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Ohio Government Websites Hacked With Pro-Islamic State Messages (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:
The websites of Ohio Governor John Kasich and other state government agencies were hacked on Sunday with a posting professing love for the jihadist group Islamic State. Ten state websites and two servers were affected, and they've been taken off line for an investigation with law enforcement into how the hackers were able to deface them, said Tom Hoyt, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Administrative Services... The same pro-Islamic State message, accompanied by music, were also shown on Sunday on the website of Brookhaven, a town on New York's Long Island about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Manhattan, the New York Post reported... Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2018, posted on Facebook that the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction website had been hacked and said, "Wake up freedom-loving Americans. Radical Islam infiltrating the heartland."
"...Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2018, posted on Facebook that the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction website had been hacked and said, "Wake up freedom-loving Americans. Radical Islam infiltrating the heartland.""
Wake up freedom loving Americans, Douchebag trying to infiltrate the Senate in 2018.
This is just BS from start to finish. The phrase 'known to security services' is used a lot, but that does not mean these individuals are under 24/7 monitoring. 'Known to security services' just means their name has come up at some point during some check up, ie. that these people are not in the country illegally/without the permission of the officials. This group of 'known to officials' includes everyone vetted and cleared by the officials, as well as everyone with friends and family of a person that's ever been a person of interest. Say someone's brother or a friend travels over to Syria, these people are then likely interviewed/checked by the security officials and are now under the category of 'known to officials'.
Officials in Brittain and elsewhere have openly said one of the problems is there is not enough human resources to track/monitor every potential threat 24/7. Whether this is actually the case or whether the UK authorities simply want to use this as a leverage to gain more powers á la the Patriot act I do not know, Speaking about the London bridge attacker, assistant comissioner Mark Rowley said he "was known to the security services, but there was no evidence of "attack planning" by him." (source).
You're trying to insinuate that European and American intelligence agencies know well in advance who's going to attack and where and just can't do anything because of "human rights" (using air quotes as if the concept would be somehow difficult or vague to understand). If there's probable cause that someone's planning an attack, of course they're arrested and prosecuted. What's really going on is that the security services are doing their best to try and prevent/arrest people who're actually planning crimes but no system is 100 % perfect. If there is no evidence that someone is actively planning an attack there's simply no way in most countries for the authorities to have the money/legal power to keep these individuals under surveillance 24/7 'just in case'. So in the example mentioned earlier, if someone's interviewed because their friend/family member went to Syria and nothing of interest comes up during this check, they're not going to be put under 24 hour surveillance. If this individual years later self-radicalizes (in a fashion very similar to western born school shooters) and commits an attack, he/she was 'known to officials' but this obviously does not translate to 'the officials were watching them continuously and had exact details about the planned attack, however chose to do nothing because of the subject's 'human rights'" and anybody who thinks so is an idiot.
There seems to be a misconception in the west that the security services are somehow all knowing and all powerful (they're not, they just like to project that image) and could prevent all attacks if we just got rid of such pesky things such as the rule of law and gave the authorities the power to kick in doors and disappear people based on just their internet search history without any probable cause or a trial but I really would hope people on /. are smart enough and know enough history to understand why this is unwise.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Interestingly the concert bomber was a known threat, and here comes the problem with painting all Muslims with the same brush: he was a known threat because the Muslim community had reported him as a threat !
His own Imam had banned him from his mosque over his violent rhetoric and reported him to the authorities over his bragging that he was planning a violent attack.
His family had made similar reports, wanting him watched - because they'd rather see him in jail for conspiracy to commit terror than dead from doing it.
Why was he not being watched ? Because the Tories have cut the police force's budget by over 25% in recent years leaving Britain (and London in particular) with a massive shortage of cops. Thousands had to be let go due to this insane policy.
Ironically - while the government keeps trying to use terror to get further reductions in citizen privacy and surveilance power (things that do not help to prevent terror attacks) they gutted the one thing that DOES have the power to stop terror attacks: good old fashioned police work.
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In the USA - in the past 9 years, Islamic groups have launched 63 attempted attacks of which 76% were prevented by law enforcement. 13% of successful attacks had fatalities. Overall death toll: 90 (mostly because of the high deathtoll in the Orlando nightclub shooting - which it is not certain was, in fact, an Islamic terror attack)
Rightwing Christian terror groups planned 135 attacks of which only 35% were prevented. 33% had fatalities. Overall death toll: 79 (pretty close considering they haven't had a nightclub shooting outlier in there - and of course if the Kansas Mosque/Appartment bombing hadn't been prevented - it would have been in the hundreds, and since they get prevented far more rarely, the odds are in their favour).
http://www.newsweek.com/right-...
