If you're wondering why the terrorists weren't picked up, it's probably because we have a) freedom of movement -- we don't need permits or other authorization to pick up and go -- and b) a lot of separate databases all over the country with addresses and so forth. The IRS might have a somewhat accurate single database to be able to send out those income tax forms, but I don't know whether that can legally be used for law enforcement purposes.
As for encryption, well, traffic analysis would have helped. Certainly, frequent communications with suspected terrorists (some had been on watch lists, for instance) or foreign agents would have attracted attention, if known -- an awful large part of the battle is first figuring out who's interesting.
Al Qaeda is specifically the group I was referring to, and to some degree the Taliban as well. After all, most of the Afghans themselves aren't terrorists.
They weren't religious fanatics. Heck, most of 'em weren't Marxist, Leninist or Maoist fanatics -- they were more interested in staying in power, and when that wasn't feasible without systemic change, they chose NOT to go out in a blaze of, er, chaotic rebellion.
The dedicated Communists, on the other hand, still haven't broken, regardless of the promise of prosperity.
bin Laden seems to be a reluctant martyr at best -- the man keeps being a moving target. It's primarily his low-level operatives that get expended. Perhaps his lieutenants also consider themselves too valuable to sacrifice themselves.
As for the IRA, they've calmed down a touch recently, no? And they normally targetted soldiers, government people, or suspected collaborators -- ISTR that they even warned before some attacks in order to give time to evacuate civillians. That's a completely different mindset.
My understanding is that we could work with the Northern Alliance. They've pledged 15,000 troops, and presumably know the ground pretty well -- many have been fighting over it for a LONG time.
Re:They talked about this on the "O'Reilly Factor"
on
A New Kind of War
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· Score: 1
Ick. Not only an unnecessary bureaucratic step, but that would probably greatly increase the probability of the informant's identity being leaked, you'd think -- or at least the fact that there IS such an informant under consideration, which may be useful to know by itself.
It's a human war more than a technological war.
on
A New Kind of War
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· Score: 1
Specifically, the cultivation of human sources and the exploitation of mistakes that humans eventually tend to make. Informers, the faking of informers (falsely implicating a loyal member of Al Qaeda as an informer, say; I doubt that Al Qaeda merely hands out pink slips to suspected traitors), and otherwise inducing paranoia and purges would help.
Reading e-mail won't help if the vital orders are communicated through a heavily guarded face-to-face meeting in some anonymous mountain retreat -- or if you don't know whose e-mail to read, or what code phrases they're using. Nor did satellites or signals interception tip off the CIA about the Pakistani and Indian nuclear weapons programs, it seems, despite the fact that governments often leak information like sieves. bin Laden presumably knows what can happen to cell phone users -- his people might be aligned with certain Chechen separatists, and a former leader -- Dudayev -- got his cell phone triangulated by the Russians. He rapidly found out that grease spots don't lead very well.
Sometimes, you just have to have an informer willing to betray his organization, or be able to infiltrate somebody in -- although Al Qaeda almost certainly would minimizes information flowing downwards from the upper echelons, while making it difficult for outsiders to attain higher-level positions; that's no-brainer good operational security. So it's not exactly easy, but it's probably necessary.
Re:What can 60 billion dollars buy?
on
A New Kind of War
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· Score: 1
In the eyes of a radical, that money might look like an attempt at bribery with ill-gotten gains -- money made through speculation and gambling (stocks, say), exploitation, usury... and another illustration of how Western countries, especially the United States, place a large value on coin.
Maybe not the best way to deal with religious fundamentalists.
And what, precisely, makes you think this war would ever end?
After all, it's a war on a methodology -- namely, the entire concept of a formless, invisible army. Al Qaeda is hardly the first to use this method, nor the last -- off hand, I can think of -- the Abu Nidal group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, the Irish Republican Army, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the African NationalC. (Congress?) (during their guerilla war against apartheid), the Black Panther Party, the Weathermen, Abu Sayyaf...
You don't vanquish a concept, generally, especially one that is incredibly logical for those who would wage asymmetric warfare. Sun Tzu basically recommended it when he suggested that the perfect structure for an army is formless, so that no disposition could be determined by the enemy.
