luggage, In Russia they plant the explosives inside of YOU.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Seriously. This could get someone killed. Someone needs to be punished for this.
(Assuming, of course, that this report is true.)
Even the Taliban was not so sophisticated in their attack.
First post was what the crap, my exact thought was what the f _ _ _? WTF? W? T? F? Holy F? F me? Ok, I'm sorry, but if I were one of the people, I would be FREAKING out, like "I REALLY REALLY REALLY have NO, NO NO NO NO NO NO F _ _ _ ing CLUE where that came from" as I jump up and down. Holy Crap F. F.
This is great, next time someone gets caught with "research development explosives" they can just say they were in Slovakia.
Wow.
Wow again.
Can you say "lawsuit"? What are the laws in that country concerning these things? Boy! If this happened to me here, I'd start planning my European vacation and picking Lamborghini colors.
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
crash test; dummies.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
"Oh, these explosives must have been *planted* on me. I'm not part of a group trying doing dry run or anything."
Hey, just "puttin' it out there"...
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
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.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If you don't test your security, how do you know if it's working? Or, in this case, apparently not working.
Without a detonator, these explosives aren't actually going to be dangerous.
This country is going to hell, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Police planting exposives in your baggage ? (WTF ? )
1. WTF: No theat to passengers? At the very least 8 passengers were put into serious danger, considering the trigger-happyness of some guards. Your bags get opened, they find explosives, now don't twitch the wrong way or else...
2. WTF: What about the whole security theater we have to endure? The whole privacy invasion and they can't even find effing explosives? Just do away with the whole crap and be done with it, at least the planes will go on time again that way. Because that showed one thing: If you want to blow up a plane, you can. You just might have to send a few guys, one of them will make it. And that's pretty much all you need. After all, as a terrorist you don't really care about picking a special target plane. Any will do to cause fear.
But I'm sure we'll soon get info how the whole thing works like a charm, after all 7 out of 8 bombs would have been detected...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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This is not funny.
Im from Slovakia.
What the hell is going on in this country ?
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
According to http://www.sme.sk/c/5179110/policajti-na-letisku-schovali-vybusniny-do-batozin-jedna-odletela-do-dublinu.html (in slovak)
You forgot the FBI, ICE and the DHS....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I really wonder what American authorities would have done! This stunt is so crazy that I almost can't believe it's real.
It's horrible for the arrested man, but part of me wants to applaud the Slovakian police. These guys aren't pussyfooting around, and did a real blind security test. This probably exposes how the security works on an average day, rather than when screeners suspect a test of the system.
From TFA:
Explosives found in Dublin flat
CONOR LALLY, Crime Correspondent
A Garda investigation is under way after a Slovakian man unwittingly carried explosives on a commercial flight to Ireland as part of an airport security check that went wrong.
The 49-year-old was one of eight people who had plastic explosives planted in their luggage last Saturday morning at Bratislava airport by the Slovakian security services.
The covert planting of the material in the passengers' bags was done to test the airport's security screening.
Security checks at the airport uncovered seven of the concealments. However, the man flying to Dublin was not detected.
Read the rest here.
What do you mean unbelievably? I'd hope to most people that the ability to get through security with a bomb is completely unsurprising. Surely to anyone capable of critical thought and has been through an airport security checkpoint.
Could this be another Police test gone awry ?
"Huge" quantities of cocaine delivered to supermarkets in Spain hidden in boxes of bananas.
We all know that the "security" is crap (and now we have more evidence that those enforcing it are loons).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The Slovakian minister for the interior had expressed his government's "profound regret" to Mr Ahern
How old is this story? Mr Ahern (presumably Bertie Ahern) resigned from office in May 2008.
Oi, those crazy Slovaks, always kidding around. I'm sure all involved will get a good laugh out of it...
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
Why didn't they use blocks of plastic COATED with a thin layer of real explosives? Enough that any sort of sniffer should be able to detect them, but not enough to make a dangerous explosion.
Even 80g of explosives is a fair sized bang, is it not?
Never travel to Slovakia.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I hope they at least chose non-smokers.
... know exactly which airport is best for smuggling explosives.
I mean, responsible intrusion and disclosure is useful on computer systems, but what exactly did this test accomplish? All I know is that I'm not flying to Bratislava.
My mother managed to smuggle a pen knife on board an airplane in her makeup case. My sister had a knife on the OUTSIDE of her backpack; the supervisor made the screener run the backpack through twice because the screener didn't see it the first time! You try looking at thousands of x-rays a day and see how well you pay attention. Human monitors are inherently fallible; our best bet is automated chemical-sniffing technology that can easily be trained to look for new forms of explosives.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about!
Maybe NOW people will stop saying that. Probably still wishful thinking on my part, I admit.
