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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."
We must give unlimited powers to the supreme chancellor!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
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.
Please login to access my lawn
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.
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.
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....
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
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".
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.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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.
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....