MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers After Paris Magazine Attack

An anonymous reader writes with news that the head of MI5 is asking for more snooping powers following the attack at Charlie Hebdo. "The head of MI5, Andrew Parker, has called for new powers to help fight Islamist extremism, warning of a dangerous imbalance between increasing numbers of terrorist plots against the UK and a drop in the capabilities of intelligence services to snoop on communications. Parker described the Paris attack as "a terrible reminder of the intentions of those who wish us harm" and said he had spoken to his French counterparts to offer help. Speaking to an invited audience at MI5 headquarters, he said the threat level to Britain had worsened and Islamist extremist groups in Syria and Iraq were directly trying to orchestrate attacks on the UK. An attack on the UK was "highly likely" and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said."

Comments

By all means

[fustakrakich]

We must give unlimited powers to the supreme chancellor!

Re:By all means

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I caught part of a review of today's papers on the BBC News last night. The comments by the two guest reviewers actually made me nauseous. One claimed to be concerned about the implications about extending surveillance powers further and that we should have some sort of debate, yet clearly thought we should just hand over whatever it takes to keep us safe. The other was just saying he didn't care who read his e-mails, didn't feel that being spied on limited his freedom of expression, and MI5 were welcome to spy on him, with no apparent consideration for the implications of that policy for anyone else who might not share his views. The host actually quipped -- in possibly the only balancing comment in the entire segment -- that the guest sounded like he was making the old argument about having nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and the guest just laughed and said he didn't think so.

So it looks like there was at least one thing Lucas got right with episodes I-III: liberty really does die with thunderous applause.

Re:By all means

[Anonymous Coward]

Mohamet, a star is born!

Re:By all means

[g0bshiTe]

We pretty much did in the US after 9/11 look where it got us.

I don't feel any different today than I did 9/10 yet there is more suspicion and animosity everywhere.

I'm fucking sick of it.

Re:By all means

[zeroryoko1974]

But, it's for the children. Think of the children

Re:By all means

[davester666]

Followup-> nothing says "we are free, and demand our freedom" than having thousands extra of police and military wandering around your city.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30760563

Vague article

[Chrisq]

It doesn't say what new powers he wants. It makes it hard to decide whether this is good or bad, because general surveillance of everyone is very different from powers to monitor those who are already under suspicion - with prosper controls like court warrants, etc.

Re:Vague article

[Tablizer]

doesn't say what new powers he wants

Leaping tall buildings. X-ray vision (especially around Lois Lane)

Re:Vague article

[carnivore302]

Doesn't matter what new powers he wants, it will be one step further in reducing peoples privacy and freedom. At some point in time the cure becomes worse than the disease. I think we're already past that point.

Let me be clear: it's awful what has happened. But so is the death of a child hit by a drunk drivers car. Or a swimmer drowning in the sea. If we were to stop swimming, or playing in the streets life would not be worth all that much.

Like the drunk driver, these terrorists are losers. Don't make them anything more than that.

Re:Vague article

[Xest]

It doesn't really matter what they are, it's bad regardless.

Why? because if we've learnt anything from terrorist incidents since 9/11 is that the perpetrators were all already known to the authorities.

- Lee Rigby killers? Already detained trying to head to support Al Shabab by Kenyan authorities and sent back to the UK with MI5 informed

- Boston Bombings? Russia already alerted the FBI to the fact they'd been hanging with Chechnyan extremists and were a threat.

- Australian hostage taker? Already on trial for violent crimes and with a history of support for Islamic extremism

- These guys? Already on the US no fly list. Already known to French authorities for extremist sympathies. At least one already had been in trouble with police for violent crimes.

It seems to me that a taboo needs to be broken, that the general public needs to stop assuming the security services are competent. It's clear they're not and it's clear that no new powers are needed because in each and every case of terrorism that comes about the perpetrators are already known to the authorities.

All that's needed is for the authorities to start better determining threats from the data they have, they don't need new data. If they simply started monitoring based on the following two criteria then all of the above would've been prevented:

1) Does the person have extremist sympathies?

2) Does the person have a violent disposition / have they been arrested and convicted of a violent crime?

Simply monitoring on these two criteria alone would've prevented all of the above. No new data needed, no new powers needed. It's not rocket science but apparently the likes of MI5 are so entirely inept that they can't even figure out the basics.

Re:Vague article

[icebike]

At some point in time the cure becomes worse than the disease. I think we're already past that point.

You have to know that the spy agencies have a list of demands they hold for situations like this. Strike while the terror is hot.

If your tinfoil hat is on too tight you might suspect they fund some of these events when ever they don't get their way.
Nah, that's crazy talk. Where are my meds....

Re:Vague article

[Xest]

That's exactly the problem, they shouldn't be monitoring tens of millions in the first place because there aren't tens of millions that are a threat. My point exactly was that they only need to monitor the few hundred or few thousand that match real actual threat criteria.

The fact they're monitoring tens of millions is precisely the ineptitude that needs calling out and dealing with. There aren't tens of millions of real actual threats present within each country, there are a few hundred or maybe a few thousand at best. You don't need to monitor anyone abroad, that's the job of external security like MI6 and your foreign partners to do. MI5 can't keep track of internal threats precisely because they're too busy snooping and gathering mountains of data on non-threats.

As I've said before, instead of working on becoming better at finding the needle in the haystack, all MI5, GCHQ, and it's counterparts overseas seem to do now is build a bigger haystack so that even when their counterparts from overseas say to them "Hey, you've got a bunch of terrorist threats here" they seem to just respond "Sorry, too busy with head buried in massive haystack to care".

Re:Vague article

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

This may be true. Personally, I think the vast majority of people working for these organisations probably are just normal people trying to do an important job under difficult conditions.

However, I don't think you've undermined Xest's point: if a perpetrator of a violent act was already well known to the security services for both their views and their violent disposition, but for whatever reason the perpetrator had not been effectively monitored or contained despite that knowledge, why would we rationally expect that providing any further information would necessarily improve the situation?

Re:Vague article

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you ever pause for a moment to think how police should do their work if they aren't given any means to do it? Criminals use internet and electronic devices as much as possible while authorities are denied to use them with every step. Have you thought that they might tell you the truth when they say they cannot do their work of upholding public safety without tapping internet?

Police: Please, can we google for terrorists to find them?
Privacy guys: Muh muh privacy!! No you cannot!
*Bomb goes off somewhere*
Police: Now can we google for them terrists?
Privacy gyus: You probably planted that bomb yourself to get more powers! No!

There are no Sherlocks in reality. Finding and thwarting threats takes real work and that work needs real tools and real powers.

Re:Vague article

[Xest]

It doesn't have to be. It's good enough to have caught the most atrocious attacks since 9/11 and that's drastically better than what we have now which is apparently just gathering more data without the slightest clue how or if it's possible to make any kind of use of it all.

There's always going to be terrorists that will slip through the net, I agree with that assessment by MI5's chief. The problem is we're not even dealing with the ones for which there's no reason they should be slipping through the net because they can trivially be categorised as threats - in fact, in some cases they've already been categorised as threats by foreign intelligence agencies and then that advice ignored by the agencies of the countries they move to.

We'll never achieve perfection, but achieving a marked improvement doesn't look too difficult relative to the sheer ineptitude we seem to have right now.

Re:Vague article

[Vintermann]

"These guys? Already on the US no fly list. Already known to French authorities for extremist sympathies. At least one already had been in trouble with police for violent crimes."

Yeah, but it looks like they also checked all the flags for troubled kids. You'll find lots and lots of foster home boys(which those were) who are kind of attention-seekers, kind of flirting with various radical political cults, kind of narcissistic, kind of sociopathic/antisocial. What are you going to do?

There are tons, tons of people who fit your 1 and 2. And much as they may be personality-fucked up people who go on to cause a lot of suffering for people they encounter, the vast majority of them are not terrorists. Surveilling them is not free, and is not without consequences in itself.

Re:Vague article

[Xest]

"Surveilling them is not free, and is not without consequences in itself."

Regardless, it's a far better step up from surveilling everybody and makes the data set of targets for more detailed analysis far more manageable.

It's ultimately a question of whether profiling is ever acceptable. I believe it has to be acceptable at some point else you might as well just disband the security services altogether. In terms of human rights I don't think narrowing the surveillance set from "everyone" to "violent criminals with jihadist sympathies" is a particularly unfair trade off.

I'm not recommend we profile based on skin colour, I'm not recommending we profile based on religion. But profiling based on a history of violence and/or terrorist activity such as funding and recruitment of groups overseas all coupled with a hatred for the society in which they live as a starting point for investigation? I don't think that's unreasonable.

Those edge cases that are borderline troubled teens not yet truly radicalised can be passed off to anti-extremism programmes and any lack of progress reported back to enabled continued monitoring.

But when you've got two guys on no fly lists, who were previously in court for supporting jihadis, and one of which has a history of violence both managing to get hold of AK-47s and reportedly even an RPG-7 and getting them all the way to central paris? Something is going very fucking wrong in the intelligence world and it simply cannot be excused as anything other than outright incompetence - it's a level of failure that would get anyone else fired from their job and yet instead we're told "Oh they're doing a tough job, we shouldn't be too hard on them. They're heroes, we can't possible suggest otherwise!" whilst their bosses tell us they need more powers to snoop on even more people in even more invasive ways as if that's somehow going to change anything at all.

Re:Vague article

[kevinbr]

So when you can't monitor the obvious threats you already know about the solution is to add more and more to the pile ? Really? Why not ask for more manpower to monitor the known threats? Or are they busy monitoring politicians and journalists ? Who the fuck knows how they are burning manpower but the Paris incident shows that they can't do threat assessments nor properly monitor who they know about.

If they knew these guys were a threat, then they can get a warrant already an scoop up everything. Phone locations etc. No one objects to monitoring via a legal process known threats. But with current powers available, they did not. So adding more and more powers leading to more and more data is in my opinion not a solution.

Potentially the whole world flies under the radar.

Re:Vague article

[MMC Monster]

Just because someone is known, doesn't mean anything can be done.

What should have been done with these guys before they killed people? Have them watched indefinitely? Imprison them because they may cause a crime? Limit their freedoms in any other way?

The world governments know a lot about a lot of individuals. It's just that most of what they know is circumstantial and not actionable information.

Re:Vague article

[stephanruby]

Let me be clear: it's awful what has happened. But so is the death of a child hit by a drunk drivers car.

Actually, those people killed were the last people in the world that wanted a government with more snooping powers. Warning: Some of these drawings may not be work safe. http://www.le-livre.fr/photos/... http://www.le-livre.fr/photos/... http://www.iconovox.com/blog/w...

That head of MI5 is just an idiot opportunist with a very poor sense of taste and timing. Of course, MI5 can't guarantee that it can stop a muslim extremist terrorist attack. No one can guarantee that, except may be North Korea.

