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Terrorist Murder In London Could Revive Snooper's Charter
judgecorp writes "Supporters of the Communications Data Bill (also known as the Snooper's Charter) have lost no time in calling for the Bill to be revived, in response to yesterday's brutal murder of a soldier on the streets of Woolwich, South London. The Bill would have allowed monitoring of all online communications — including who people contact and what websites they visit — but was shelved after Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg opposed it, effectively splitting Britain's coalition government on the issue. Now the fear of new terrorism could rekindle support, based on the argument that even 'lone wolf' attackers use the Internet."
Perhaps I missed it, but how was this murder terrorism?
My barber gave me a bad haircut! We need a Snoopers' Charter! Now!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Why can't we be more like Norway?
The prosecutor actually shook hands with Brevik because that's how they always do it and the hell some mass murdering bastard is going to make them give in and change their ways for the worse.
Yet one person gets murdered here and everyone seems to be yelling "terrorist" and going weak at the knees in fear and stupidity.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That the Snooper's Charter will reduce the threat of Terrorism is an untested hypothesis. Prove it will achieve such goals, THEN we'll talk about having it be a law.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When will you trust a "Robot Barber" to cut your hair? Sure they would test the software and such, but edge cases and an "off by 1" error would be much more painful I would imagine.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Of course this bill would not prevent any repetition of this act and countless other ways psychopaths with religion can kill people. It will however foster a police- and surveillance-state where the whole population is kept in fear permanently. From the efforts to reclassify this act as "terrorism", I conclude that keeping the population in fear is highly desirable for the UK government, possibly because it is failing at its job in countless other areas.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why? It's not particularly insightful. It doesn't take much power to take everything away from you. Much less than it would take to protect you from everything.
First, this wasn't terrorism, it was war. Killing a soldier of a nation that kills people in a nation you view as "your" nation is not terrorism, it's plain war. Well, at least it's every bit war as drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan are war. Or are the soldiers controlling the drones from Texas terrorists and killers?
And: Snooping on all Internet communications to catch "lone wolf" terrorists is a War on the People, nothing less.
This isn't going to end well and this "attack" (on one soldier, OMG) is the smallest part of it. There are people in Britain knived down in the streets every day. Two guys decide to change the course of history and everybody is helping to get the job done. Just great, really.
Err, that's what these two people did. They saw the enemy, someone who (if not personally, then is part of the same gang that has) harassed their community, jailed their compatriots, etc. They took steps to "vanish" the person.
Now quick, justify the E-e-edl attacking mosques! What? You're denunciation seems rather half-hearted you right-wing racist bastard scum. I think it's about time someone took direct action to make you vanish.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
I'd like to see a guy out on the streets here in Texas try to stab people to death. He might get one, then he'll get shot by several people who were carrying concealed handguns. But unfortunately for the UK they have disarmed all of their citizens.
That only works if you have people who care about living. Some of these attacks are by those who seek to become 'martyrs'. Indeed reports stated that the attackers ran to the police armed response unit brandishing weapons alnd almost wanting to be shot.
I'm glad to live in a civilised society without guns and the risk of injuries from crossfire. At least here we don't have over 80 deaths per day from guns -- even scaling for relative population size the death toll is a high price to pay for "freedom" to carry devices with no use other than to inflict suffering and death.
We in the UK do have the right to bare arms. I myself have an extensive t-shirt collection.
pjk
This would be substantially less likely to work in the US because terrorists know that such acts of violence would very likely end with them being met with a hail of bullets from bystanders or the police.
You do know that it did end in a hail of bullets from police, right?
right to bare arms.
What's that? The right to conceal-carry then briefly open-carry? "One Adam Twelve, One Adam Twelve: Reports of man flashing his 'piece' near 5th and Elm" "Roger, dispatch. We encountered the gentleman, and he was exercising his right to bare arms".
Or maybe it's a right to wear no sleeves?
