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Breaking the Codes In Oslo Terrorist's Manifesto
repvik writes "The 1500-page manifesto of the terrorist who killed 77 people in Oslo and on Utøya two weeks ago contains a series of seemingly encrypted URLs. There are 46 of them, and the initial part of the URLs appear to be GPS coordinates. An effort to analyze the codes have been launched."
Considering the FBI and MI6 don't have jurisdiction in Oslo, very probably.
Also, why would terrorist cells communicate via secret text in 1,500 page manifestos? It just doesn't make any sense. Encode some data into witty photos posted on Reddit photoshop contests. Mix some in torrents. Or, gasp, talk to people. Let's be honest here, most terrorists don't communicate by massively arcane technological methods. Most just talk on forums, make phone calls, or chat through chat programs.
Anything embedded secretly in a 1500 page highly public manifesto is basically advertising intended to keep people excited and talking about the manifesto. And at that, the nutjob wins. But the idea of some form of meaningful project-based communication between terrorists happening secretly via 1500 page manifestos is ascribing a degree of power to them that I personally have trouble stomaching.
The ______ Agenda
Because anyone who is going to use this information to do harm already knows it. The thing people seem to forget whenever something scary happens is that the "bad guys" aren't stupid. Terrorists know how to use a computer. It's better that everyone knows the information so that everyone can use it to prevent whatever attack it might indicate.
The two choices are NOT:
1. Keep the information secret and the bad guys will never find it
2. Release the information and the bad guys will use it to do bad things
The choices ARE:
1. Keep the information secret and everyone is caught with their pants down when the bad guys, who figured all this out on their own, do bad things.
2. Tell everyone the information so that any Tom, Dick, and Harry knows what the bad guys are going to do and they can take appropriate measures.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I am sure that this will be lost time. Worse. Spending time with his manifesto is exactly the thing, the killer wants us to do. He is not worth the time and effort, his manifesto is also not worth it.
The murders were his PR campaign. Don't fall for it. I know that a "damnation memoriae" will not work, but don't help a killer with additional attention.
I don't want to know about his childhood, i am not interested in his home stories, i don't want to see his pictures or see his manifesto publicly discussed.
If you want to spend time, do it for his victims. What where their dreams, ideas, visions? Try to use your words to keep their memory alive, not some sick bastards.
Yours, Martin
Sheesh, don't bother going to the trouble. You've got the killer, just try a little waterboarding and save the time and money.
That is not the Norwegian way. Norwegians are a people of honor, who won't stoop to the level of the evildoers in order to fight evil. The reaction to the deed was one of sorrow, reflection and (and this is hard to understand for outsiders) love and openness instead of hatred and retaliation. In the days after the attack, the prime minister and mayor of Oslo walked around in public with less protection than before, precisely to show that the terrorist would not win by changing Norway for the worse.
In polls, Norwegians are overwhelmingly against the death penalty, torture and revenge, and more so now after the UtÃya tragedy. Norwegians want to distance themselves from everything the perpetrator stood for, and retaliate by doing the opposite of what Mr Breivik thought he would achieve.
The great majority of Norwegians want him to have the same rights as any other accused, and be judged and sentenced for what he did in a fair trial, and not risk jeopardizing justice by the police overstepping their limits. If the police can torture Mr Breivik today, they can torture you tomorrow. Punish him by exposing him to a fairness he never showed others. He will have plenty of time to reflect on how what he did hurt his cause, due to Norwegians being Norwegians, and not Americans.
I've read some of his book. I won't finish it (not enough time in my life), but it's worth reading at least the first couple chapters and skimming the rest. It's scary to do because you'll find that it's not "incoherent ramblings" as the media tells you - quite a bit of it is eloquently written (I suspect it's stitched together from multiple sources) and presents some decent arguments. I'm pretty far to the socialist side, and he's hard-right, but I agree with some of what he's saying, even if I think the conclusion that he reaches (that it's time for Europe to rise up against the oppression of the current ideological regime) is bunk.
This tragedy isn't caused by simple Crazy. An important ingredient is Ideology. To prevent future killings in this form - lone wolf, keeping a low profile - you have to fight the ideological reasons that drive them to do such a thing.
The amount of Crazy this takes is not Batshit Insane. It's a lack of critical thinking about the flaws in their ideology, the conclusions they've reached, and the worth of the actions they will undertake; nurtured a supportive environment which will encourage his thoughts; but still enough sanity for long-term planning and preparation without raising red flags.
Police work does not find these types. Some idiots will fuck up and get caught, but there are lots of people out there who are lacking in the critical thinking department. Some will always slip through.
The way you defend against this is not to brush him off as Crazy; but rather to dive into his mind and try to understand what drove him to kill 77 people. And once you do, you, a rational thinker, need to talk with other people who may hold radical ideologies and help them to understand where the flaws in their beliefs are before the real Crazy takes hold and they start shooting.
And you can't until you let yourself really understand his ideas, rather than just getting the two sentence blurbs. Know - deeply, intellectually - your enemy.
More likely the code, just like the rest of the manifesto, are all just elements to feed the ego of a psychopath whose singular motivation was to ease his frustrations by inflicting pain and suffering upon as many people as possible. Everything now is about ego inflation of a homicidal maniac, about gaining further attention, about driving conspiracy theories and about forcing his frustrations upon others.
The more it drifts from reality, the reality of a sad pathetic individual suffering from a genetic birth defect that absented him from interacting normally, basically lost in a empty world devoid empathy, conscience and a whole range of human emotions, including happiness and joy. His world of frustration, driven largely by the envy of seeing normal people sharing real emotions whilst he could only ape them so that he could appear normal and gain advantage in what ever self serving schemes and plots he had going to assuage his frustrations and feed his ego.
His greatest fear, to be treated as a pathetic nothing, a victim of a genetic birth defect whose manifesto is as meaningless and empty as his life was. The manifesto being nothing but fantasy and lies to feed his ego and make him the centre of attention. The is only one lesson to be drawn from his life, the importance of testing for psychopathy in order to prevent the huge of of victims those that suffer this genetic disorder create. Those that go insane with a gun have nothing on those that gain positions in government or those that run corporations.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
nauseating
The really nauseating thing is that he is, of course, exactly right about some of what's in there. That the truth is mixed up in crazy land is part of the problem with guys like this - because when they're calibrating their world view, even their irrational minds can find some confirmation of their suspicions/projections, and it happens just often enough to keep them going on the loonier stuff.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You can't fight the ideology without understanding it. Reading Mein Kampf would have saved European politicians a lot of hesitation before they declared war on Germany.
The most serious error we can make is to dismiss this guy as a nut. He was not, he was a smart man who gave into a toxic ideology. I mean, he learned how to manage dangerous chemical processes in a DIY fashion, he carefully planned a lot of dangerous material acquisition, he has a coherent prose, and sadly, he made a very smart choice in the people he chose to kill.
Understanding why he chose to follow the most extreme opponents of multiculturalism is important. Right now, some people are reading his prose like a manual. We know about the streisand effect : trying to force people to not talk about something doesn't work. Right now, every sympathizer of far right ideology has read it. Understand the effect it will have, understand what to expect.
After reading it, I was convinced that it will encourage other people to act in a similar way. It is very seducing for people with the right background. Fight it by addressing the questions it poses about multiculturalism. His arguments need to be addressed and answered instead of being silenced.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.