Re:Vague article

[AmiMoJo]

It's not really a case of incompetence, it's a case of not being able to prevent every single attack in the same way that we would never expect the police to prevent every single crime or doctors to prevent every single disease.

It might be possible to stop more of them with greater powers. The argument is that because there are checks and limitations on spying it is harder to track every person of interest, so we should all just open up our Facebook and Gmail accounts for them. If we have CCTV in every living room, which is an actual possibility thanks to smart TVs with insecure web-cams built in, we could monitor these people more easily.

That's obviously a stupid argument. If you put CCTV in every living room, competent terrorists won't talk about terrorism in their living rooms. These guys knew what they were doing, they didn't have traceable phones on them, they switched vehicles because they knew there would be CCTV and ANPR everywhere, and they apparently kept their online profile low enough to avoid detection as well. With hindsight it might be possible to say that certain invasions of privacy may have helped detect them, but the next guys will just avoid that too.

The powers GCHQ has used in the past were secret. They were less useful when made public. In other words, to be most effective they need to break the law and do things that people think they are now allowed to do. Of course the cat is out of the bag now and people just assume they are monitoring everything. They screwed themselves, and asking for more powers now isn't going to stop terrorism but it will definitely damage our freedom.

Re:Vague article

[houghi]

To know somebody is a treat, you need at one point turn him from a non-treat into a treat. The only way (according to them) is to follow the non-treats as well.

The second issue is 'what is a treat?'. Amd I because I do not like governement X? Or if I just am opposed to the current political party in power (which changes every few years).

This is just number filling. I see this where I work as well. Managers asking for data. I can produce the data, but they seldom can answer the question "Why do you need it?". I can bury them in reports, but I know that it will never be used.

It is just a way to be sure that if somebody somewhere asks, they can say that they have the data. Not processed the data. That question is never asked.

And then suddenly somebody sees something strange in the data. Then we need to spend X mandays on it, just to realize that it means absolutely nothing. (I don't know why it looks as if somebody was on the phone for 72 hours.) and then again nothing will happen.

Re:Vague article

[AHuxley]

Back to the 1920-50's paperwork? Home Office Warrants (HOW), opening all mail not just saving the to and from parts. More funding, more staff, more real super computers and internal MI5 control over the entire UK telco network. A fully funded MI5 version of Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... to reconcile every message into and out of the UK.
A watch list of subversive academics who could be teaching real crypto courses. More staff with Russian skills to find Russian plots to request more funding to find other Russian plots.
Total freedom to access all UK web 2.0 servers to create undercover online personas going back years.
Access to all UK telecommunications equipment without needing the GCHQ or mil.
A request for surveillance powers without all the sharing, requests, foreign considerations of the CIA or MI6.
The UK would be turned into a version Ireland in the 1980's - 1990's with a total internal surveillance system.
The ability to put surveillance on legal teams, the press, NGO's within 4 hops of anyone of interest.
The ability to track legal teams and access to all their files at anytime for any reason. That was very useful in Ireland.
Every method used in Ireland would be legal within the UK. MI5 trapdoors and backdoors in all UK produced or sold crypto on any device or telco systems sold in the UK.
The main requests would be for more powers, more technology, more staff, linguists.
Foreign security services are going to flood with perfect UK applicants hoping some will be accepted. Mass recruitment is always a risk.

Re:Vague article

[clickclickdrone]

This is the UK Government, they want everyone to be monitored 24/7 and everything they do recorded and kept safe 'just in case'.

Re:Vague article

[coofercat]

If we make it too easy for him, we don't need him at all. We'd need maybe 10 police officers for the whole country, and they only need to be 'plod' and not some sort of highly trained super-cop. They'd just wait for the computer to text them the name and address of a 'criminal' and they'd go fetch them and throw them in the back of the van.

Honestly, if I need something in order to do my job and stop some systems falling over constantly, I ask for it. The difference is that if my management agree with me and give me something to help me, other people don't lose anything as a result. This guys doing the same as me, but with considerably graver consequences.

Re:Vague article

[Nidi62]

It doesn't say what new powers he wants.

All of them

Re:Vague article

[meta-monkey]

Mmmmmm all those sexy internal organs....

Re:Vague article

[Cederic]

How do you know which of the several million leads is actually a threat that needs monitoring.

I despise ubiquitous surveillance and have written to my MP on the matter but even I can see how fucking difficult it can be to investigate this stuff, identify and manage the threats and prevent attacks like this occurring.

Re:Vague article

[Cederic]

It might be possible to stop more of them with greater powers.

The obvious challenge being that the greater the powers, the greater the number of people willing to take up arms to defend against them.

Re:Vague article

[Xest]

There aren't several million leads in each country. The UK has a population of 65 million. We do not have a significant proportion of the population even close to showing signs of interest in terrorism. We have a few thousand at best.

Of those few thousand you can quite quickly see which ones are most troubled and which have convictions for violence. Once you've narrowed it down there it becomes even easier to cross reference against those that have traveled to known areas of concern for terrorist training like Yemen and Pakistan.

By the time you've done this basic filtering, you're left with maybe a couple of thousand at worst, most likely a few hundred in practice.

It's the same names over and over, one of the guys that did this in France had been convicted for helping fund terrorism, he had convictions for violence, he was on two terror watch lists, he was known to have travelled to Yemen to an al Qaeda training camp. How many people do you think there are that fit this bill in France? I'd wager it's no more than maybe the very low tens at most.

Once again the Lee Rigby killers fit the same profile - albeit with attempts to go play jihad with al Shabab instead.

I'd sympathise with your point if we were talking about these sorts of people having done nothing other than posted sympathies for al Qaeda in Facebook but we're talking about more than that, we're talking time and time again about people who have travelled to fucking training camps with the security services knowing about it and nothing is done. The people actually carrying out the attacks show very clear signs of escalating and obvious intent. They're not going from Facebook posting to terrorism, they're slowly becoming more and more radicalised and more and more serious, the security services know but fail to believe it's worth acting on.

In this case he went to Yemen and they knew themselves, in Rigby's case they tried to go to Somalia and the Kenyans alerted them, in the Boston bombing case they went to Chechnya and were warned by the Russians, in the Canada parliament shooting he'd tried to get to Syria.

It's become quite clear that if someone is wanting to go to an Islamic terrorist training/fighting hotspot that maybe it's worth taking serious notice. The only people who don't seem to have figured this out are Western security services.

Re:Vague article

[Hognoxious]

Imprison them because they may cause a crime?

But they already had committed crimes.

The weapons possession alone should have got them doing a 15 stretch.

Re: Vague article

[BellyJelly]

He doesn't want you to know what new powers he wants, just like he didn't want you to know what powers he already has. He wants you to be afraid, so you will let the security services get on with doing absolutely whatever they want without question or meaningful oversight.

Re:Vague article

[gweihir]

It will not be powers that actually help against terrorists, because that is not what people like him want. Terrorists are _good_ for them, and hence the last thing they will do is anything effective against terrorists.

Re:Vague article

[tburkhol]

That's exactly the problem, they shouldn't be monitoring tens of millions in the first place because there aren't tens of millions that are a threat. My point exactly was that they only need to monitor the few hundred or few thousand that match real actual threat criteria.

Really? Because your point seemed to be that they were already monitoring the perpetrators of these crimes, rather closely, and still failed to prevent them. The US no-fly list, for example, is supposed to be around 20,000 - that seems like a pretty manageable planet-wide number. I get that you are not arguing for expanding existing surveillance, but your original argument seemed to be more along the lines of "Lock up for life anyone with a criminal record and extremist sympathies." That is a recipe for witch hunts.

Re:Vague article

[Cederic]

And yet several of the people leaving the UK to go and fight for ISIS _are_ going from "browsing radical sites" to "crucifying the unbeliever"

It's not a slippery slope, it's a fucking conveyer belt.

Even if you do know someone went to Chechnya, that's not actually illegal. You want a team of 8 people tracking that individual 24/7 just in case they're being naughty?

Re:Vague article

[Xest]

How many of them are there? Why do we have to worry about them leaving the country? Even then it's not like we're talking thousands.

The problem is that we let them back in and let them act as if they haven't just been trained by the likes of al Qaeda and ISIS.

Once they're out of the country that's MI6s job and the rest of the foreign security services they bypass on the way to wherever they're going. But why does MI5 and internal security of countries like the US, Canada, France, Australia do fuck all when known terrorists return? Even here a good number of those returning learnt the hard way that ISIS aren't nice people and that it's completely turned them around. There are a number of ex-wannabe jihadis that now preach against going over, so of those returning some actually become reformed by the brutal experience alone so of the small number returning it's not like they're even all threats. Sure some could be putting on a front, but that's the sort you can let slip through - these French guys didn't even put on a front, it was open and blatant that they still supported al Qaeda post-return.

"Even if you do know someone went to Chechnya, that's not actually illegal. You want a team of 8 people tracking that individual 24/7 just in case they're being naughty?"

Why 8 people? what is the relevance of that arbitrary arse plucking you've created other than to try and justify your point without actually having any basis on which to justify it. Some of these folks have even posted on Twitter and Facebook before they've done what they've done - if nothing else have a single person monitoring the tens of Twitter/Facebook feeds of these people, you'd only need one or two people doing that for many suspects and even that would be a big step up from where we are now. But if you think their job isn't to monitor such suspects then what exactly do you think they are there for? to just sit on their arse and get paid? Are you really claiming there are so many people coming back to the UK et. al. after having attended terrorist training camps and with warnings slapped on them by overseas agencies that we can't monitor all ten of them? If so I'd suggest you have a warped view of the numbers involved. We're not even talking thousands here, and we're barely talking hundreds.

Worse, you like others are making the claim that they're understaffed. If that's true why are they gathering so much irrelevant data? Why are they begging for more powers not more staff? If they're simply understaffed then they need to ask for more staff. Capturing even more data when the implication of your argument is that they can't even act on what they already have even though what they already have is sufficient enough that every single terrorist threat since 9/11 has been known to them then how will more powers help at all?

It's one thing going to Chechnya, it's another going there and having the Russian authorities tell you they've been mingling with extremists and engaging in training and that they're a threat and then not monitoring them at all.

It seems your argument is basically that it's okay to completely ignore blatant threats because bless MI5 et. al. their jobs are so hard and they couldn't possibly be incompetent, it must just be bad luck and we should leave them alone because there's no way they could improve ever.

On what do you base that premise? Why do you think they're perfect? Why given that they pay low do you think they're somehow miraculously staffed with highly competent people? What do you think makes them special that they don't suffer high levels of incompetence like many other parts of public sector?