While you're correct, the liberals are also correct that tea party charities are likely to cheat on their taxes and should have extra scrutiny, but you don't see many conservatives calling for profiling when it's them getting the anal probe.
So I saw one video where apparently a normal passerby was simply video'ing one of the suspects, bloody hands and all, rant about how necessary it was. And during the filming, another lady just pushes past the guy, cleaver & knife in hand, with a goddamn baby stroller!!! Who would be comfortable casually filming such a thing? And who would be comfortable walking by with your baby???
Then on the linked article above, I see another picture, this one of the other suspect, holding a bloody knife, talking to a woman who doesnt appear to be very threatened or worried.
I just find this to be bizarre. Could be totally wrong, but after 9/11, Boston, New York attempts, etc. I would imagine in America such an attack would result in a mob surrounding these guys and "neutralizing" them. Maybe not politically correct, but I think Americas tolerance for this kind of thing is zero now. I just find the British citizens reactions extremely strange. (Yes, I know they had knives, etc. but I would expect people to either avoid them, or surround & neutralize them.)
The IRA didn't get near this level of either publicity OR hate to the Irish.
But because this one is by someone of dark skin, therefore OBVIOUSLY different (and if we'd been negroid and this person white, the same would be true: it's the "obviously different" thing that's important: many of these fwits trying to kill muslims can't think of anything more complex than "he's black, not white"), there's a huge shitstorm of the most ignorant fwits who are trying to one-up the murderous tendencies they're rampaging about.
How does that work?
The irony of this is that the Prophet Muhammed fought explicitly against this kind of behavior in his wars against the Arab pagans. Before Muhammed, Arab culture was drowning in "Jahiliyah", which is best understood as extremist machismo. Arab chieftains would think nothing of acting violently and completely out of context/overreact to any insult, real or perceived. They would commit acts similar to what occurred in London: beheading a fellow tribe member for looking at them wrong, proclaiming a blood feud over a trifle--all in the name of being a leader and being a "man's man". Women had only the rights and privileges that men allowed them--which in those times varied wildly. If a woman was part of a bedouin tribe, she was merely property and forced to be part of a polygamous society (and as far as the whole 9 year old girl thing--that was exceptionally common amongst most cultures in that time period, and it was the de-facto standard in Arab tribal life); if she lived in Mecca or one of the few Arab cities, she had a chance at wealth and education. What Muhammed did (leaving Allah out of this) was introduce a counter-culture where women and men were on separate, yet equal footing, and deprogrammed the extreme masculinity. The wars between Mecca and Medina were all about this, and eventually Muhammed won out. Except that after his death, the Arab culture slowly subsumed and altered Islam, because culture always subsumes religion (and not the other way around; modern Christianity is nothing more than Emperor-worship a la Rome).
And now I'm going to violate the One True Scotsman rule, and say that what happened in London was a complete barbarity, and Muslims should be ashamed because they have allowed the worst aspects of Arab culture to redefine the words of the Prophet--it's as the critics of Islam say on here now: Islam as it is now, needs to either be destroyed or thoroughly reformed because it no longer reflects the will of Allah and the Prophet.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I thought everyone was familiar with the process thanks to the Saturday morning cartoons, but perhaps some of you Delinquent Terrorees need it spelled out.
After a crime or crime-like event, what'll happen is that someone on the Terroree Committee announces their IBA (Intent to Become Afraid). Another committee member seconds this, possibly after some out-of-band side-dealing. This brings the terror (small "t") to the floor, where a wider discussion ensues. If seven ninths of the committee supports Afraidity, then goes to the larger Terroree Assembly for more debate and ultimately a straight majority vote. (I'm oversimplifying here, but I'm not sure how much detail you were requesting.)
