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RC Plane Attack 'Foiled,' Say German Authorities
garymortimer writes with this excerpt from Sky News as carried by Yahoo UK: "German authorities are holding two men of Tunisian origin who they say are facing possible charges for the 'preparation of a serious, state-threatening act of violence.' Prosecutors say the men are suspected of 'procuring information and objects to commit Islamic extremist explosive attacks with remote-controlled model airplanes,' prosecutors added. Police investigating the terror plot on Tuesday launched a series of raids in Stuttgart and Munich in southern Germany and Saxony in the east. They also carried out one raid in Belgium. No-one was arrested. The suspects had been under surveillance for more than a year and authorities had recently detected 'an increased interest in explosives and model aircraft,' according to an unnamed security source quoted by a German news agency."
if i read the article, could i be accused of ''procuring information to commit Islamic extremist explosive attacks with remote-controlled model airplanes,' - i mean, if they go into detail about what was planned..... oh oh! they could even say "ive downloaded it onto my computer" with the cunning use of a cache.
...state-threatening act of violence.
Unless the model plane is the size of a 747 or the explosive is anit-matter, how is that a "... state-threatening act of violence." Is Germany in such dire straits that a single model aircraft can topple a whole country?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Yeah, I've only flown r/c planes for 40 years. They can NOT carry a big enough payload to do any substantial damage. Even full-sized Cessna's have been ruled out as not being able to carry enough explosives to be a real threat.
Say goodbye to RC as a hobby.
"..became radicalised by watching jihadist propaganda on the internet..."
Became "radicalised"??!! WTF?
You'd have to be mentally unstable in the first place to believe that kind of thing.
The only "propaganda" is blaming the internet in the first place.
Mind you I've seen Iron-man 3 so hey you never know.
The suspects had been under surveillance for more than a year and authorities had recently detected 'an increased interest in explosives and model aircraft,' according to an unnamed security source quoted by a German news agency."
Whoah there, fellas! So basically you've admitted to spying on innocent people for years, in who-knows-how-big of a trolling operation, and you finally caught two small fish who so far have done nothing more than "shown an interest" in something that might count as illegal?
I realize the FP doesn't involve the US, but I also thought Germany had gotten rid of the whole Stasi thing back when the wall came down.
Evidently not.
I wonder if the German government stores a database of every one of their citizens phone?
They don't need to. If you have a court order, the ISPs (which do have such databases) will provide the details you need.
Why can the Germans catch Islamic extremists using remote control planes, but the American government cannot catch Islamic extremists using pressure cookers?
Because, if you read TFA, these guys had been under observation for a year already. Basically, one of two things happened:
Either, the police decided that they won't learn anything new by further observation, or discover any more parts of the network, so to wrap things up and close the case, they arrested the guys and called it a day.
Or, politicians in charge needed something to distract. You see, they always keep stuff in store for that purpose. Pispers says it very nicely (on a different topic):
http://youtu.be/qRWAyM26YV8?t=5m42s (english subs)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I am sure Germany has all words to do with anything controlled/remote logged due to acts like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Herrhausen
beam of infrared light or triggers via photographic flash units, engineering of shaped metals or RC are well known and any keywords around that tech would be tracked.
You also have movies like The Dead Pool.
West Germany has always had huge database options, resident registration and lots of cash.
The tracking and tapping of East German spies/helping the USA/UK would have made West Germany think about easy call tracing during all national telco upgrades.
A physical location eg one "Internet exchange point" for all intra-German Internet traffic would make tracking ~95% of the German internet trivial.
As mentioned by the European Parliament: Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System (pdf).
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
So basically you've admitted to spying on innocent people for years, in who-knows-how-big of a trolling operation, and you finally caught two small fish who so far have done nothing more than "shown an interest" in something that might count as illegal?
Right. Most FBI-reported "terrorist plots" are like that, especially the ones that involve informers. They get a report of some loser mouthing off about blowing up something, and they investigate. They get some informer close to the jerk and encourage the wannabe to push their plan forward, often providing resources to help. Then they arrest the loser and announce they've foiled a "terrorist plot".
The most notable example of this kind of FBI activity was the "terrorist plot to blow up the Sears Tower" in 2006. Even the FBI Director said it was "more aspirational than operational".
When Al-Queda set up the 9/11 attacks, they had good operational security. Nobody talked in public about the plan, and many of the participants didn't know the details until hours before takeoff. What the FBI is doing wouldn't stop a real terrorist organization.