This is precisely the problem I have - we've got no evidence the security services are doing a good job, we have examples of high levels of incompetence yet apologists like you come along and declare them as untouchable, that we shouldn't ever criticise them, that they couldn't be doing anything other than their best. It's stupid. It's a sure fire way to create and protect an environment where incompetence thrives, and that puts us all at risk.

Re:Vague article

[Cederic]

You have a very naive view of the effort needed to track and monitor several thousand people.

There are estimates of over 2000 British people fighting for ISIS. That doesn't include anybody being naughty elsewhere in the world, or in the UK.

You think it's possible to keep tabs on all 2000 when they return to the UK just by monitoring their twitter feeds? You accuse the security services of incompetence and you clearly don't have even the most basic of clues about what they do.

By the way, I'd appreciate you not calling me an apologist. Just because you lack reading comprehension doesn't mean I'm saying the things you seem to think I'm saying.

Re:Vague article

[Xest]

"You have a very naive view of the effort needed to track and monitor several thousand people."

I don't suffer from naivety, the problem is you're make the same false arguments the intelligence services make to try and pursue their power grab.

"There are estimates of over 2000 British people fighting for ISIS. That doesn't include anybody being naughty elsewhere in the world, or in the UK."

So fucking what? MI5 need not care in the slightest. That's MI6's job. What have people fighting for ISIS got to do with internal security? If they're not inside the country they're not currently a threat to the country. MI5 does not need to monitor a single one of these people whilst they remain in Syria/Iraq. Your argument is so fundamentally broken it should be obvious, but apparently to you, it's not. I can only guess you don't even know what MI5's job is, despite your insistence on defending it.

"You think it's possible to keep tabs on all 2000 when they return to the UK just by monitoring their twitter feeds? You accuse the security services of incompetence and you clearly don't have even the most basic of clues about what they do."

Again, you're so desperate to try and salvage what tatters remain of your argument you've just resorted to simply making things up. Ignoring the fact that all 2000 wont return because some are already dead, how do you know with apparent certainty that the rest will return? No you don't need to just monitor their Twitter feeds, but regardless, doing so would still be a step up from where we are now - which is to not monitor them, and allow attacks through, which is precisely the point. Yes, you need to do other stuff as well, yes, it's not even just MI5, we need to to improve efforts in terms of social work with these people to deradicalise them. None of which changes the fact that this isn't happening now and MI5s failures are a part of that.

"By the way, I'd appreciate you not calling me an apologist."

Well what else would you prefer? A pro-MI5 zealot? I don't really know what else to suggest when apologist fits perfectly.

I mean, when you have to resort to making up scenarios such as the return of 2000 jihadists from the middle east what else fits? Anyone who wasn't an apologist wouldn't need to make stuff up to try and fix their broken argument - I notice you completely ignore the point about why are MI5 asking for more data collection powers if manpower is the issue.

So yes, you're an apologist. Don't make stuff up and ignore things you can't answer because you know full well they make a mockery of your failed argument.

Re:Vague article

[Cederic]

Given I've already told you in this thread that I've contacted my MP to raise concerns over surveillance powers available to the security service your continued claims that I'm an apologist merely expose your own ignorance and blindness to bitter realities.

Do I give a fuck whether a problem is for MI5, MI6, SOCA, Scotland Yard, GCHQ or the boy fucking scouts? No. Do I want ubiquitous surveillance? No. Do I acknowledge the difficulty in tracking and measuring the risk of several thousand people? Yes. Does that excuse the mistakes in managing known or perceived risks, resulting in the Menezes and Rigby killings? Hell no. Is the answer to pretend that the collective security services don't need the ability to monitor communications? Join the real world you idiotic twat.

Shit, you're talking utter lunacy, completely disregarding other threats (e.g. there's a bunch of wankers in Ireland still resorting to violence as their preferred form of politics) and frankly I'm not responding further, you clearly have no desire to listen to sense or reason, and blithely ignore simple facts. You're a cunt and I shall treat you like one - e.g. by finally addressing the problem at hand, which is you.

Re:Vague article

[Xest]

"Given I've already told you in this thread that I've contacted my MP to raise concerns over surveillance powers available to the security service your continued claims that I'm an apologist merely expose your own ignorance and blindness to bitter realities."

Well no actually, if anything it just demonstrates that you're either a very contradictory person or you're simply full of shit. Whether you've written to your MP or not makes no difference to the fact you're making apologies for MI5 and defending it's request for more powers whilst inadvertently admitting that if they need anything it's not more powers, it's more staff, because they already can't get through the data they harvest with the powers they have as is.

"No. Do I want ubiquitous surveillance? No."

It may not be what you want, but it's exactly what you're defending and asking for. You're saying it's okay that MI5 wants more power because their job is difficult whilst arguing that what they actually need is more manpower.

"Is the answer to pretend that the collective security services don't need the ability to monitor communications? Join the real world you idiotic twat."

Okay I can see this is beginning to make you cry now, you're obviously one of those irrational types who just no matter what cannot admit they've made stupid arguments. But here's what's odd, you create a great long rant about how you don't want ubiquitous surveillance and you then say it's somehow necessary in the real world, so what you're saying is you do want ubiquitous surveillance, that is the only logical conclusion of your argument.

It's the logical conclusion of your argument you see, because security services already monitor all communications, they already have the power to invade the privacy of suspects to whatever degree they require, and that's okay, because that's what they need to do. They can already do all this - targeted surveillance of threats to national security isn't illegal and isn't what they're asking for.

What they're asking for is the ability to access every digital communication of every person in the country at will, regardless of whether they're a suspect or not. You're defending their request for something you previously said you're wholly against. This is why between all your bile spewing you also come across as not only completely out of control of your emotions, but wholly confused also.

So there's one of two conclusions we can reach here:

1) You're making contradictory statements because you seem to admit you've no idea what the job of the security services are, and because you clearly have no idea what they're asking for given that you're defending their request whilst arguing you don't want what they're requesting

2) You do actually finally concede that you were wrong, but are one of those people who just can't say it, no matter how much bile they start spewing and how much nonsensical rubbish they keep throwing out which makes them look more and more irrational and crazed so continue to spout falsehoods and nonsense alongside comments that agree with everything I've been saying all along

But whichever doesn't really matter, the point is that you've highlighted full and well that you were wrong either way. Spewing bile everywhere and contradicting yourself doesn't change that, and if you think that you doing that is somehow my problem rather than yours, well, I genuinely feel sorry for you - you clearly have anger management issues.

Please tell me that these include...

[tlambert]

Please tell me that these include being faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

Re:Please tell me that these include...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Nah, it's more like powers of sweating bullets about terrorism, railroading people in interrogation and jumping to conclusions.

Who says the events are connected?

[wonkey_monkey]

MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers After Paris Magazine Attack

I think it's fairly likely that he was seeking new powers before the Paris attack as well. It's just more newsworthy now.

Re:Who says the events are connected?

[hcs_$reboot]

Terrorism gives some administrations leverage to get more power. 9/11 proved that point. 01/07 will prove that point.

Re:Who says the events are connected?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's rude to point.

Re:Who says the events are connected?

[tehcyder]

Good point.

Bad point.

Counter point.

Numberwang!

Re:Who says the events are connected?

[AmiMoJo]

He was, but now he is using the death of brave cartoonists who defended and exercised our right to freedom even in the face of fire-bombings and other terrorist attacks to further his goal of reducing our freedom. He is seeking to use their deaths to undermine the very thing they risked their lives and ultimately died to defend.

Re:Who says the events are connected?

[bartosek]

Look at all this terrorism they could have stopped if only that had the power to install anal probes in everyone on the planet.

Re:Who says the events are connected?

[wonkey_monkey]

Cardboard box.

MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's constantly "seeking" new powers, not just after "Paris attack".

On another --similarly surprising-- news, Marine LePen is thinking aloud about death penalty in France.

Disgusting pack o'rats. Just instrumentalising the occassion for their little dirty agendas. I'm sure *no one* of the dead folks at Charlie Hebdo would have liked that.

Now excuse me while I go puke.

Re:MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Corner cases? There numerous exampled of people being falsely accused, convicted, given the death penalty and even wrongfully executed. Wrongful accusations and convictions are not corner cases.

Re:MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers?

[Nemyst]

It's LePen, what did you expect? The thing you have to fear isn't LePen, it's whether these fucking idiotic jihadists will give LePen more votes. The last thing you want is for extremist right-wing parties to gain power in Europe, because that'll end in bloodbath.

Re:MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers?

[phorm]

I dunno about that. I think a lot of issues with the death penalty is how long and draw out it can be. If there was a very strict set of circumstances like: public massacre+verificable identify+caught at scene while shooting at police I think I'd be in favour of death, just don't drag it out.

Re:MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers?

[fnj]

Rolls eyes helplessly at the depth of ignorance.

Fuck the Nanny State

[mentil]

An attack on the UK was "highly likely" and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said.

I, for one, would rather be shot or blown up than live under a government that can 100% guarantee my safety. Better to live under a Sharia theocracy than a tyrannical nanny state.

Re:Fuck the Nanny State

[hlavac]

Fuck them both. People are forgetting what freedom is...

Re:Fuck the Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, would rather say screw both of your options and keep my rights while fighting these islamic douchecanoes to the death.

Seriously, it's time we started taking the threat honestly. The first rule of surviving a gunfight is to understand and admit that you are in one. At this point, it's pretty clear that we're in one.

Re:Fuck the Nanny State

[Hognoxious]

Better to live under a Sharia theocracy than a tyrannical nanny state.

Why?

Neither would be my first choice but if they were the only options I'd take the one with beer.

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the brits can't have guns, I'd say it's a lost cause already. The government is perfectly OK with a couple dozen civilian dead now and again than a population with the means to fight. Statistically speaking, they're probably right: you and me and our families do not matter. The State matters.

Re:Fuck the Nanny State

[chthon]

It seems that the practical implementation of sharia IS a tyrannical nanny state.

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[WindBourne]

OK, you can move to Syria where you will get your wish to live under sharia. But somehow, I doubt that you will back up your words.

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The US is anomalous in terms of its murder and violent crime rates, of course. There are other nations where the general population is also allowed or even required to have firearms that do not suffer the same level with violence, suggesting that the problem may be one of culture rather than tools.

Still, the statistical question is a fair one. Given that routine carrying of firearms by the general population would almost inevitably lead to some level of extra deaths, if only through accidents, and given that the number of people actually hurt or killed in terrorist-style attacks is tiny, it may still be the case that statistically it is a bad bet to routinely arm the general population of the UK as a response to that particular threat. I don't know what the actual numbers would be, but it's a fair question to ask.

(I am not offering any view on the merits or otherwise of arming the general population for any other reasons here. I'm talking specifically about whether generally arming everyone would be a good thing in response to this kind of attack.)