If it wins the vote, it is promoted to a Terror (large "T"). A Terror's actors become "terrorists" and the action "terrorism" and so on. If no motive for the terrorism is found (no one comes forth and explains their demands and that they performed the act in order to persuade the public to see things their way, the classic boilerplate being "I committed that violent action in order to prove that my views are the wisest views") then something can be made up -- technically after being sent back to the Terroree Committee. To save time, the original committee's meeting may come with a non-binding suggested motive, and after the assembly's Terror vote, a popular Terror will often immediately proceed to a vote on the suggested Terror Motive.
All members of the Terroree Assembly agree, as a condition for joining the assembly, that they will comport Afraidity with any and all Terrors, without exception, and regardless of however they voted upon the original terror (the "Mandated Afraidity"). This helps to address charges of illegitimacy, so that we don't have a repeat of the Cole incident (where it languished in Terror Court after passing the assembly (with high absenteeism) and a poll of the assembly members found that 87% of its members hadn't been Afraid).
The Mandated Afraidity, while once thought of as draconian and overburdensome, is now widely accepted thanks to a notification network which helps to keep assembly members up-to-date and informed about exactly what to fear, how to persuade the public to comport Afraidity, etc.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Power-grabbing government fucktards exploiting fear created by murderous religious nutjobs yet again. And again. And again.
Until humanity as a species somehow simultaneously outgrows religion and greed, we're stuck with it.
I'm betting on Carrie Fisher clone extraterrestrials showing up with free beer and a cure for herpes first.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Remind me how many people died in the boston bombings again? How did or could guns have helped there exactly?
Remind me how well your firearms trained campus cop fared against the two brothers responsible again?
If we had US gun laws then this would've looked a lot less like a random murder and a whole lot more like an Anders Breivik massacre, so no, how about we don't have US style gun laws here.
The fact the most these guys could muster was a rusty pistol that they appeared to have managed to make little use of and a bunch of knives meaning this was only a one victim attack is actually a vindication of the fact that our gun laws are pretty effective. If even determined killers can't get more than a knackered rusty pistol between two of them then great, our laws are working really well.
You revive gun rights instead. Let's dispense with the boilerplate bullshit about how having a gun might not have saved him and just face a simple fact here. This would be substantially less likely to work in the US because terrorists know that such acts of violence would very likely end with them being met with a hail of bullets from bystanders or the police. In the US, random acts of savagery typically only happen in those areas where criminals know the citizenry cannot be lawfully armed. That those areas also tend to be minimally secured by the government to counter this fact is probably also a feature to them as well...
If we had extensive gun ownership, they would not have been stabbing their victim- they would have hit him with a hail of bullets, probably killing bystanders in the process. The hail of bullets from other panicked bystanders would probably have killed yet more innocent people on the crowded London street.
Nothing is likely to save someone from a targeted ambush; it's a simple fact of life that no matter how well armed you are, if people you don't know want to kill you by surprise on a busy street, you probably won't be able to get away. With that in mind, what's left to say? In an act of so-called terrorism in the UK, one victim was killed, the perpetrators were killed themselves, and no-one else was hurt. That's a fantastic result which you would be unlikely to have seen if our country had been flooded with guns.
According to today's news, the 'security services' had run into these men several times in previous investigations, so if that hadn't tipped them off that they were going to do something, snooping on their email would unlikely to do so.
The idea that a firearm renders you invulnerable is a strawman set up by the anti-gun crowd. No firearms freedom advocates are claiming that carrying a firearm is a panacea for personal safety. A firearm merely gives you a fighting chance against an armed or physically superior attacker.
Speaking of the Boston bombings, are pressure cookers and fireworks banned in your country? Do the anti-gun laws extend into Ireland and did they prevent the IRA from carrying out attacks?
Considering the fact that the criminals didn't attack anyone else in the general vicinity, I don't think their goal was to murder as many people as possible. If they were intent on mass murder, they would have found a means to that end.
