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Banks Accept Dubai Assassins' Stolen IDs
schliz writes "Public scrutiny did more harm than good last week, after Australian police and the media released details of three stolen passports allegedly used in the assasination of a senior Hamas member in Dubai. As if having their identities stolen for an assassination wasn't enough, it turns out the victims' passports had not been cancelled by the government, so the details that were published by the media in fact could be used to open fraudulent bank accounts."
It seems like every government in the world has something equal to our Social Security Number being used for national identification... and no way to scrub your permanent record of what they want to record about you, or even an easy way toget your record cleaned if somebody should take your identity and uses it. Lifelock is basically selling insurance that if your ID is stolen, they'll do the legwork up to $1 Million in filing paperwork and making calls on your behalf to get things back to normal.
Israel basically doesn't care about what they've done to these people because for them their war against Hamas justifies anything... they've been doing War on Terror since day one of their existence. The least these people should be able to expect is that their government would cancel their stolen passports... but apparently that's too much to ask.
That makes me think that Hamas and Isreal deserve each other.
I thought that the details had been obscured by the government when it made the release. It appears that the ABC and Seven blurred the important numbers. Others broadcast the details without editing. I thought we had enough of these on Media Watch last year to teach them a lesson.
schliz, kdawson: are you absolutely sure that this is public scrutiny's fault?
Sounds a lot like how Sarah Palin's email got hacked to me. Asking security questions has proven to fail when someone wants someone's information.
Recent IT events have suggested that the Australian government is below par as far as their critical thinking skills go, so this is a surprise?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Please, stop trying to distort the situation.
Hamas has its own particular ideology and I want to make it clear I don't support their methods.
But to say that their basis for attacking Israel is merely its existence is a distortion. There is legitimate beef on the part of the Palestinians against Israel for the loss of land and livelihood under the Israeli occupation. You and I can sit here and debate whether or not their actions are appropriate or understandable, but it boils down to an entire population of people who live under the rule of a foreign occupier and it is quite clear that the occupation has not had a positive impact on them.
We talk righteously about Jews who were forced into ghettos and then violently rebelled against their oppressors but then on the other hand when it involves Arabs against Jewish occupiers, its all of the sudden an immoral thing to resist that oppression.
Slowly we lose sight of how a nationally recognized ID was not always required to do mundane things like opening a checking account.
Australia (like many other Western nations) is slowly becoming a police state. That somebody's identity card was used to assassinate someone in the middle east is not the problem here.
I'm Australian, and don't have a passport. I've also had a number of bank accounts in my life. To open an account, you need proof of identity. There's a whole list of things that can satisfy this - driver's license, passport, birth certificate, etc. There's hardly a unified ID system.
Besides, you think fraud is bad now, try it when there's no way to uniquely identify people.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Funnily enough, you only need that ID when initially opening your business with a bank, if you continue to patronise their business you will likely need nothing more than your keycard and a bit of easily obtainable information to open accounts, loans, etc.
In fact, I organised, established and paid off a personal loan with the National Australia Bank without even owning a piece of primary ID (photographic) "just sign here and here...", that deficit in my own recognition paperwork has since been rectified of course.
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on average, israel kills 10 palestinians for every israeli killed by palestinians, drilling down further, for every Israeli child killed, 40 Palestinian children are killed.
you can't claim the moral high ground while using military ordinance against occupied residential structures.
I have seen photos of the damage caused by each sides weapons, a qassam rocket will typically blow a hole in a wall and hurt or kill anyone nearby in that room, while an israeli airstrike will level an apartment complex.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
opening an account doesn't really get me anywhere. now if i can borrow a little money...
Long live the BSD license
Getting tired of kdawsons scaremongering bullshit.
Can we have it corrected please, the headline reads like it has already happened ?
"Banks Could Conceivably Accept Dubai Assassins' Stolen IDs"
(And then only if they'd been living under a rock).
...let us not forget that there is no actual *evidence* to indicate that this was actually an action of the Israeli gov't. There's just been a lot of hot wind coming out of Dubai, and a bunch of finger pointing going on in the world. So until there is some evidences, let's not let this spin out of control into a pro-zionist vs. anti-zionist flamewar.