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say "arming the population", that implies you think the population wants to be armed, I live in the UK and in general people are much happier without these weapons. Guns are designed to kill, that is there one and only purpose. We don't (and wouldn't for long) have enough natural animals to even hunt where they would have any other use, so the prime use for guns would be to kill other people. That's it.

I think being an island nation we have always taken for granted that it is easier, than say being part of the continent, to prevent lots of illegal firearms from spreading. The people want it to stay this way and a massacre or two will not change that.

Re:Fuck the Nanny State

[tehcyder]

I, for one, would rather be shot or blown up than live under a government that can 100% guarantee my safety.

So would you rather be shot or blown up than have governments (say) issue passports and check incoming passengers' details against known terrorists? or have a police force?

It's not a black or white thing, because while obviously no government can 100% guarantee your safety, they can do certain things which increase it greatly.

I believe even libertarians admit the need for a country to have a military, for instance.

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[FireFury03]

The people want it to stay this way and a massacre or two will not change that.

Although crazies keep voting for UKIP, who have said they want to legalise firearms...

Re:Fuck the Nanny State

[TeknoHog]

Better to live under a Sharia theocracy than a tyrannical nanny state.

Why?

Neither would be my first choice but if they were the only options I'd take the beer.

FTFY.

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[internerdj]

Laying aside for the moment that mass casualty events are rare, this very article is about MI-5 saying that even with super-strict gun laws and super invasive surveillance, they cannot prevent every mass casualty event. The schools and cinema shootings are just hyper-emotional events used by gun-control advocates to drive change. Controlling for the real problem (that we treat our poor like animals) by discounting cities whose numbers are driven by poverty and criminal gangs that thrive in poverty, the US has a very low homicide rate even lower than some European countries. Further, comparing the numbers worldwide, gun ownership does not correlate to homicide unless you choose to specifically look at firearm homicide. Guess what vehicle homicide rates correlate to vehicle ownership too.

Re:Fuck the Nanny State

[CheeseyDJ]

Better to live under a Sharia theocracy than a tyrannical nanny state.

Don't they pretty much amount to the same thing?

Re:Fuck the Nanny State

[Hognoxious]

0.5%? That really is tyrannical.

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[Builder]

I see this statement time and time again. The UK has tens of thousands of privately held firearms and shotguns. Just not handguns.

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[Builder]

As opposed to the current government, under which many shotguns and firearms (except handguns other than for humane despatch) are legal ?

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[ihtoit]

Guns are designed to kill

Oh, really, Sparky?

Stapleguns are designed to kill?
Nail guns are designed to kill?
Electron guns are designed to kill?
Jackhammers are designed to kill?

Incidentally, there are approximately 200 million rabbits in England (not counting Scotland or Wales), 300 million pigeons and 12 billion rats, all of which are controlled by cunts like ME armed with... AIR RIFLES. I keep bread below £5 a loaf. YOU'RE WELCOME.

Think about what you're saying, you fucking tool.

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[ihtoit]

uh... I have a drawer cabinet full of handguns, all legally held.

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[Hognoxious]

Stupidest post ever. Do you think hot-dogs say "woof"?

Re: Fuck the Nanny State

[ihtoit]

pour on gasoline and throw on a match, you can make anything say "woof".

We already knew this was a possibility

[91degrees]

This was a possibility before. It's still a possibility. Crime happens. We know this. We'll never get 100% crime free. We just have to do the best we can, balancing the risk against other factors such as civil rights and cost.

It's unlikely that anything short of 100% surveillance would have prevented this, and the last islamist extremist attack in the UK was a nutter armed with a car and a machete. Is there really anything MI5 could have done to prevent that?

Re:We already knew this was a possibility

[Xest]

"Is there really anything MI5 could have done to prevent that?"

Yes an awful lot given that MI5 had been told by Kenyan authorities about how they'd tried to cross into Somalia to take part in Al Shabab's jihad there and so knew full well what a risk to the public those two were.

Of course you could argue as others do that "they can't keep an eye on everyone", but if that's the case they might as well just give up and go home right now.

Attention all (potential) subversives

[ihtoit]

Go dark NOW. All communications must be wetware-to-wetware and randomised. Electronic communicaitons will not be acknowledged nor will they be responded to. All previous arrangements are now void, all meetings vacated.

Surveil *that*, motherfuckers.

Re:Attention all (potential) subversives

[bmo]

The point of going dark is to make surveillance expensive. You want "them" to spend as much money as possible. Currently, just about everyone sends plaintext through the Interbutt, for example. Archiving all of this in a building in Utah and using search technology to sift through it, building "instant dossiers," is well within the budget capabilities of many governments.

If everyone uses encryption, there isn't enough computing power in the universe to sift through all of that. At that point, "they" will have to devote actual warm bodies to do surveillance, aka "spies." Spies cost money. They cost a not insignificant amount of money to train and require weekly paychecks. Plus they are quite a bit slower than computers sifting through plain text and unencrypted Skype calls.

What we want to do is break their budgets.

The only drawback to all of this is the instant you mention encryption to Joe User, you get this glassy eyed stare, dead eyes, like a doll's eyes, to butcher a line from Jaws.

--
BMO

Re:Attention all (potential) subversives

[AHuxley]

The number stations will keep working as they always did.

Seeks new powers

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, of course he does. First your freedom of speech is chipped away by the terrorists, then the state chips it away some more. The argument for this is generally something along the lines of "We didn't find the needle in the haystack, therefore we need more haystack".

No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... as long as the top level politicians are disciples of the cult of Politically Correctness the real problem, the problem with the Islamic barbarism will still remain

In fact, those at the top are secretly encouraging them barbarian to commit more barbaric acts so that they can ask for EVEN MORE POWER

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[rmstar]

As long as the top level politicians are disciples of the cult of Politically Correctness the real problem, the problem with the Islamic barbarism will still remain.

That is true. Admitting that there is a problem with islam would be a very big step towards improvement. But since this is categorically denied, it is not possible to find a solution.

BTW, the vast majority of the victims of radical islam are themselves muslims. Maybe it is time for muslims to stand up and say, no, peeps, contrary to what political correctness suggest, we actually do have a problem in our religion, and here in the west it is actually possible to do something about it.

The point, rather obviously, is not to exterminate muslims, but to make the fringes of islam less barbaric.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[chthon]

The police officer which was murdered by the terrorists was also a muslim.

Re: No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Killing 1+ billion people is RATIONAL?

If so, I'm PROUD to be crazy!

Most muslims are quite harmless, though, their religion do have problems being mixed up in affairs of the state, politics and law, making muslim countries repressive and racist compared to Western countries. Especially against minorities.

There is a problem. You are part of it.

Captcha: rearrest

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[ScentCone]

I have a very hard time seeing that the same problem doesn't exists in Christianity and Judaism

Yeah, all of those contemporary examples of Christians and Jews doing things like shooting up rooms full of satirical journalists, and sending mentally challenged young women into vegetable markets with bombs strapped to them - they just won't stop doing that! All of those Christians and Jews that post online videos of themselves beheading their captive hostages, lining up villagers and gunning them down, burning teachers alive for daring to teach girls to read - it's definitely just like what all those thousands of Muslims are doing, no question.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the reason why radical islamists are so powerful in middle east today is mostly western intervention. Be it Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or the gulf states... The islam is not more or less barbaric than christianity, it is just that the wrong people are in power right now, just like the wrong people were in power in medieval christian Europe.

Mankind would be better off accepting that there is a fundamental problem about most religions (not faith, mind you. I am speaking of religions) and overcome it as a relic of the past.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Xest]

Haven't you just disproved your own point? that if the vast majority of victims of Islam are innocent victims then the problem isn't actually with Islam but simply violent thugs?

If the problem is with Islam itself then it seems odd that literally about a billion other muslims manage to practice it entirely peacefully. A problem with the religion itself would imply that all muslims would be effected by it, but they're clearly not, so instead we need to understand what the differentiating trait amongst the subset who are actually problematic is.

It may be that it's another trait in conjunction with the religion itself that's the problem, sure, but it's not clear that it's definitely the religion itself, and it seems very clear that it's not wholly the fault of the religion due to the massive majority that aren't impacted.

Note that I'm not defending religion per-se, I think it's unhelpful and demands people opt for ignorance over evidence, and maybe that is the problem - it makes them vulnerable to extremism, but I think it's clear we can't wholly blame religion, again, given how many peaceful followers of Islam there are - over 10% of the entire world's population in fact.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[herve_masson]

> BTW, the vast majority of the victims of radical islam are themselves muslims. Maybe it is time for muslims to stand up
> and say, no, peeps, contrary to what political correctness suggest, we actually do have a problem in our religion,

I'm uncomfortable with this. Many public persons in my country (france), being journalists, politicians, whatever, make the same claim, urging muslim to react, clearly and loudly. I mean: *more* than other people. I was thinking the same way, but I recently realized it's a trap.

This indirectly suggests that muslim people have something to do with those barbarians asses. It even go further in the direction: "if you don't yell loud enough, you're with them and against us", and that's really really bad to my opinion.

We count million Muslims in our country, and a handful of dumb asses. Yes, a handful: a few hundred people have been filed as "potentially dangerous radical Islamist". The 2 that killed journalists a few days ago were in that list. Not high enough in the list apparently, but that's another story.

Is there really a "problem with islam" ? I feel like its more a problem with a really tiny proportion of incredibly dumb people giving no value to life. They occur to attach themselves a religion, and make it a meaning of life.

We have seen fanatics in every religion in the past, the religion of the day for those guys happens to be islam. That does not make muslims potential killers. That does not make them responsible for those assholes. We should know that Islam and those dudes have nothing in common but a name. We should not need Muslims to remind us this fact more than others.

Now, you may consider that islam has in its foundations the seeds for such violence. I just don't feel this way myself.

Anyway, just my one cent feeling.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[jareth-0205]

As long as the top level politicians are disciples of the cult of Politically Correctness the real problem, the problem with the Islamic barbarism will still remain.

That is true. Admitting that there is a problem with islam would be a very big step towards improvement. But since this is categorically denied, it is not possible to find a solution.

BTW, the vast majority of the victims of radical islam are themselves muslims. Maybe it is time for muslims to stand up and say, no, peeps, contrary to what political correctness suggest, we actually do have a problem in our religion, and here in the west it is actually possible to do something about it.

The point, rather obviously, is not to exterminate muslims, but to make the fringes of islam less barbaric.

But there's a problem also with assuming that there's a systemic problem with a whole belief system like that. Even if it were true (which I don't think it is, and doesn't seem to be from the muslims that I know) if you start saying there's a problem with this group you single them out for discrimination which is exactly the sort of response that the extreme fringes want you to do.

http://www.juancole.com/2015/0...