Perhaps nothing would have saved the victim, but the odds of his survival would have been much better with a firearm.
the police are just minutes away.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
North Korea
I consider these sorts of immediate reactions as the worst kind of political deceit. (The Patriot Act was another, similar, case.) It would be one thing if some commission examined the circumstances, and came out in 6 months or so with a considered argument as to why this or that measure might have made a difference. That at least could be debated. But, no, instead it is "here are these pre-canned ideas that have been shot down before, but now you need to adopt them immediately just because."
I would suggest sending the proposers to the Tower, but I understand that is passe now-a-days.
The prosecutor actually shook hands with Brevik because that's how they always do it and the hell some mass murdering bastard is going to make them give in and change their ways for the worse.
...Is almost certainly the correct answer.
We've managed to take principled stands against things like paying ransoms to hostage takers for years, recognising that even though the consequences in an individual case may be horrible it is important not to lend any credibility to the strategy of taking hostages.
Today we are seeing a few very small groups of people, who want to instil fear to promote some sort of ideological position, who actually do relatively little damage but do it in ostentatious ways to seek attention. How is it that our political leaders and media reporters think the correct response to this strategy is to give these people exactly the attention they crave, with wall-to-wall graphic media coverage and inflammatory political statements full of phoned-it-in remorse and concern? If we want to disrupt people who support terrorism, perhaps we should start with all the influential people who are making terrorism a viable strategy in the first place.
I'm pretty sure the correct reaction to these kinds of incidents is to allow the police to investigate, to put the perpetrators on trial, and in this case probably to send them to prison for life like any other murderer. Meanwhile, the politicians and media could spend their time promoting (both politically and with funding) things like medical research or safer driving, either of which has the potential to save many more lives in a single year than preventing every terrorist attack that has occurred in the same places in my entire lifetime.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
After some considerable delay, while the terrorists milled about chatting, yes.
If a law abiding person at the scene had been armed, instead of just the terrorists, it might have ended before the terrorists were able to decapitate Drummer Rigby. Personally, I would have found that quite agreeable.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
For those who saw the beheading of a woman video, you have something real to compare to this fabrication.
They just would have used guns instead of knifes, maybe killed ten instead of one.
I bet they all drank milk too!
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
"Also don't appreciate your ad homimem [sic] .... I'm pretty sure your hoplophobia..."
Hypocrisy or irony ?
I am not entirely sure that pointing someone's fear out is an ad hominem as it does appear to be relevant. Here's a link where you can check the definition and decide for yourself if it meets the criteria or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Even if you adopt a self-appointed role in choosing where it is appropriate to kill (an interesting position in itself, that you feel so superior that your judgement is wise, great and infallible), how would you face the relatives of someone else killed by crossfire or ricochets (these are busy city streets remember)?
I can answer only for myself. If I were the family of someone who was killed in the crossfire (using worst case scenario) I'd like to think that I'd be angry and would want to kill the person who killed my family with their idiotic gun use. However, I'd like to hope that I got over the feelings quickly because they're absurd and I'd hope that my emotions were such that, after reflection, I was grateful that they had at least made an effort to help.
There is some degree of chance here. I may be less inclined to be grateful should they have been randomly shooting and shooting inappropriately. However, there's always a risk. So, assuming they had good intent and good methods which still resulted in an accidental death I'd like to think I'm rational enough to accept that it was accidental and would like to think that I'd thank the person for having tried. I'm sure that no amount of my berating them would cause them more mental anguish than they were already suffering.
And yes, yes I do have the legal right to carry a concealed weapon. I've never used it and I hope I never have to. I have combat experience where I fired my weapon at an enemy who was returning fire. I don't know if my rounds were the cause of their death but they were killed. We do not live in a utopian society. Removing the right to arm oneself is, in my opinion, a net negative. Freedom means accepting risks and responsibilities. While the loss of life is tragic the measurement we need to use is the scale of the whole rather than the individual.