Most people have neither the information nor the background to make informed decisions regarding this matter. And, frankly, I'm glad that specific details (e.g. changes in espionage matters, specific invasion plans, target lists, et al) haven't leaked, because they'd be rather more useful to their intended targets than to the population as a whole.
Ah. But Florida law specifies "clear intent" of the voter. Dimples are unclear -- there were voters who testified that they dimpled, but hesitated and failed to puncture because they changed their minds. Putting smiley-face stickers on the appropriate chads, though twisted, should OTOH be legal as long as it's clear that it's a logically consistent (such as no voting for two mutually exclusive -- different -- candidates in the same race). If it's clear, it should have been permitted; if there's any reasonable doubt, no.
Sure they had the right to take the case -- the FL SC was violating its own state law, in violation of the 14th, and the SCOTUS had appellate jurisdiction to uphold the 14th. They can even rule on traffic tickets, you know, if city / state courts refuse to obey their own laws...
It's a failure of the intelligence establishment to have poor human intelligence gathering -- that is, we just don't have a good network of informers and spy-runners in, say, the Middle East, or in Afghanistan for that matter. A "follower" willing to betray his organization, or a deliberately planted infiltrator, can provide far more information than a satellite if the organization relies on such means as face-to-face talk and so forth.
As of recent rules changes, none are legal. Airports may also feel free to block any other objects that seem to be sharp/pointy enough, like scissors, nail files, and so forth.
Well, bin Laden is trained as an economist, IIRC, and he probably has very, very good operational security -- considering that the Russians have been irritated at him for a long time, and their KGB didn't exactly operate under very restrictive rules.
Oh, and for highly educated, yet very dangerous, immoral people, you needn't look much further than the (now largely defunct after the Tokyo subway sarin incidents, IIRC) Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese and Russian cult which included among its members well-educated chemists and biologists. These, no doubt, helped in their attempts to develop biological and chemical weapons.
Well, it'd be political suicide for the politicos to act any other way right now -- even if they themselves have misgivings.
Bush probably has to at least talk about war, even though, to my knowledge, no strikes have actually occurred, and nobody seems to have bothered asking whether or not such a declaration of war legitimizes Americans as targets instead of innocent civillians. If he doesn't, he'd be shredded by reporters, Congressmen, and so forth, all screaming for blood.
Let's see if he acts hastily, such as lobbing Tomahawks at Kabul without regards to civillians there.
Y'all should watch out, then. If any extremists in the anti-glob movement *do* rally, you can bet that reporters will flock to it, just as they focused on the most violent protesters at the various WTO/G8 meetings -- except that I think it'd be an even worse public-relations nightmare now that the population's got its bloodlust going.
It should be possible to take a middle road. I'm far from being a Green, but that doesn't mean that I'm in the "nuke 'em till they glow" camp, either. Clearly, a "kill all Arabs" policy is irrational, immoral and, frankly, impossible.
Most Arabs in the world have better things to do -- like live their daily lives -- than conspire with Al Qaeda, and most -- being human -- likely view killing civillians en masse as a deplorable act, even if they believe that US foreign policy is misguided.
I'd say it's more rational to consider what measures and attitudes need to be changed, such as whether it's really clueful for airport terminals to have stores selling lots o' potentially deadly objects *past* the security checkpoints, or if the government should act less unilaterally, or if international arrivals need to be screened more carefully. This won't end even if bin Laden and all of his lieutenants get simultaneously turned into grease spots by a multiple bolts of lightning on a clear day.
He's not saying that Democrats don't care about privacy; he's saying that comparing cryptography rights with the Second Amendment is not a good argument with Democrats, since that particular party is known for having a most restrictive issue of that particular amendment.
Considering that most of them portray themselves as in favor of the country (the right-wingers, anyway; they claim to uphold the people, and just oppose governmental abuses), it's not impossible. Some of the militias have assisted government manhunts in the past.