"War of Terror"
Fixed that for you.
Both sides justify their dirty tactics by the existence of the other.
Israelis don't level apartment complexes arbitrarily. They do so when the apartment complexes in question get used in Palestinian attacks, or on the rare occurrence of a high-profile ticking-timebomb blood-on-hands type of persona rearing his head in a known place at a known time.
The Qassam "holes in walls", on the other hand, are conducted randomly, by weapons with very primitive targeting, into the heart of civilian population centers, with no other purpose than to harm civilians.
You have to decide whether you're handing out points for who has the better technology (bigger bombs/targeting systems) or who has the better ethical/moral; base.
It's not about the size of the hole in the wall. It's about whether you had a valid military target in your sights when you pulled the trigger.
And before we start a discussion on (Israel) firing on ambulances/UN schools et,remember the Geneva convention and wartime rules are only applicable so long as both sides respect them. When one side ignores them, they become a worthless piece of paper.
You will respect wartime rules and won't shoot at *my* ambulances, civilian shelters, schools etc, so long as I respect the same wartime rules and not misuse my ambulances, civilian shelters, schools etc.
If I get caught several times with my ambulances smuggling weapons and bombs, and it ends up costing you lives (and your government public criticism from your angry voters), you'll throw the wartime rules out the window same as everyone else who has had to face a similar situation ever did, and treat my ambulances as potential weapon-carrying-trucks (which, I remind you, in our example, they *are*).
Unfortunately (mainly to the Palestinian and Lebanese populations), the methods of the Iranian proxies Hammas and Hezbollah openly ignore wartime law. And when they dont respect it, it would be naive and totally unrealistic to expect their adversary (Israel in these two cases) to respect those same wartime laws.
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Then why does the Hammas have Israel's entire land on its flag? Why does it continuously call for Israel's full destruction?
You have a valid point, there is a very justified side to the Palestinian struggle for independence. Only problem is that organizations like the Hammas deliberately blur the line between the bits that are justified, and the bits that are hate-mongering, impossible loony ideas (entirely displace a 7-million modern nation with access to money, all the technology it needs a big army? yeh, right) that are entirely outside any acceptable modern ethics/morals profile.
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Israel basically doesn't care about what they've done to these people
That hasn't been proven and the last known whereabouts of two of them were boarding a ship for IRAN.
Why would Israeli agents be doing that? You know very little about middle eastern politics if you think only the Israelis want people dead.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh, sure, these criminals may think they're getting away with something, but in Australia the penalty for such things is the boot.
Distortion? It's their self-defined raison d'être.
I have seen photos of the damage caused by each sides weapons, a qassam rocket will typically blow a hole in a wall and hurt or kill anyone nearby in that room, while an israeli airstrike will level an apartment complex.
When Hamas stops launching rockets from the roof of apartment complexes, then there will be fewer apartment complexes hit.
Learn to love Alaska
Sorry, did you seriously just claim that it's ok for Israel to attack the ICRC and the UN because Hamas doesn't follow the rules either?
... to check on the status of things
Maybe because they're pissed off? Try living under siege, seeing your land encroached by illegal settlers and your people's homes bulldozed and see if you're still reasonable towards your oppressors. I don't agree with Hamas's methods, but I can see why they do what they do.
Maybe because they're pissed off? Try living under siege, seeing your land encroached by illegal settlers and your people's homes bulldozed and see if you're still reasonable towards your oppressors. I don't agree with Hamas's methods, but I can see why they do what they do.
What other methods can they use? Conventional warfare against a US-backed Israel? They might as well stab themselves in the balls.
I think that Hamas's best bet is not violence. If they can only be seen as a passive Gandhi style resistance it might go a long way to improving their image in the US. Frankly, their armed struggle doesn't have much effect anyway. Also, they do a lot of things that are pretty bad for PR. For instance, arresting Western journalists does not endear you to the people who might be able to help your cause.