Not posted AC... I've got the karma to burn.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I can't speak for them but I presume that they're talking about the immediacy. The police did, indeed, end it with a hail of bullets but it was some 20 minutes or a little less (depending on whose timeline you go by it seems) after the fact. I understand it was nearly 15 minutes before the police even arrived on the scene. My impression of the GP's post was that they were speculating that it would have resulted in a hail of bullets (for better or worse) sooner than that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
In a perfect world, we would realize that we don't get to choose where we are born and what color of skin we get.
In a perfect world, we would also realize that every culture has something good to provide and bad customs to shed themselves from.
In a perfect world, we would educate everybody towards personal accountability and tolerance to various beliefs
In a perfect world, we would acknowledge that nobody has ultimate knowledge and that we work much better as a whole, than we do when we are fragmented.
In a perfect world, we would know that we can't have it all, rejection is part of life
But this isn't a perfect world, now, is it?
So, we must deal with the illogical, the greedy, the narcissistic and the cruel.
If we want terrorism to end, we must ask ourselves why it is there in the first place?
Nature vs Nurture
Inherently we all want peace, but our various upbringings make us believe in all kinds of non-educated nonsense about being superior, or inferior to other members of humanity and or various deities and worships, so on and so forth, which somehow, always has the net effect of segregating people.
Take any newborn from any race, in fact, take 2 yrs old from all races and cultures and put them in a room. And you will see the truth through their eyes. They just want to have fun, they will play. Sure, there will be some tantrums, and some crying and some hurting, but that's just it. There is no hatred.
Humanity will need to learn a few things very shortly.
1) There is only 1 planet Earth
2) The boundaries on this planet are man made, wind, water and nature doesn't care about those boundaries
3) True power comes from building bridges between people
4) Humanity is like a lawn, you kill the bad weeds
So, with that in mind, for the sake of this planet, we should learn that life is sacred, not because of some god(s), but because it is sacred and we most of all need to learn that those who take an active stance towards oppression, cruelty and discord, should be eliminated from this planet. Kill all terrorists, Kill all dictators, Kill all those who kill for pleasure and/or for profit.
Killing is a choice, it isn't good or evil.
Those who we would prove to be killers, should be put to death by their peers.
That is justice.
I believe that we humans whether we like it or not, are on an continual quest to learn about ourselves, to better ourselves. To do that, we must take a stance and we must stop the nonsense. Life is truly what "WE" make out of it. There is no "I" in team, a cliche, but so true.
There's more: there was a woman who approached within arm's reach and engaged them in conversation. And now, just because they didn't happen to be killing randomly, there are probably people who think she "defused" the situation. If they would have been on a murder-spree, she'd be dead.
This woman deliberately walked up to the guys when they were talking about starting a war in London and told them 'You're going to lose, it is only you versus many'.
I can't see anything wrong with that. It was brave, yes, but not wrong. If you have common people acting like that, idiot terrorists will never win. I don't know if she "defused" anything, but she surely demonstrated a kind of confidence that is the best thing against warmongers of all kinds. Letting terrorists induce fear means letting them win.
It's important to know that this kind of quiet bravery has a tradition in Britain. The population handled the German terror against London back in WWII very similarly by going confidently about their business while the bombs were hitting left and right. Pubs were even fuller than usual, with people suggesting that occasional air raids ("maybe once a week") wouldn't be too bad and chatting about bombings like about the weather: "It's quite blitzy today, isn't it?".
Not much different during the terror bombings in 2007. Typical reaction: ""They did their worst, and they managed to disrupt our transport network and get fatalities in the low double figures. That happens on a fairly regular basis anyway, you twits. What's your next trick - a fiendish weather control device which makes it rain on a bank holiday weekend?"
Terrorists can't win again THAT. No way.
If governments would stop making terrorism so incredibly effective then maybe people would stop doing it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Do we know for sure yet whether the "terrorists" fired a shot? I saw one person claiming to be a witness that said the terrorists fired first, but most reports have no mention of that, and the event by event accounts that I've seen don't say that they shot.