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[serviscope_minor]

If the problem is with Islam itself then it seems odd that literally about a billion other muslims manage to practice it entirely peacefully.

Not only that but if the problem is with Islam in general, then why was a Muslim policeman murdered when trying to stop the attack?

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from Northern Ireland, it is/was a hell of a lot more about land, allegiance and which constitution you're following than if the pope was the head of your religion or not. Actual arguments about religious dogma never featured very much at all when I was growing up around paramilitaries. It was very much country on country hate, religion just happened to also be a convenient divider - and remember Wolfe Tone was a protestant...

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[coofercat]

You're just a few hundred years too late. Had the technology existed, I'm sure all the things you describe would have been happening during the Crusades.

Rest assured, a lot of people have died in the name of $religion. Thankfully, Christianity has, on the whole, evolved beyond such things )although certain outposts in the US (including the White House) do slip up from time to time). I'll leave the question of Judaism's evolution, and its effect on the Israel/Palestine region to the reader.

I think it's fair to say that just because you're in a club, it doesn't mean that the actions of everyone in that club are things you agree with or support. On occasion, people will join a club in order to give themselves an air of legitimacy, or to give their cause a greater meaning or voice, whilst they continue with a course of action that is contrary to the majority of club members beliefs or support.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[dablow]

Umm...you realize that the Nazis where mostly Christians that tried to exterminate the Jews....Although it was never referred to as a jihad......And if you look in Africa I am pretty sure there are more recent atrocities committed by Christians towards others.

Also we should not forget the irrational hate & fear Christians have towards homosexuals (mostly in the US though)....

Christianity is not that far ahead my friend.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Lumpy]

They were not standard terrorists, That was a military strike team. This is not the typical idiots that shoot with the gun over their heads, these guys were Navy Seal level of skills.

Yet none of the news outlets are talking about it.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[dablow]

You are correct, organized religions and dogmatic though is a serious problem for the human race.

But, as much as I do not like saying this, it is more of a problem for the uneducated & poor, who are more easily duped into committing atrocities. It's not their fault, they just never had a proper education and given the required skills to be able to avoid extremism. It's also a lot easier to blow yourself up when you have 0 hope of ever earning a decent living and getting married (you would be shocked how important this factor is actually).

This is also the outcome of when you go in and destroy the legitimate governments of other countries and leave a power vacuum. Local warlords fight, and sometimes these fights spill over to other nations.

Saddam Hussein, for example, was no angel, not by ANY stretch of the imagination. However he had succeed in creating a relatively safe and peaceful state in the middle east, mostly secular (at least at the central government level) and women enjoying unusual amounts of freedom (compared to it's neighboring states). Is the world a better place, overall, now that the west violently removed him? I personally do not think so (although I am sure a lot of people who suffered at his hands might think so).

Same with what happened in Iran in the 1950's....And so on and so forth....

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Xest]

"All of those Christians and Jews that post online videos of themselves beheading their captive hostages, lining up villagers and gunning them down"

You mean like this?

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/...

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have lived in your mothers basement then because I don't know how you can have missed religious slight after religious slight grafittied on the walls alongside militant murals that were plastered in my neighbourhood there as a kid.

The whole thing was, and still is by those persisting in violence claimed to because the Catholic Irish wanted us Protestants out to make it a wholly Catholic state.

Why do you think so many religious marches are still causing so much trouble to this day?

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your car could be safe to drive 99% of the time, but if it blows up that spectacularly 1% of the time, it's hard to brush it all off as driver error or some other reason.

You mean YOUR car, right?

Clearly, the only logical thing is to ban all cars as there is no way that they can ever be completely safe.
Same applies to all other not completely safe things.

       

IMNSHO same attitude should be applied to religion, for it rules over people's lives just as much if not more than the state.

Let's just ban it then.
All we need is a rule and some guns to enforce it. Oh look! We already have guns!

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[g0bshiTe]

You're trying to compare the military action of a country to the military action of a fringe religious group.

You are also trying to parallel collateral killings to outright civilian targeting.

It's like going duck hunting and accidentally shooting a goose that was in a flock of ducks vs hunting for the goose outright. It's not the same thing.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Penguinisto]

They were not standard terrorists, That was a military strike team. This is not the typical idiots that shoot with the gun over their heads, these guys were Navy Seal level of skills.

Yet none of the news outlets are talking about it.

Yes and no.

They had *just enough* training to be comfortable with the weapons and have a plan, but consider that they went up against newspaper editors in an office, and not a hardened military squad. And yes, judging by my radio on the way in, it is being discussed (albeit on the more right-leaning shows... the left-leaning ones are too busy trying to loudly restate the obvious, as in "OMG islam is a peaceful religion and these guys are not representatives of it and OMG they're no different from Jerry Falwell when he sued Hustler!**

I mean, c'mon - we're used to bumbling fools like the frickin' underwear bomber, so any terrorist with even a small modicum of military training is going to look like a 'SEAL-Delta-Para-Ranger-Force-Space-Shuttle-Door-Gunner(!)' to the masses.

TBH, at most they probably have about the same skill and training as, say, the typical Army boot half way through OSUT training. In other words, they know and are skilled enough to pull off the stunt they did, but would most likely collapse/die/fail if they faced anything stronger than a gaggle of cops (which is pretty much the most that they'd had to go up against so far).

** No shit - some idiot commentator on MSNBC made that comparison yesterday. And they wonder why no one takes that damned channel seriously these days...

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Penguinisto]

Worship of and total allegiance to the State is not Christianity.
A leadership who actively pushed a pseudo-norse mythology based on ubermenchen and "racial purity" is not Christianity.

Nice try and all, but your argument fails. It fails twice over in the face of the fact that activity from the Vatican itself managed to directly rescue an estimated 800,000+ Jews and similarly-targeted folks throughout WWII (and indirectly rescued far more) - in spite of it being unarmed and surrounded.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[operagost]

You really are thick, aren't you? He used the word "contemporary" in a generous attempt to keep someone from looking like an idiot. I think we've solved the Christian violence problem in the modern world. It helps when literacy is widespread, and a religion's texts don't actually call for violence against those of other religions-- it makes it easier to point out the radicals.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Shatrat]

I tend to agree with most of what you said, but you should also keep in mind how many of those millions of Muslims are sending money overseas to 'charities' that are really fronts for ISIS, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, whatever. Certainly far more than a few hundred people. I think those communities that are funneling money to fuel radicals overseas do have some responsibility for the deaths they cause, both abroad and at home and that has to be recognized internally before it will change.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[dablow]

Never said that the Vatican himself was a Nazi. I was pointing out Christians (and the far majority of Germans where Christian at the time) behaving badly towards those of another faith. And it happened in recent history.

My point is, most of the major faiths have committed and are still committing atrocities towards people of other faiths and to humanity in general.

Israel's treatment of Palestine comes to mind....

Christianity has no better track record than Islam, Islam has no better track record than Judaism, and so on and so forth......

It may seem like Christian nations have made some progress, in reality a lot of those nations where hatred and overall violence have diminished have adopted more secular values over the years.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[ikhider]

Certainly, the deployment of drones for extrajudicial executions throughout the Muslim world is less barbaric. So is wholesale bombing of the Middle East in order to play whack-a-mole with ISIS/ISIL/whatever. This extremists did not pop out of Middle Earth looking for The Ring, there are decades, no centuries of foreign policy initiatives that let to a radicalized populace who do not even have political say in their own country. Take post 2003 invasion Iraq, a lot of ISIS/ISIL guys are former Baath party members who were denied political involvement hence a significant demographic became outlaws. The "muzzies" do not come to Europe and North America for the burgers and porn, but to flee war torn regions. If they had their choice, they would stay in their respective lands. Need I remind you that France is also a major colonial power that shaped much of the way the Middle East and Africa is today. When you colonize a region, you had better take on the responsibility that comes with it. When your new subjects come to the doorstep of their new ruler, the ruler had better be willing to take on the problems, not just the wealth of the regions. When you oppress and marginalize a people in their own lands, do not be surprised when radical factions arise and lash out. You want to take the wind out of radicals? You don't need a security apparatus, work out why these people are doing the actions they do. Put pressure for a just, not colonialist foreign policy--then you will see radicals disappear.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[next_ghost]

I'm the AC who posted #48773735.

It was very much country on country hate, religion just happened to also be a convenient divider - and remember Wolfe Tone was a protestant...

What makes you think that islamic terrorism is any different?

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[next_ghost]

It may seem like Christian nations have made some progress, in reality a lot of those nations where hatred and overall violence have diminished have adopted more secular values over the years.

Exactly. The greatest moral progress of the western civilization happened when people stopped taking their religion too seriously.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[dablow]

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that our own Western Govs are funneling money to them indirectly (via heads of states like Saudi Arabia etc).

Keep us in fear, and you keep your people in check...Also convinces a lot of people to WILLINGLY give up their rights and freedoms.....

Of course this is just my speculation......no proof

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[whoever57]

I'll come back to a point I have made earlier. I think that most Muslims are in denial.

A religion cannot allow someone to preach hate and murder in the largest mosque in a capital city for 5 years, only being stopped when the police stepped in, and still claim to be a peaceful religion.

This wasn't some tiny mosque in a backwater town of no-where. This was the largest mosque in London, for 5 years. This was hate and muder being preached in a large mainstream mosque.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[herve_masson]

> I tend to agree with most of what you said, but you should also keep in mind how many of those millions
> of Muslims are sending money overseas to 'charities' that are really fronts for ISIS, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda,
> whatever. Certainly far more than a few hundred people

How many ?

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[squiggleslash]

No no no! We must vilify the world's largest religion because, as the world's largest, it also has the largest number of extremists.

Remember: Muslim terrorism should be blamed on all Muslims. We should also make shit up and repeat it repeatedly like claiming Muslims never condemn it.

Irish Republicans on the other hand? We should only blame Catholics if our audience contains certain certain Protestant groups, otherwise the religious angle should never be mentioned.

Irish Protestants? Nah, they only ever engage in "revenge attacks". That's not even terrorism! (And the Scot-Irish Protestant origins of the Klan have nothing to do with its actions, which BTW aren't acts of terrorism because, hello, they're Americans!)

The Stern Gang? While I'm an anti-semite just to bring that up! Besides they were fighting a brutal undemocratic dictatorship which uh wasn't Nazi Germany but was nearby on the other side of the North Sea!

(You know, I wouldn't mind the general nuttiness so much if we agreed that ideological extremism is an evil that leads to terrorism, and that most religions are guilty of that, but no, instead we pretend there's issues with one, and only one, religion, and demonize _all_ followers of that religion as somehow untrustworthy and inclined to violence in a way others aren't. Some even pretend to be saying that, but they never, ever, condemn non-Islamic terrorism in the same way, and they always take pains to single out Islam by name and condemn its followers universally.)