I'm Slovak. The version presented in our press goes as follows. Planting and then detecting the explosives was a part of a dog training security exercise of the Slovak police. The exercise was a disaster. Out of the 8 items planted in the travellers' luggage only 7 were found successfully. These are probably the "seven stopped by airport security" from the summary. The seven do NOT include the guy in Dublin. That is the unlucky guy that got the eighth piece. His luggage passed all security checks and he unknowingly brought the piece of explosives with him into Dublin, where he was then detained by the Irish police. This more or less matches the BBC version linked from the summary, only the summary is wrong. Please update it.
Ok, a bit of karma whoring, but couldn't keep from telling that someone has already tested the fails in airport security:Reporters Expose Airport Security Lapses By Blowing Up Plane
Why can't
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0106/1224261733594.html
TFA makes no mention that the explosives were planted by Slovakian police, only that British police were informed by them. For all we know, the explosives were planted by baggage handlers. I have no idea how thoroughly baggage handlers are screened (both before each shift and before employment) in Slovakia.
The one bomb that made it through wasn't found at the airport in Ireland. The Irish arrested him at home and then released him after further information from the Slovaks.
including one man arrested and held upon arriving at a Dublin airport
He was arrested in his flat, not in the airport. From TFA:
From this article:
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
In Soviet Russia the airlines plant bombs on you!
The most unbelievable thing is how we and the media are responding to the story of Mr Mutallab's actions on NW Flight 253. It is clear the authorities had more than enough specific information about this young man either collected by them or given to them - and well in advance - to stop him boarding the flight.
1. His own father reported his concerns about his son's dangerous intentions to his local CIA office who promptly forwarded an urgent report on the kid to HQ, four weeks before his flight was due to depart.
2. His ticket was one-way.
3. He paid for his ticket in cash.
4. His ticket was bought in a different country from the country of departure.
5. He was a Muslim.
6. TLAs in multiple countries had records of his travels to Yemen.
7. TLAs had records of his attendance at extremist Islamic preachers of hatred at mosque in London.
8. TLAs in multiple countries had a detailed record of this man's views from a scheduled talk he gave at University College London on his sympathies with jihad and his deep-seated hatred of the West.
9. Multiple witnesses, including an American lawyer, reported that Mr Mutallab was accompanied to the airport check-in desk by a smartly dressed man in a suit and necktie. The man was overheard telling the check-in staff that Mr M must be allowed to board the flight despite his having no passport. WTF!
Frankly, just hitting any couple of these warning buttons would be enough to get a normal passenger barred from flying. He hit all of them, and still, the TLAs failed to stop him. Why? Was it incompetence by the TLAs? Is that credible? Not given the specific information on this young man that was clearly significant enough for urgent action even without the benefit of hindsight.
Our political system and security industry are hugely and extensively corrupt. Corrupt systems are not trustable. There is a long history of corruption being used to facilitate new business opportunities. The security industry stands to make huge additional profits out of selling, operating, and servicing the additional security measures and systems for scanning, monitoring and profiling of billions of civilians. How very convenient this attack is given that it precedes the EU's forthcoming review of its long-standing opposition to scanners on privacy grounds, which is now almost certain to be overturned. Smell the corruption that let a known bad guy pass.
Caricature creators in Slovakia sure have inspirations.. not a single day without a fuck up
Let's not forget that there are an estimated 11.5 million illegal aliens in the United States. Good luck deporting them all.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think people shouldn't be fired for making mistakes. After all, you want to learn from your mistakes. What you get with a policy of firing people who make an occasional blunder is a party-line culture. In intelligence, you definitely want free-thinkers. New ideas fail sometimes, but you need new ideas if you want to keep your edge. Instead, fire people who don't learn from their mistakes.
My equipment is frequently exposed to explosives, always gets the swab, always tests positive, the TSA always says "survey equipment, right?", I nod, I go through without any more hassle.
No deeper inspection, ever.
This is what it is to be white in America.
He was arrested in his unpressurized car tire?
http://scentlogix.com/
... I can attest, that one does exactly what one is told to do. (Ex-wife claimed I threatened her with a firearm from my car. Problem was, there was no firearm in the car.)
Being stunned and doing nothing is not the same as being panicked and moving quickly. It's the latter that will get you killed.
I was cuffed, the car searched, and then released.
In Liberty, Rene
http://scentlogix.com/
So, this was just a really stupid stunt. What if someone had run in a panic during an arrest and been shot? If this story really is true (it seems idiotic) then the world would be wise to demand the execution of the people involved. It really is an amazingly bad move. Using random people as test subjects with life explosives on planes with no warning to other security forces to expect this.
Heads should definitly roll, in a very real sense.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They invented it in the 1600's. Yes, I know before the actual founding of the bloody country but hey, that just shows how big the conspiracy is!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The illegal immigrant who ran from police because he knew he was a criminal and wanted to escape arrest. Something a normal person would not do?