The anarchists, the most extreme Greens, and isolationists, on the other hand -- I wouldn't be surprised if they sat this one out, or even (quietly, or from hiding...) cheered -- the WTC could be taken as a symbol of global corporatism, and the Pentagon as the ultimate symbol of the military-industrial complex.
I believe that the Chinese hackers sentenced to death were employees of the bank. It was embezzlement -- an inside job. The government there knows that they have a reputation for being corrupt, and minor employees like these are disposable when it comes to appeasing the people -- especially if they a happened to be having an anti-corruption Strike Hard campaign.
This kid didn't do that much more than the equivalent of wide-scale vandalism and blocking traffic -- interfering with trade, and all that. 8 months, as long as it includes education and counseling, doesn't seem unfair to me, barring a serious prior record or other compelling evidence that he won't reform.
Oh, there's a difference. To my knowledge, the Native Americans never deliberately stalled peace talks in favor of annihilating the newcomers, and never talked peace while smuggling in Katyushas, AK-47s, mortars and SA-7s.
Those were private contributions by individuals, mostly. Aid to the Afghan Mujahadin (sp?), however, was public policy in an attempt to tie down Soviet resources.
Re:"Pearl Harbor" - when did they know?
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 1
Convenience, and perhaps a bit of fatalism.
It's a bit tough to spot, say, a ceramic knife taped to one's thigh, given reasonably loose clothing.
Re:Sorry if I'm preaching to the choir
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 1
You only need the money and the motives to subvert a sub crew, not ownership. The question, then, is -- can one be sure that they're all incorruptible (either through money, or drugs, or threat to family?).
Or, you need to be willing to take the hit, anyway. Saddam Hussein seems generally willing to risk major damage to his people, and might not be particularly restrained if he got a nuke -- although in that case, he might first try Tel Aviv.
Ah, but don't forget that Saddam Hussein isn't the sort of person who seems to _mind_ being bombed -- he's decently safe himself, as long as his close associates decide not to assassinate him and his troops stick with him.
After all, there was an Iraqi plot to assassinate President Bush early during President Clinton's first term, if memory served. Trying to kill an ex-POTUS is pretty vengeful, and had it succeeded would have incurred a LOT of retalliation I'm sure.
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If you're wondering why the terrorists weren't picked up, it's probably because we have a) freedom of movement -- we don't need permits or other authorization to pick up and go -- and b) a lot of separate databases all over the country with addresses and so forth. The IRS might have a somewhat accurate single database to be able to send out those income tax forms, but I don't know whether that can legally be used for law enforcement purposes.
As for encryption, well, traffic analysis would have helped. Certainly, frequent communications with suspected terrorists (some had been on watch lists, for instance) or foreign agents would have attracted attention, if known -- an awful large part of the battle is first figuring out who's interesting.
Al Qaeda is specifically the group I was referring to, and to some degree the Taliban as well. After all, most of the Afghans themselves aren't terrorists.
They weren't religious fanatics. Heck, most of 'em weren't Marxist, Leninist or Maoist fanatics -- they were more interested in staying in power, and when that wasn't feasible without systemic change, they chose NOT to go out in a blaze of, er, chaotic rebellion.
The dedicated Communists, on the other hand, still haven't broken, regardless of the promise of prosperity.
bin Laden seems to be a reluctant martyr at best -- the man keeps being a moving target. It's primarily his low-level operatives that get expended. Perhaps his lieutenants also consider themselves too valuable to sacrifice themselves.
As for the IRA, they've calmed down a touch recently, no? And they normally targetted soldiers, government people, or suspected collaborators -- ISTR that they even warned before some attacks in order to give time to evacuate civillians. That's a completely different mindset.
My understanding is that we could work with the Northern Alliance. They've pledged 15,000 troops, and presumably know the ground pretty well -- many have been fighting over it for a LONG time.
Ick. Not only an unnecessary bureaucratic step, but that would probably greatly increase the probability of the informant's identity being leaked, you'd think -- or at least the fact that there IS such an informant under consideration, which may be useful to know by itself.