As I've said before, I can't tell if the next Hitler, the real one, not some easily overthrowable tin-pot dictator, the next one that organizes an actual holocaust, will be an Islamic figure from the East, or a Christian from the West.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[datavirtue]

I have seen protestant rich-kid heathens machine gunning and sniping civs from the top of a building while laughing and jumping around like school girls. I dont care who you are or what label you reside under....evil is deriving enjoyment from the pain of others...I have seen evil.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Cederic]

As I've said before, I can't tell if the next Hitler, the real one, not some easily overthrowable tin-pot dictator, the next one that organizes an actual holocaust, will be an Islamic figure from the East, or a Christian from the West.

Clearly you haven't been reading the fucking reports coming out of ISIS held territories then.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Man On Pink Corner]

A leadership who actively pushed a pseudo-norse mythology based on ubermenchen and "racial purity" is not Christianity.

Yeah, that must be why Wehrmacht soldiers' belt buckles were emblazoned with the motto "God is With Us." It was Odin's fault all along, I guess.

Nice try and all, but your argument fails. It fails twice over in the face of the fact that activity from the Vatican itself managed to directly rescue an estimated 800,000+ Jews and similarly-targeted folks throughout WWII (and indirectly rescued far more) - in spite of it being unarmed and surrounded.

As usual with the Catholic Church, most of their acts of charity and compassion are directed towards fixing social problems they actively participated in causing.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[fustakrakich]

those at the top cultivated the barbarian, grew it from rag-tag regional gang bangers into a global army, ready to strike at any time. This whole 'Islam' thing is a distraction from those who seek power. It is a very effective tool, used to exploit human weakness and overwhelm reason. Find the money, and the only possible conclusion will not sit well with most anybody here.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Hognoxious]

This is not the typical idiots that shoot with the gun over their heads, these guys were Navy Seal level of skills.

There's quite a range in between.

Yet none of the news outlets are talking about it.

Because, for the reasons given above, it's bollocks.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[cheater512]

Christians should lead by example and do the same.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[neoritter]

The Nazis, and German public by association, weren't doing it because Christianity said to do it. You'd have an easier time arguing that they did it due to science. It was an in thing to research racial science. Charles Lindberg himself, one of the most influential Americans of the time had supported the notion of racial purity (from a scientific stand point). You can find plenty of things in history to throw out for Christianity. No reason to Godwin the discussion and try to pin Nazism, or more specifically the Holocaust, on Christianity.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[neoritter]

Are you brain dead, or are you just that biased and ignorant?

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[neoritter]

Wahabism, the Sunni sub-sect that started all this crud was put into power by the British in the early 20th century.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[fustakrakich]

Religion is a tool for psychological manipulation. It matters not what denomination you use. Yesterday it was the Christians, today, the Muslims... It's not too hard to even incite the Buddhists (peaceful bunch they are, eh?) and Hindus into burning down a village or two, so, there you go. But nobody here wants to even look for who benefits from all this. I, mean, even the New Yorker has it right. They call it the terrorism business. When properly framed as such, you are at least pointing the right direction in your search for the perpetrators. The ideology serves its purpose in the pep talk rallies for the tyrants, but is totally out of line in a serious investigation.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[fustakrakich]

mostly in the US though

Heh, travel to Uganda. The American mega-preachers are having much better luck over there.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[tburkhol]

BTW, the vast majority of the victims of radical islam are themselves muslims. Maybe it is time for muslims to stand up and say, no, peeps, contrary to what political correctness suggest, we actually do have a problem in our religion, and here in the west it is actually possible to do something about it.

This sounds rather like asking all Christians to stand up and accept blame for the abortion clinic bombers and the systematic sexual abuse perpetrated by FLDS. Westerners seem very capable of recognizing that the existence of Christian Crazies does not mean Christianity is crazy; why is it so hard to accept that the existence of Islamic Crazies does not make Islam crazy?

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[davester666]

"I mean, c'mon - we're used to bumbling fools like the frickin' underwear bomber, so any terrorist with even a small modicum of military training is going to look like a 'SEAL-Delta-Para-Ranger-Force-Space-Shuttle-Door-Gunner(!)' to the masses."

I mean, c'mon - we're used to bumbling fools like the frickin' underwear bomber, so any terrorist with even a small modicum of military training is going to sold as a 'SEAL-Delta-Para-Ranger-Force-Space-Shuttle-Door-Gunner(!)' to the masses.

FTFY

Pretty much every wacko that has done something while being muslim has been labelled a terror attack, and after every "attack" the talking heads announce that we have to give up any pretense of freedom to maybe be able to stop the next one.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Penguinisto]

Pretty much every wacko that has done something while being muslim has been labelled a terror attack, and after every "attack" the talking heads announce that we have to give up any pretense of freedom to maybe be able to stop the next one.

Partially agree - I agree perfectly with the latter half of the quoted sentence.

The former half? Well, if the guy is shouting "Allahu Ackbar!" and expressing desires to die a martyr while attacking unarmed civilians? It's gonna fall under the definition of terrorism.

The politicians' grab for power is a grab at opportunity, not a construct.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[rmstar]

Haven't you just disproved your own point?

No, of course not.

that if the vast majority of victims of Islam are innocent victims then the problem isn't actually with Islam but simply violent thugs?

Your sentence is gliberish, and doesn't say what you meant. But whatever.

Just like smoking causes cancer, which isn't anything the smokers actually want, Islam causes violence and grief without its adepts really wanting it. Of course everyone involved would be better off without it. Of course the humans that fall for Islam are victims. The problem is how to free them of that.

And just like admitting that you have a problem is the first step out of alcoholism or drug addiction, so it is the first step out of barbarism.

Islam is a problem. Look at the world today. Where is a free, prosperous Islamic state? Where? They are all host of no end of calamities and disgusting cruelty. Why?

You Will Know Them by Their Fruits.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Man On Pink Corner]

I'm rubber, you're glue. Bounced off me, stuck to you. (Am I doing this right? It's been a while since second grade.)

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[ihtoit]

fuck me, if one in a hundred cars was destined to explode I think they'd be banned as weapons of mass destruction.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[ihtoit]

His name is David Cameron.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[ihtoit]

those two were actually on the MI6 watch list and on the UKBA Denial list. They would have been refused entry into the UK. Apparently.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[HiThere]

If you said "mock scientific" point of view, I'd agree with you. He did not use science, but pseudo-science. like giving IQ tests to people who didn't speak English, and then classify them as morons. (I don't think that was Lindberg. That was Binet...the Binet of Stanford-Binet.) But Lindberg's science was no better.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[HiThere]

It is not clear to what extent the Roman Catholic Church actively supported the Nazis. It is clear that they came to an agreement to support the Italian Fascists...but that is really a different animal. It's also clear that the aforesaid church did not behave in a particularlly principled or noble way, and did not live up to its espoused principles, but my guess is that this was largely governed by justified fear. They knew that if they challenged a superior physical force no big daddy was going to help them.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[HiThere]

The Buddhists actually *are* relatively peaceful, though not entirely. And they Hindus don't even make claims in that direction. *Some* of their gods favor peaceful actions, others would like to bathe in blood. Read the Baghadvagita.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[HiThere]

Actually, an indictment of all fundamentalist religions isn't unreasonable. Anybody who believes that their religious belief gives them the right to control your actions is not sanely civilized.

It is unfortunate, but to believe that this applies to a greater percentage of Muslims than of other religions is not unreasonable. The Koran is much more explicit that followers of their prophet must enforce the belief upon others than is any other scripture that I am aware of. Therefore people who take it seriously will seriously believe that they have the right to enforce actions upon others. Most things in the Old Testament can be worked around. The New Testament doesn't really say anything that directly claims that one has the right to coerce someone else to behave as claimes. Hindu writing are contradictory, speaking for several different dieties, only some of whom believe that one has the duty (or that some people have the duty, it's not clear that, e.g., anyone besides Arjuna as the duty to kill all their cousins) to control the actions of others. And nothing in the original writings of the Buddha even seem to imply such a duty. Now there may be other religions with those values, but I don't know of them.

OTOH, many Muslims are quite willing to give a mystical or metaphorical interpretation to those sections that are most repellent to me. (Personally, I don't understand how they can justify both beliving in the Koran and allowing people who know of the Koran to live without obeying is, but I'm quite happy that they are able to do so.) OTOH, I can't read Arabic, and I've only read one translation. Perhaps if I studied it more this would make sense.

Still, to me it seems that the Muslim religion is unique in requiring that everyone be coerced into following its teachings. Some other religions promise eternal damnation if you don't, but that's not the same thing as requiring change right now.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[Xest]

"Your sentence is gliberish"

What's gliberish? Is it like an elven language or something?

"Just like smoking causes cancer, which isn't anything the smokers actually want, Islam causes violence and grief without its adepts really wanting it."

This implies that you believe all 1.2 billion muslims are violent, because if that's what Islam causes then it follows that all muslims must be victim of it.

Of course, that's not true, because all we need is one single peaceful adherent to prove it, of which we infact have a billion or more, so your argument is broken from the very outset. The fact that you can't follow this basic logical point doesn't bode well for painting yourself as a rational person, you're clearly not if you can't see how broken your argument is - to follow your argument as you have requires one to throw logic out the window.

"Where is a free, prosperous Islamic state?"

Kurdistan? Qatar? UAE?

"They are all host of no end of calamities and disgusting cruelty. Why?"

Mostly because of foreign intervention having kept them down for many centuries.

Why not just come out and say you're an Islamophobe and fear those who are different? You'd save yourself of an awful lot of words to tell us the exact same thing you're telling us anyway.

Re:No matter how much power we gave them ...

[neoritter]

I said "easier time" not that it'd necessarily work. Whether Lindbergh actually conducted credible scientific research on the matter is moot, eugenics was a very popular notion among scientists and intellectuals in general at the time. I mention Lindbergh because he was a American cultural icon and science promoter in that period of time. And in some ways a scientist himself, he created the first heart pump. His conversion, for lack of a better word, into the cult of eugenics started with his interaction with Dr. Alexis Carrel a surgeon who helped him on the heart surgery issue.

I'm not saying science caused the Holocaust. I'm just saying there's a more solid argument that "science" was more involved than Christianity was.

Would that help?

[Roodvlees]

It seems clear that extremism cannot be fought with violence. Afganistan? Irak?
9/11 came with a massive increase in power, and what has that done for us?
Aparently there is no such thing as lessons learned for these guys.

Even more so with these guys. So what we must do is try to understand the underlying problem.

In my opinion that's religion. It blocks people's ability to think rationally about something because of indoctrination.
We should stop supporting religion. People are free to believe whatever they want, but they should pay for it themselves.

More police power just reduces the freedom we have, which is exactly what these terrorists want.