Get this and get this straight, he was shot because he ran and he ran because he was a criminal.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Mrdej sam sebe!
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
and their onerous, over the top "strict liability" charges. For example: http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/news/Ex-soldier-faces-jail-handing-gun/article-1509082-detail/article.html
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
He was shot because he was a brown man in a white man's country. Running or not, there's no way an unarmed white brit gets shot just because he is running from police.
Cell phone cameras and video? Of course it would not only get out, it would be all over the internet within minutes. Remember, we're talking about the TSA here. They can't even keep from posting their own internal procedures manual on the internet, and now you think they can control the personal communications of everyone in an airport terminal.
Perhaps you will find the availability heuristic interesting.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
These articles are in slovak language: http://tinyurl.com/yeut367 http://tinyurl.com/y8jozyj Basicly, they were testing dog in real conditions, but after finding one explosive, policeman with dog went to a second airplane and forgot to look for another explosive in first one.
How about YOU realize that that is only true because of all of the resources the government prevents to prevent terrorism, you insensitive clod!~
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
are trained to find the more deadly items, like more than 3 ounces of toothpaste or shampoo.
I am from Slovakia so I read the original news. What has happened is that police planted the explosives after the baggage was checked in and screened to train bomb sniffing dogs. I guess they didn't do that kind of good job which is considering the state of Slovak governmental organization just a day like any other. The article also says that the same happened in France in 2004 after which France stopped such practice.
Madness!
Madness? This is SPARTA!!!
*kicks you into the pit*
Religions don't kill people; religious people kill people!
This is the kind of ballsy moves we need to scare terrorists away. Well done.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, said scanners were not the only solution and profiling passengers was, in fact, the best way to prevent terrorist acts. "We've got to face the fact that you can build a bomb in the duty free shop, after you've gone through screening. Bearing that in mind, we need to look at what people's intent is, not what they are carrying on their person."
We told you, this Slota guy is some crazy nut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ján_Slota
Had you been reading this sub-thread, or done any research, you would know the bags in question were CHECKED.
http://www.matthewyglesias.com/2010/01/05/slovak-man-takes-hidden-explosive-on-dublin-flight.html
"Security experts said the episode illustrated the inadequacy of security screening of checked-in luggage — the very point the Slovak authorities had sought to test when they placed real bomb components in nine passengers' bags Saturday."
The point of this sub-thread is discussing whether or not it is a waste of time to plant tests on people with Carry-On baggage and if that properly reflects todays terrorist since they tend to be suicide bombers.
Bombs plant you!
(can't be the first one to post that, I know... but I'm not reading this lame thread)
Based on my novice attempts at researching odds, I found you have about a 1/12,300 chance of being killed in a motor vehicle wreck each year and a 1/40,000,000 chance of having a terrorist bomber board your flight since 9/11 (United States only). I flew home on December 27th two days after the attempted bombing and I slept the entire way back.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yes, if only there was some kind of "final solution" that could eliminate all the undesirable elements in society...
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.
"Kurds" != "Iraqis", therefore "they" DID NOT use them against "their own people"
Of course, if you still wish to claim this, then to be fair you must also claim the US used WMD against ITS "own people" (i.e. the so-called "Native American" population)
[captcha: "fairer"]
How many car accidents leave nuclear fallout and potentially render large areas verbotten?
And how many terrorist attacks have left nuclear fallout?
Besides the ones the US carried out against civilian populations in 1945, that is?
lets face facts and the rest of the usa and other country's need to. if they wanna blow up a plain they will. they don't even need to be on it ever hear of solder mounted ground to air missiles yea they do that all the time in iraq but you never hear them talking abought that. they won 911 copuse rather then rebuild the towers with aa cannons on it we made airtravel a nightmear fucked up the encomy and started a war we can never win. its in the fing bible if you need any timeline on how long these sand people have been killing eatch other. usa had its share of terrest in he past but for some reasion sense aircraft where in this one it matterd more then the past somehow. unibomber anyone the first bombing of the towers they seem to just forget all abought them.
The Slovakian cops apologized to the Irish government but not to the guy they planted?
Maybe they went back in time to invent it so early!
Sure, then we could just randomly detonate certain passengers from certain destinations. Maybe competing oil-bearing countries. We'll call them terrorists...
What could possibly go wrong!
Quack, quack.
your logic sure works great, because Bin Laden was poor growing up. Hell, even the columbine killers were doing pretty damn well.
I don't think the comparison is fair (traffic accidents vs terrorism). If the problem being debated was "saving lives" - then yes, the comparison would be fair; but the problem is different: "us vs them", therefore different counting rules apply.