The FBI, and 238 police organisations in the USA all consider rightwing militias the greatest terror threat to US citizens.
Globally the Christian Lords Resistance Army alone has killed more people every year of it's 20 year existence than all the Islamic terror groups combined in total, ever - even 9/11 is a blip on the radar next to the LRA (a group also known for using child soldiers and engaging in cannibalism).
When you add other terror groups however the Islamic numbers turn into a rounding error. They just make better news in the West.
That said there is no religion with clean hands. In 2003 over 3000 Muslims in Southern India were killed by Hindu extremists in an act of attempted genocide, the main ringleader of that attack is now the prime minister of India. Meanwhile in Myanmar as we speak thousands of Muslims have been killed in an ongoing genocide attempt by Buddhists (yes, Budhists - their pacifism apparently does not extend to their Muslim fellow citizens).
But there is no doubt the overwhelming majority of terrorists are Christian - it is only logical, as the largest religion on earth by far, they must also have the largest number of radicals.
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>Uh. Citation needed.
Did you not see the citation earlier on in the post- showing how Christian terrorists outdo Islamic ones in the USA ? Then you acknowledge the lack of reporting on the LRA but don't realise they ALONE outkill Islamic terrorists. They do in a year what all Islamic groups manage per decade ! That alone makes Christianity the obvious worst globally. The rest was just more examples.
>Every time there's a terrorist incident in the west, we all politely wait to find out the ideology behind it, and it almost invariably turns out to be jihadism
Nope. Not even slightly true. What IS true is that, almost every time a terrorist incident in the west is actually REPORTED as one it's jihadism. I, personally, have zero qualms about saying that German pilot who flew his plane full of people into a mountain on purpose was a terrorist in the exact same vein as those on 9/11 - but it wasn't reported that way because he was white, male and Christian. But even so - study after study keeps confirming, the vast majority of terror attacks are not Islamic jihadists.
>The closest we've seen is a Muslim-hating nutter [theguardian.com], but as far as we know he wasn't motivated by his own religion (if he even had one)
Firstly, you're forgetting the IRA existed, how short our memories are - that peace deal was so recent the ink was still wet when 9/11 happened. Their terror attacks on London killed far more people over decades than Islamic terrorists ever have. The blew up more than a few buildings in London - the last one in 1996 I believe.
But jihadists are not motivated by their religion either. Indeed I don't think any terrorists are motivated BY their religion - mostly they are motivated by other factors and religion becomes an excuse to rationalize what they do about those factors. There's significant evidence to back this up - including that most of the people who have launched attacks in Europe were either new converts to Islam or had a long history of apostocy before suddenly becoming radicals. Two of the Charley Hebdo shooters had only become Muslims less than 2 years earlier. The other one had a long history of drug use and other prohibited activities and were known as "not religious" for most of his life.
France's top terror expert has said "It's not the radicalization of Islam that's the problem, it's the Islamification of radicalism that we should worry about".
It actually makes sense - 1.6 Billion odd Muslims are convinced their religion absolutely prohibits killing people except in self defense. I live in a 30% Muslim city and I regularly see Bumper Stickers that read "I Shall Love All Mankind" (by the way - we've not had a terrorist attack in 3 decades now and the ones we HAVE had in the past didn't include a single one from the Muslim population).
The evidence suggests that the real problem is culture-clash - which is common in second-generation immigrants. Expected to live according to their old culture at home, but live in a different one - they often feel isolated and out of touch with society. In a few - this can be twisted into radical violence (it's almost unheard of in first or third generation immigrants - the former haven't attempted to fit in, the latter fits in too well to feel isolated). We just happen to live at a time when, the majority of second generation immigrants in Europe happen to be of the same religous heritage. But it's not their religion that motivates them - if anything it's a feeling of not being able to connect with that religion.
Rootlessness is hard for all people - and in a few it can be exploited. But so can a lot of things- many a rightwing christian militia terrorist have been military veterans, and it wasn't just their military training (that only makes the valuable to recruit - not easy to recruit), what made them recruitable was PTSD and, again, the resulting isolation.
Finally - there is a very clear pattern where terrorism attacks show strong upticks around elections - and the strongest upticks happen in elections
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