Re:Would that help?

[Zocalo]

It's definitely part of the solution and can definitely help in some situation, but it's not the best general approach and has the highly likely side effect of perpetuating the problem by creating more extremists as a result of the actions taken again existing ones that goes wrong. This has clearly been happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and everywhere else this approach has been used where many extremists cite past attacks against earlier extremists that have claimed the lives of friends and family (innocent or otherwise) as their motivation. As you note, it also gives the terrorists exactly what they want; forcing those they are attacking onto the backfoot and reducing the freedom of the people to the point that there's not really all that much difference between the control enforced by the state and the control the extremists want to enforce.

The wake of the attack on Charlie Hebdo has given us a look at a far more effective general solution in my opinion, and one that ought to be used far more than the usual approaches of guns, smartbombs, mass surveillance and security theatre. The use of "Je suis Charlie" has been a rallying cry by which people can stand up and be counted as being opposed to what the extremists are trying to achieve. More importantly it has done so in a way that does not offend those that the extremists probably believe they are acting on behalf of so that they can (and have) stand up and make a statement to the effect that this is not what they want - something simply reprinting the original images does not. Demonstrating to extremists that, actually, most people - including those you think you are fighting for - don't feel the same way ought to make at least some of those that are not just in it for the violence to start questioning whether they are on the right path after all, and maybe stand down without any further bloodshed - on either side.

Re:Would that help?

[nickmalthus]

Fear is a great fund raiser for the military industrial complex. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars will cost between four and six trillion dollars. Think of what all that money could have paid for and what we got for it. I am much more afraid of dying a long and painful death from cancer rather than being killed in a terrorist attack which is statistically next to impossible to happen. All four of my grandparents were diagnosed with cancer and two died from it. Where is the trillion dollar war on cancer? On the other hand some brainwashed malcontents assaults a small group of people and one would think it is the apocalypse. Certainly the government, the media, and their corporate sponsors will exploit every penny possible out of this tragic event to further their institutional objectives.

Re:Would that help?

[Roodvlees]

Much of that comes from religion. Cancer is accepted as a decision from god. But a Terrorist attack shows there are people who don't want freedom (most religious people want freedom now because religion has lost in the western world). This is shocking to many. Also because human behaviour is considered to be much more preventable: 'Can't we just oppress those who think differently a little bit more? Then we won't have to think about why they did it in the first place.

Re:Would that help?

[nehumanuscrede]

Not entirely true I think.

Extremism CAN be fought with violence, one just needs to quit pissing about and get it done.

The problem is, we're too nice. We go into a conflict with rules of engagement whereas the enemy operates without them. This puts us at a huge disadvantage right from the beginning. Is why we can't win a gorilla style conflict. We have too many rules. They know this and use it to their advantage. As long as we continue to play by their rules, we'll always lose.

As for an example of violence stopping violence, I need merely point to the following dates: August 6th and August 9th, 1945.

It does work, but you have to toss aside the idea of pretending to be the nice guys and make the decision to go all in.

Re:Would that help?

[Dcnjoe60]

Even more so with these guys. So what we must do is try to understand the underlying problem.

In my opinion that's religion. It blocks people's ability to think rationally about something because of indoctrination.
We should stop supporting religion. People are free to believe whatever they want, but they should pay for it themselves.

You are 100% correct on the need to understand the problem, but you fail on defining it. It is not religion that is the problem. People rise up and do all sorts of violent things and there is no religion involved. It is all about ideology and there are many more ideologies than religions. There's are political ideologies, economic ideologies, social ideologies, philosophical ideologies, to name but a few.

Banning free thought, whether religious or any other kind, is not the answer. Neither is increasing police power.

In terms of religion, the late John XXIII said if you want peace work for justice. That seems pretty rational to me. Obviously when people do such attacks, whether the one in France, or shooting up a school or other acts, they have a deep sense of an injustice having occurred and to them, this is the only available course of action. That doesn't mean they are right, just that to them, their actions are justified.

Instead of spending more time, effort and money on increasing police power, we might be better served if it were directed at the injustices in the world.

Re:Would that help?

[NewYork]

Democracy is the Government of the Politicians, by the Politicians, for the Politicians.

"They always want something more..."

[Loki_1929]

"They always want to meet; the SS love to meet, and they always want something more, 'til they have everything."

— Dr Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, Conspiracy

Insult to injury

[seoras]

I was just waiting for some dick head in the establishment to show the same sort of insecurity that led those self righteous arseholes in Paris to murder cartoonists.
In they step over the bodies and blood looking for the best spin, angle and outcome for their own agendas.
They didn't stop these deluded morons this time and their laws won't stop the next ones. There, sadly, will always be a next time.
What pisses me off is that they patronise us with their "we'll do something about preventing it happening again in exchange for you giving up some of your rights and freedoms".
The truth is they (the establishment) are as afraid and insecure about all of us as the few violent extremists that are out there.
What happened in Paris in 1793 at the Place de la Révolution is probably of more concern to Andrew Parker than what happened to Charlie.

Re:It seems we'll have to come to this

[hcs_$reboot]

Depending on who's gonna get the key to root... could well be rm -rf `find / -not -iname "*islam*"`

Oh do shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always the same song, it never helps, and it's the same everywhere.

Who cares that he goes "I cannae do it cap'n, I need more powerrr!"? He'll do that anyway. It's what he does. He and everyone else in that industry.

No thanks

[Bender Unit 22]

No thanks. I'd rather keep my freedom. I find the governments intrusion/power grab much more scary than terrorists.
(Sadly the people I vote for who are against it, are in a minority thanks to the fear mongers in politics and the news media)

Normal stuff, isn't it?

[aglider]

[A security related entity] Chief Seeks New Powers After [a (potentially) bloody event] Attack.

It's getting so annoying that I would include it in all constitutions. So they just fill in a form and get new powers.

No one is calling for extremination of Islam

[Taco Cowboy]

What I am talking about is the problem of Islamic barbarism --- not Islam itself

Re:No one is calling for extremination of Islam

[Anonymous Coward]

What I am talking about is the problem of Islamic barbarism --- not Islam itself

Because barbarism, and politically motivated violence is particular to Islam? No. The West doesn't fear Islamic law they/we fear Unity under Islamic Law. We are willing to countenance extreme violence against civilians by even our allies and friends as long as they remain divided and manageable.

When push comes to shove we always back the manageable dictator with guns and money over a less predictable democratic system no matter how many people are tortured and killed to keep them in power.

Oh but it is all civilized if it is not on You Tube and you have the decency to slaughter innocent people behind closed gates off camera? No, US foreign policy has not matched the cynical short sighted actions of US agents on the ground or in the skies above.

Instead of attacking the tradition of Islamic Law we should be consistently promoting democracy and freedom as an alternative. Indeed many aspects of democratic elections and strong human rights should be seen as a natural evolution of the best aspects of traditional Islamic Law. Because even traditional Islamic Law would actually be better than the rule of terror under dictatorships and corrupt US backed governments that permeate the Middle East and saying otherwise just makes us all fools... or worse it makes us knowing accomplices to these atrocities.

I am speaking against Islamic *BARBARISM* !

[Taco Cowboy]

I am not speaking against Islam

Islam is a religion. Just like any other religion it has good parts in it and it has its fair share of rotten stuffs

What I am speaking out against is the Islamic Barbarism, the viewpoint of some of those who think Muslims are of 'better people' and the rest, the 'infidels' are scums of the earth and deserve to die

That kind of barbaric viewpoint is the one I am speaking out against, not Islam

Re: I am speaking against Islamic *BARBARISM* !

[ihtoit]

tell that to the 53 million foreign non-combatants who have died at the hands of the United States military since 1945.

thank you snowden

[WindBourne]

Well now that snowden has told AQ, north Korea, China, ISIS, etc how we USED to spy on them, we now have the first of many coming attacks. The real problem, is that 5Is have already taken things to the edge of legal (or beyond). Personally, I am hesitant to extend things. If UK goes over the edge, i suspect that america will try to follow.
At this time, we may simply have to acknowledge that AQ and Isis are about to bring major terrorism to the west.

Re:thank you snowden

[shortscruffydave]

I wish I had mod points to mod you up with, but I've already commented (similar to your comment) on this article

Re:thank you snowden

[WindBourne]

Yeah.
Funny thing is, that I worked on USA PAT act. I saw when the GOP removed the congressional oversight that things were going to get bad.
So, part of me really understands Snowden and his outing of out capabilities to spy on Americans. I really do.

BUT, once he started talking about how we spy on everybody around the world, and esp. how we do it to AQ, Russia, North Korea, etc, he changed from a whistle blower to a traitor.
For the next 5 years, the west is in a great deal of trouble. I am not a fan of allowing more opening of the gov to spy on us. So ......

The barbarians will murder anyone they want

[Taco Cowboy]

Remember that American aid worker Peter Kassig that got his head cut off?

He has converted in Islam but that still didn't prevent them barbarians from cutting his head off

Re:The barbarians will murder anyone they want

[tehcyder]

Remember that American aid worker Peter Kassig that got his head cut off?

He has converted in Islam but that still didn't prevent them barbarians from cutting his head off

Surely this shows that it is not Islam itself that is the problem?

It is not "political correctness" to differentiate between ordinary Muslims and terrorists who are Muslims.

Re:The barbarians will murder anyone they want

[g0bshiTe]

The infidel can convert and shall be embraced but he is still the infidel.

Re:The barbarians will murder anyone they want

[jader3rd]

Surely this shows that it is not Islam itself that is the problem?

Nope, I'm not seeing that at all. Given that the worlds most violent people tend to be Muslim, it may actually be Islam that's the problem.

Re:The barbarians will murder anyone they want

[Kartu]

Pardon me, but how does this show that Islam itself is not the problem?
It merely shows that being Muslim doesn't save you from Muslim fanatics.

Now, examples that you have mentioned, pardon my cynicism, were more of a collateral damage. The terrorists weren't after these people because they were Muslims. However there have been dozens if not thousands of Shia Muslims vs Sunni Muslims terrorist attacks in Iraq.

Problems with Islam:

1) Apostasy in a crime punishable with the death penalty

2) To qualify as apostasy, one doesn't even to renounce Islam or join another religion, just questioning "fundamental tenet or creed" of Islam is enough. (e.g. Sharia law)

In 23 (!!!) (as you'd guess, Muslim) countries apostasy is covered through criminal laws (which is a violation of universal human rights) it is THAT bad.

Re:The barbarians will murder anyone they want

[fustakrakich]

Surely this shows that it is not Islam itself that is the problem?

That's right. It's the designated distraction from those who hire these people to do this stuff. I don't give a damn about whatever ideology is there, it still takes money to motivate people, even the most fanatical have a price. Everybody here is sniffing the wrong butt.