The official Israeli line appears to be "we won't deny we did it, but there's no evidence it was us". From where I'm standing, that sounds a lot like an admission.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I'll bet it's a typo (how can it be an insult anyway if it wasn't?) and the problem is really that Israel is cursed with some criminals that the Jewish WWII refugees would despise that have managed to get into positions of power. Ignore all the "us versus them" bullshit and it comes down to individuals committing murder and framing others for it. No matter how highly placed the criminals are doesn't mean that the entire nation is rotten. It probably doesn't even mean that all of Mossad is rotten.
There was a historical difference made by the bombings but it's not really relevant today. The UN assembly has been full of mass murderers at various times (had one from Palestine and one from Israel at the same time once) and still has one or two. What is relevant is the actions taken by the current government and of course what their enemies are doing.
What part of "foreign occupation" don't you understand?
Max didn't have a misconception he just thinks it is more significant than you do - it's called an opinion. Every country has a few skeletons rattling around in the closet but what really matters is what is being done now.
So to summarize, you don't support their methods, but "it boils down to" you debating that they are appropriate or understandable. Cool.
We talk righteously about Jews who were forced into ghettos and then violently rebelled against their oppressors
WTF are you talking about? We talk about how the Jews were forced into ghettos *and then put into death camps where they were starved to death or simply exterminated with poison gas*. Are you really just forgetting that part? If Jews had just been rounded up and arrested in WWII, well that's bad and all, but it would be a hell of a lot better than the Holocaust!
And when did Jews violently rebel en masse? Do you even know anything about WWII? A lot of Israeli philosophy today is based on the fact that NOT violently resisting was a fatal error.
but then on the other hand when it involves Arabs against Jewish occupiers
Duh and are Arabs being exterminated by Jews?
How about surrendering? Could they use that conventional method? You know, the one that has been used in war for thousands of years? Hey the English surrendered to the Americans, and guess what, England is still around. The French surrendered to the Germans, and they're still around. The Germans surrendered to the Allies, and they're still around. SURRENDER IS A VALID TECHNIQUE.
Look, "freedom fighter" is a catchy name that everyone including terrorists wants to co-opt, but if you're fighting for a cause that's hurting your own citizens much more than what "the enemy" is doing to you, you're doing it wrong.
All countries use statements like this when it comes to secret military and intelligence operations. If you say anything other than "no comment" to some operations, then when you say "no comment" to the ones you did do, everyone will know it was you.
you can't claim the moral high ground while using military ordinance against occupied residential structures.
Cool so in the direct conflict neither side has the moral high ground. How about in the goals of the conflict? One side goes for extermination of the infidels, the other goes for cessation of violence without extermination. There is a moral high ground there.
Being pissed off isn't an excuse for anything unless you wish to argue that Hamas is innocent by reason of insanity.
Desperate people do desperate things, and the things Hamas does are no worse (perhaps less worse) than what the Israelis are doing. Admittedly, not an excuse for doing bad things, but certainly explains why they're doing them. Like I say, imagine yourself a Palestinian living in the Gaza Strip.
Icon, I thought it was there because of the Assassin.
mm I love me some TF2
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
then screwing around with an account an assassin has used.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can see the only reason for them to send a "convention" of the operatives to Dubai and then send two agents to Iran in such open manner as even duplicate passports of the Israeli dual-citizenship holders. It could be a shout-out to certain number of Israeli-hostile states in the Middle-East and Africa that no matter what you do and how many cameras you will put up: If you hurt Israel -- we will get you anytime, anywhere on our terms.
I would like to get my hands on those fraudulent bank accounts just for one day. Then I can commit a Robin Hood. I promise to be generous. Haiti, Chile, New Orleans, just to name a few.
Israel basically doesn't care about what they've done to these people because for them their war against Hamas justifies anything...
So I take it you have evidence it was done by Mossad?
Reply to That ||
I assure you, Israelis are just as pissed off.
Busses with 20 kids onboard blowing up, Discotheque bombings that kill dozens of teenage kids... Israel had its share of pain.
Are you suggesting their pain exonerates them?