The difference is that a car accident is an unfortunate event, while terrorism is an action with the evil_bit=TRUE, i.e. someone means to cause harm and does so.
The difference is that there is an illusion that acts of terrorism could be prevented, while car accidents - no. Every time terrorists score, the government tells itself "failure on our end, we could not prevent that, control is not in our hands".
Note: Both problems are important, both can be addressed by a better education; but terrorism has an impact on the "emotional layer" too, so humans react to it differently because such is the design of our psyche.
I wrote an article about humans and the evil bit, perhaps it will give a better picture of what I mean.
The saddest poem
It was not at Bratislava Airport but at Poprad-Tatry airport. Cops ran the security test while using real passengers' luggage for explosive hide-out because it's cheaper to do it on real passengers than use the undercover cops for whole thing.
Police new that the 8th bomb was on the plane, and they notified the pilot but according to the police report the pilot acknowledged that the bomb in its current state is not a threat to a safety and didn't want to delay the flight and departed with the explosive aboard.
Slovak police claims they immediately notified Irish police about the incident. Irish police claims that they were notified 3 days later, so on Tuesday (the man departed Slovakia on Saturday) they raided his home, looking for that "forgotten" package.
Nobody in Slovakia is happy about what happen because this can happen to anyone and god forbid this would happen on the flight to US or if planted the drugs while on the plane do Thailand.
I guess general public has to wake up and start doing something with this after-9/11-nonsense because this can happen to any one of us.
what I am waiting for is the press conference. The Slovak Interior minister Mr. Robert Handsome-Guy Kalinak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kali%C5%88%C3%A1k will surely state that 'This event just did not happened' (skutok sa nestal), similar to his previous statements about similar internal affairs that did not get such international publicity.
Iraq had WMDs because the US sold them WMDs.
While I don't doubt that everything else in your post is correct, as it coincides with my own prejudices regarding police, according to a google image search I just did, Jean Charles de Menezes is not brown.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
Seriously. This security scare has gotten to the point where you actually have more to fear, as an air passenger, of security forces than of actual terrorists....
And the latter are sitting back and laughing their arse off...
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
I think it was a smart idea badly executed. If they planted explosives on unsuspecting passengers, the passengers could conduct themselves with a sense innocence. This would give human screening personnel a challenge in looking for suspicious behavior. Also the detection devices would get a thorough test based on finding the traces of those explosives.
Where they failed is that after the screening process they should have taken those passengers aside and explained what was going on and pulled the explosives back and to be honest they should have used something that simulated those explosives. They should have also not allowed any individuals to board flights with live explosives, risking further individuals as well as those carrying them.
As they say, you can't fix it unless you know what is broken.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Wealth redistribution is not the only way to improve the quality of life of the poor. Labor adds value. People are inventing things and manufacturing things that have lasting value. Technology and simple production capacity can reduce scarcity. I'm probably not using the term scarcity correctly in an economic sense there, as there is always more to want, but there is a threshold of want. A semi-rational person might become violent in a situation where they can't feed their family. But to become violent because you can't satisfy one of the higher orders of Maslow's hierarchy and some people can, takes a less rational person. If we can develop technology to bring almost everyone to a point where they are not short of shelter, food water et. al. That will go a long way. If we also add in some mindless entertainment like TV, video games, or bad paperbacks for everyone it becomes even less likely they will become violent. This can all be done without altering the existing weath distribution profile, just shifting the whole thing upwards.
All that said, its inevitable that someone who isn't particularly rational, or perhaps a bit *too* rational, will eventually get their hands on a WMD and use it, it will happen more than once. I just hope the first time it happens we don't react by giving up the vestiges of our freedom in the vain hope of preventing the inevitable recurrence.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
This isn't Twitter.
... I can attest, that one does exactly what one is told to do. (Ex-wife claimed I threatened her with a firearm from my car. Problem was, there was no firearm in the car.)
I can attest that YOU did exactly what you were told to do. Other people in other situations will react in different ways.
I'm guessing that you were pulled over by a police officer (lights flashing), and he was wearing a uniform?
Would you have done what you were told to do if you were run off the road by someone in a non-police car who told you to get out of the car or be shot? Frankly in that situation I'd rather trust the accelerator pedal to the mercy of someone who is apparantly attacking me.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
If this what we have come down to to random test our security, and not let people know they are carrying potentially harmful goods, and also extremely criminal in offense, I would say I don't want to travel anymore. Police are there to protect, why don't THEY get undercover and see if they can get through their security. I hate hearing about abuse of power by government officials on their own people.
Who needs terrorists when we have this type of government to worry about!!
duh
the MOSAD paid the Slovaks to do a type of job they suck at for lack of experience. Notice how none of the people's names or anything about their looks were mentioned? Do you think they were Muslim-like?
It may take years, many years, but justice is always served, one way or another.