Re:From a historical perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even more interesting that the United States presently seems to combine both.

Re:Enough means already...

[tehcyder]

... to snoop on the real terrorists.
Does he really think that terrorists are going to send each other emails, tweets or Facebook messages expressing their intentions?

The problem is that if the terrorists do send each other a plain text message saying "tomorrow we bomb X" or whatever, and the authorities do not intercept and act on it, everyone will accuse them of incompetence when the bomb goes off at X.

No Guarantees

[maroberts]

We don't expect our security services to guarantee prevention of every single attack. We expect them to do their best to prevent attacks within the constraint of ensuring that our basic rights are affected to the minimum extent necessary. We are prepared to accept a few incidents if it means that no intrusion onto our rights is necessary.

Parent is NOT insightful

[Bearhouse]

Rubbish. Whilst I agree that a lot of the recent abuses of power are inexcusable, the job of the security forces is not easy.

Lack of resources mean that they cannot be physically watching every suspect all the time, (probably a good thing, you might say).

So, what do you do with the people who meet your criteria, (and there are many of them). Detain them without trial?

Re:Parent is NOT insightful

[fnj]

We are not saying their job is easy. We are saying they are doing a very bad job with what they have. Giving them more power would be just enabling more of a bad job.

Take the no-fly list for example. You have allegedly identified people whom you are afraid to let fly, even though the claim is that flights are perfectly safe now. Why in hell are you letting these allegedly fearsome people roam about freely as long as they don't fly? Not only does it make no sense, it is so daft as to beggar belief.

Re:Parent is NOT insightful

[Xest]

"Lack of resources mean that they cannot be physically watching every suspect all the time"

So if they're so short on resources why have they been expending so much time monitoring people who aren't suspects and aren't even threats?

Let's take the Lee Rigby case an example. The security services have been harvesting the communications of each and every citizen in the UK as far as possible, they claim this is to help detect threats. Given this, why do you believe that whilst this implies they have the capacity to determine amongst the communications of 64 million citizens those which are and aren't threats and yet they don't have the resources and manpower to determine if two guys who tried to join a violent jihadist organisation in Somali and were extradited back from Kenya as a result are or aren't threats?

Do you not see the silliness of your argument? You believe they're under resourced, but if that's the case and they don't even have the resources to determine threats that are blatant and put right in front of them by the Kenyan security services et. al. then how will giving them even more powers to gather even more information help exactly?

If resourcing was the problem wouldn't they be asking for more resources rather than more powers?

I don't think you've really thought your argument through.

Re:From a historical perspective

[ledow]

Because people still equate two French nationals with a particular belief with the Middle East because of racial stereotyping?

It's like saying that some neo-Nazi born in the US committing a terrorist act is because of the deterioration of German laws.

And if you really want to get into the answers, try working out why you have to bomb an entire country to oblivion, including civilians, because a terrorist group from there bombed you once. It's akin to the UK trying to nuke Washington because the KKK came over and planted a bomb in London.

The Middle East gets bombed back to sand every decade or so, and then they'll have an uprising against their oppressors, which their oppressors then try to stomp down harder on. And then they wonder why - when they replace the native government with one of their own - they have to come back a few years later because the country is in revolt again.

You liberate nobody by bombing them and their neighbours back to the Stone Age, almost constantly since the 70's, in one form or another. If you don't want people blaming you, keep the hell out of it.

Re:One Word: GITMO

[tehcyder]

I suggest Cwmbran, in Wales.

I dislike murdering psychotic religious fanatics as much as the next man, but...WALES?

We're supposed to be better than the terrorists.

It's political correctness that LIE to the people

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not "political correctness" to differentiate between ordinary Muslims and terrorists who are Muslims

Hmm no!

It's PRECISELY because of Poltical Correctness that the Islamic Barbarism movement has sprouted

Those who subscribe to Political Correctness will label people who dare to call a spade, a spade, such as identifying the barbaric tendency amongst many Muslims "Haters"

Precisely because of Political Correctness no one dare to voice out when things started to go wrong

And when no one voicing out when things started to go wrong, the things that went wrong went MORE wrong, and those things grew and grew, until we have ...

* The Boston Marathon Bombing, the
http://www.cbsnews.com/feature...

* The Murder and videotaping of an 8-year old girl in Toulouse
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012...

* The Hostage taking and murder saga at Sydney
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

The list could go on, and on, and on, and the one common thread, apart from the Islamic barbarism is POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

If it wasn't because of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS all those barbaric fuckers would have been flushed out long before they carried out their dastard acts

Those motherfucking Islamic barbarians hide behind the curtains of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS and thriving

Their number is growing, and they are everywhere

Thanks to the motherfucking POLITICAL CORRECTNESS more and more bloody episodes of Islamic Barbarism will happen on the Western soil

More and more innocent people will be needlessly butchered, and we have POLITICAL CORRECTNESS to thank for !

Re:Powers?????

[tehcyder]

I am speculating however that if even 2 or 3 of the weekly's personnel carried (and used) the odd .38 or 9mm, it would have mattered substantially in the outcome

There were two armed and highly trained policemen guarding them, and that didn't help much.

If all the staff had been carrying machine guns, the terrorists would just have bombed the offices instead. In Afghanistan and Iraq there are a lot of armed people around, so the terrorists use car bombs.

MI5 chief seeks new powers

[rossdee]

By all means - expose him to really high does of gamma radiation and see what kind of superpower(s) he gets

Well it worked for the Fantastic 4 and the incredible hulk

Re:Easier and better for your citizens

[fnj]

more Muslims have condemned the attacks than have instigated, been involved with, or praised them

The fallacy of the fairy tale you WISH were true.

Powers

[shortscruffydave]

It doesn't say what new powers he wants. It makes it hard to decide whether this is good or bad, because general surveillance of everyone is very different from powers to monitor those who are already under suspicion - with prosper controls like court warrants, etc.

I suspect that he needs an alternative to what he has been doing, because Snowden blabbed about the surveillance techniques used and so the bad guys know how to evade them

Can't guarantee?

[Gibgezr]

An attack on the UK was "highly likely" and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said.

So, if he gets these new powers, he will guarantee that they can stop the attacks? Suuuuuuuuuure.

why not old powers?

[fey000]

Are you looking to replace Austin Powers?

Fixing Islam is Simple

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Establish a policy that you deport the families of perpetrators of terror attacks.

It is hard to celebrate the idea of being a martyr is you know your family is going be living back in squalor of the 3rd world as a consequence of what you've done.

It isn't hard, just attach a fair and meaningful stigma and mean business about it. You can't be toothless about it like France has a history of doing; doing nothing and looking the other way does not solve problem. And France has historically done nothing with these problems and to nobody's surprise they keep happening again and again.

what's wrong with the process

[beefoot]

In most developed countries -- law enforcement could get a hold of what they want by simply getting a court order. If they want to tap into my phone line, as long as they could justify that in front of a judge, they will get it. If they suspect person X has a tie to a terrorist organization, why not get a court order to spy the shit out of this person. What's wrong with this process?

Re:what's wrong with the process

[Prof.Phreak]

Because big data...

Just like big data can determine that someone's pregnant due to their shopping patterns, perhaps big data can determine that someone's a terrorist due to their behavior.

Re:what's wrong with the process

[beefoot]

Right -- combing one's behaviour for his/her criminal intent is so 70's. The big data today could determine if someone will be a criminal/terrorist when the person hasn't even born yet. That way pregnancy could be terminated ahead of time and we will enjoy world peace every single day.

Pretty sure he was asking before

[Hognoxious]

It was mentioned on Newsnight and/or the Daily Proleantics last week.

Give Peace a Chance

[jbrohan]

Guns and violence are not going to change anybody's mind. The only hope as I see it is to make friends with the Muslims. We don't have to oppress them, we could try being nice .

I know your feelings, M...

[Iniamyen]

...but I insist you reactivate the 00s!

Re: It's political correctness that LIE to the peo

[magarity]

Isn't "genocide" based on a genome? I think what you mean is "religiocide".

Bass Ack Words

[zentigger]

This is such a load of complete narrow-minded thinking by small-minded people who can't see beyond their own greed.

Really!

As long as politicians are for sale this problem will not be solved. There is simply too much profit to be made by selling guns and bombs that there is no REAL motive to solve the terrorist problem. (See what I did there? This isn't a problem of Islamists, Christians or Moonies for that matter!)

The terrorists are fighting because they have NOTHING TO LOSE.

Take a fraction of the BILLIONS of dollars that are being literally thrown away on bombs and bullets, and invest in infrastructure: roads, hospitals, communications ; justice: the real sort, not the typical highest bidder type of justice we are all becoming used to; and education. Yes, you will still have nut-jobs. They are everywhere, but if the majority of the people feel secure, and productive, they will be happy, and WAY less likely to pick up a gun and start shooting infidels.

Re: It's political correctness that LIE to the peo

[neoritter]

No.
Wikitionary:

Coined in 1943 by Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish-Jewish legal scholar, to describe what the Nazis perpetrated against the Jewish people in the Holocaust[1]. From the stem of Ancient Greek (génos, “race, kind”) or Latin gns (“tribe, clan”) (as in genus), + -cide (“killing, killer”).

Never been true

[s13g3]

"MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it" That's no more or less true today than it was 5, 10, 25 or 50 years ago. Presuming otherwise is like presuming you can prevent a single, truly determined and capable individual, from assassinating someone else, which history has proven time and time again is impossible. Sure, they might say they can fairly reliably catch amateurs and idiots, but no matter how much power they are granted to do whatever they wish, they will

• never

be able reliably detect and stop the truly determined and capable, any more than police actually stop crime.

Stop immigration

[johncandale]

If these well settled countries would stop immigration for awhile it would solve all sorts of problems in ways you might not expect.

Not only would internal security census be easier, but more people would integrate, adopt cultural mores. There will never be any peace when 65% of a persons family is back home in the middle east that is either in a war or hides women away. I know several women in the US that were quietly sent overseas when they started to become too American. Everything is culture. How can you expect less when they act more like colonists then immigrants? Mass Immigration of the sort going on now to ancient countries like England or France is just a terrible idea. Even it is travelers that do the attack, it is residents that billeted them. And yes I know it is all the EU's doing

Re: It's political correctness that LIE to the peo

[ihtoit]

the legal definition of genocide is manifold, but it does encompass the killing of (any number of) members of one group based on race or ethnicity, by a State party.
It also encompasses the forced removal of (any number of) children from one group to another group based on not only race or ethnicity, but also religion and political stance. The latter is known as cultural genocide.

Disclosure: IAAL.

"Never let a crisis go to waste"

[eric_harris_76]

Or a tragedy.

Religion was born when first conman met first fool

[NewYork]

Let Civilized Muslims deal with Radical Muslims.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...