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According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for the occupied Palestinian territory (a UN body) 1754 Palestinians have been killed since 2005 (excluding the recent Gaza war, vs. 117 Israelis. In the Gaza war 773 Palestinian civilians were killed. Israelis are free to leave their country, Gazans are imprisoned in theirs. The sources of employment are drying up in Gaza as Israel prevents many supplies entering the territory, including the building supplies needed to reconstruct the many factories that Israel bombed. So I would say that Palestinians go through a lot more pain than Israelis. Would you rather be a Palestinian civilian or an Israeli? Not much of a contest is it?
But to say that their basis for attacking Israel is merely its existence is a distortion.
Then why do they claim that as their basis for attacking?
The part where Jews are foreigners in the land of our origins.
Personally, I don't think that's much of an argument, but there is a much better one. Really, I don't think it matters who lived there once, or when, or whatever. What matters is who's making their homes there now. I'm American, and technically, my land was once brutally stolen from one tribe or another of Native Americans. If one of them now showed up at my doorstep and demanded his land beck, I'll tell him to bugger off, and if he took violent action against me I'd be well within my right to defend myself, because regardless of how things went down in the past, this is my home now. I think same applies to Israel. I don't know much about the formation of Israel, and I don't quite buy those stories about unprovoked land grabs and stealing homes from Palestinians, but either way, people are living and dying and making their home there now. It's hard to argue that that doesn't make it their home now.
I'm not saying that Israel is perfect of that the Palestinians are all bad or anything like that, but before any other issues can be addressed, the assholes need to accept that the country and people of Israel have a right to be there & defend themselves if need be and stop with the offensives.
Well sure, except that to people like the AC accepting that Israel has a right to be there now means accepting a "foreign occupation" of Palestinian land.
Since I'm Jewish (and fiercely Zionist) and oppose the occupation of the West Bank, I chose to object to the "foreign" bit rather than the other bit.
Ghandi:
"Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenseless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. "
"My creed of nonviolence is an extremely active force. It has no room for cowardice or even weakness. There is hope for a violent man to be some day non-violent, but there is none for a coward. I have, therefore, said more than once....that, if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by the force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting. "
"I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by nonviolently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully. "
May the fierce resistance of the Palestinians never fade.
look sig is kool
The rocket attacks by Hamas do not improve security for Gazans, it is to their detriment. Hamas militants took over civilian buildings during the Gaza War (indeed, so did Israel), endangering their occupants.
>> Not much of a contest is it?
(emphasis mine)
And therein lies my point. You see it as some form of contest. A "whoever hurts the most gets moral high-ground and becomes above-any-meaninful-criticism"
I call you a hypocrite. If it was YOUR toddlers that were blown up for having done nothing to anyone, you'd be singing a different tune.
Here's the real deal: BOTH sides hurt. If you say "whoever hurts the most gets a 007 license to go and kill the other's civilians and we legitimize it and call it "understandable", then you become a direct contributor to prolonging the conflict.
Both sides hurt, to various degrees.
Note I'm not arguing the point that the palestinians hurt more. I'm arguing the point that they're above harsh criticism of the hammas for having shed any semblance of human morals/ethics.
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If some words in the Geneva convention would allow perpetrators to wheel a bomb into the WTC in NY, I doubt the us should respect the Geneva convention and allow it to be wheeled in.
I'd argue that at that point the US should not follow the Geneva convention, but re-evaluate it.
Hezbollah smuggled ordance in ambulances. Hammas had "pregnant" women hide bombs (the kind you strap on and detonate, along with yourself, in a mall) under their clothes, as well as use ambulances on multiple occasions. Both organizations used schools, appartment blocks, UN compoundsas a source of mortar/rocket fire.
When you're Israel, and you SEE fire coming out of [name-your-geneva-outlawed-source-here], and that fire -is killing your civillians-, you go and eradicate the source. And if that source is a school, so be it. All you can do is try to be careful.
Unfortunately, armchair critics such as yourself cant really grasp the full meaning of "we need to make the incoming fire stop" and delve on shoulds and shouldnt's.
When my kid's bedroom gets bombed, I expect my government to make it stop, not come back and say "we can't. they're using their civilians as shields".
If it's the life of my kid or the life of theirs, so be it. It'll be theirs.
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Everyone does this when asked "is so-and-so an agent", or "do you operate in such-and-such a country". "Did you organised the murder of so-and-so" is a different matter.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.