In fact there were plenty of crowds around, who don't seem to have seen the need to duck for cover, so the gun, real or not, doesn't seem to even have been waved around till the police showed up.
In which case did they have a functioning gun at all? Or was it a replica. Or did they not have access to ammo. We may have to wait for the trial before this information is released. And why only one gun, when there were two of them? They seemed to have plenty of bladed weapons.
These are people that have been known to be involved with Islamic fundamentalism for a decade, and yet it seems likely they couldn't get easy access to firearms.
You think the public should have easy access to firearms. In this case armed bystanders couldn't have stopped the initial attack which was to run into the soldier with a car. We don't know the cause of death yet, so we don't know if that was fatal in itself, but it could have been.
For sure an armed bystander could have put an end to this sooner, but at what stage? Even after the meat cleaver attack most bystanders thought there had been a car "accident". The chances of some member of the public getting out their gun and committing themselves to shooting a man, before the first swipe with a meat cleaver are limited. For someone who'd not a police trained firearms officer assessing the situation and committing to shoot and possibly kill someone takes more that a second or two.
But still, the outcome of this MIGHT have been better had a member of the public been armed and willing to shoot someone.
But the flip side is that the "terrorists", both these ones and others, would then have easier access to firearms. They would certainly have been properly armed, and may well have have killed more people.
UK gun policy is working. Gun crime here has been falling for years. It would be foolish to reverse the policy when the existing trend is a good one.
Beyond subsection 1. Namely, subsection 3.
Here it is again, for your convenience:
(3)The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.
I.e. Subsection 1(b) does not matter.
ANY threat or action with guns or explosives against anything is automagically terrorism as long as they can claim that you were doing it for reasons under 1(c).
It is a very, very, VERY broad definition.
Basically, you could get charged with a terrorist threat for saying things like "I should shot you for doing X" or even "I'm going to shoot that phone if it rings again!" - threat of disrupting an electronic system, automagic terrorism.
All they need from you is to answer one simple question. "Why?"
BOOM! Instant ideology!
Answering why, means that you have reasons, which means you reasoned "why" before doing it, which means you created specific rules and reasons to support your "why" - which means that you have an ideology.
Which covers 1(c), which makes you a terrorist. Ta-DAH!
As for your argument for b and c not being satisfied, I already explained how police and their families ARE "a section of the public".
And as for the vendetta - you can't have a vendetta without an ideology to base it on. Even if it is something as nonsensical as "I hate people wearing blue."
It is a premeditated, prolonged and continuous act of revenge.
Again, things like that need specific reasoning and a set of rules WHY they need to continue - i.e. an ideology.
It does not need to be logical or reasonable reasoning. Most vendettas aren't reasonable anyway.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Caste system is worse than terrorism.
What makes you think your parents/your children/your women/your houses/your properties are safe from sections of society whom you've abused for thousands of years?
http://tehelka.com/karnataka-how-a-government-job-spelt-doom-for-37-dalit-families/
Casteism
Unlike Boston, instead of rushing to help, people just took out their phones and recorded the act
/. is mostly liberals, A good person is prepared to risk all to protect themselves and those around them. When all the stories that never get beyond the local papers, where when confronted with an armed victim the criminal flees without a shot being fired. A minimum of 200,000 lives are saved every year because we are prepared.You can not depend on the government or police saving you no matter how much surveillance they have. And no, it is not like the ols west over here.
So the UK intelligence services knew about both of those filmed in Woolwich - but they were not regarded as priorities
i.e. the intelligence people didn't have enough resources! So if they can't identify the dangerous "needle in a haystack" making the haystack several thousandfold bigger will help?
Clearly the politicians feel no more responsibility for the inadequate resourcing than the poor tax laws!
A good sound-bite is so much better than thinking a problem through and finding an apt solution.
if "Faith" could be proved with facts - would it still be faith? So why does "Faith" try to present beliefs as fact? -