Specifically, the cultivation of human sources and the exploitation of mistakes that humans eventually tend to make. Informers, the faking of informers (falsely implicating a loyal member of Al Qaeda as an informer, say; I doubt that Al Qaeda merely hands out pink slips to suspected traitors), and otherwise inducing paranoia and purges would help.
Reading e-mail won't help if the vital orders are communicated through a heavily guarded face-to-face meeting in some anonymous mountain retreat -- or if you don't know whose e-mail to read, or what code phrases they're using. Nor did satellites or signals interception tip off the CIA about the Pakistani and Indian nuclear weapons programs, it seems, despite the fact that governments often leak information like sieves. bin Laden presumably knows what can happen to cell phone users -- his people might be aligned with certain Chechen separatists, and a former leader -- Dudayev -- got his cell phone triangulated by the Russians. He rapidly found out that grease spots don't lead very well.
Sometimes, you just have to have an informer willing to betray his organization, or be able to infiltrate somebody in -- although Al Qaeda almost certainly would minimizes information flowing downwards from the upper echelons, while making it difficult for outsiders to attain higher-level positions; that's no-brainer good operational security. So it's not exactly easy, but it's probably necessary.
In the eyes of a radical, that money might look like an attempt at bribery with ill-gotten gains -- money made through speculation and gambling (stocks, say), exploitation, usury... and another illustration of how Western countries, especially the United States, place a large value on coin.
Maybe not the best way to deal with religious fundamentalists.
And what, precisely, makes you think this war would ever end?
After all, it's a war on a methodology -- namely, the entire concept of a formless, invisible army. Al Qaeda is hardly the first to use this method, nor the last -- off hand, I can think of -- the Abu Nidal group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, the Irish Republican Army, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the African NationalC. (Congress?) (during their guerilla war against apartheid), the Black Panther Party, the Weathermen, Abu Sayyaf...
You don't vanquish a concept, generally, especially one that is incredibly logical for those who would wage asymmetric warfare. Sun Tzu basically recommended it when he suggested that the perfect structure for an army is formless, so that no disposition could be determined by the enemy.
Most people have neither the information nor the background to make informed decisions regarding this matter. And, frankly, I'm glad that specific details (e.g. changes in espionage matters, specific invasion plans, target lists, et al) haven't leaked, because they'd be rather more useful to their intended targets than to the population as a whole.
Ah. But Florida law specifies "clear intent" of the voter. Dimples are unclear -- there were voters who testified that they dimpled, but hesitated and failed to puncture because they changed their minds. Putting smiley-face stickers on the appropriate chads, though twisted, should OTOH be legal as long as it's clear that it's a logically consistent (such as no voting for two mutually exclusive -- different -- candidates in the same race). If it's clear, it should have been permitted; if there's any reasonable doubt, no.
Sure they had the right to take the case -- the FL SC was violating its own state law, in violation of the 14th, and the SCOTUS had appellate jurisdiction to uphold the 14th. They can even rule on traffic tickets, you know, if city / state courts refuse to obey their own laws...
It's a failure of the intelligence establishment to have poor human intelligence gathering -- that is, we just don't have a good network of informers and spy-runners in, say, the Middle East, or in Afghanistan for that matter. A "follower" willing to betray his organization, or a deliberately planted infiltrator, can provide far more information than a satellite if the organization relies on such means as face-to-face talk and so forth.
As of recent rules changes, none are legal. Airports may also feel free to block any other objects that seem to be sharp/pointy enough, like scissors, nail files, and so forth.
Well, bin Laden is trained as an economist, IIRC, and he probably has very, very good operational security -- considering that the Russians have been irritated at him for a long time, and their KGB didn't exactly operate under very restrictive rules.
Oh, and for highly educated, yet very dangerous, immoral people, you needn't look much further than the (now largely defunct after the Tokyo subway sarin incidents, IIRC) Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese and Russian cult which included among its members well-educated chemists and biologists. These, no doubt, helped in their attempts to develop biological and chemical weapons.
Well, it'd be political suicide for the politicos to act any other way right now -- even if they themselves have misgivings.
Bush probably has to at least talk about war, even though, to my knowledge, no strikes have actually occurred, and nobody seems to have bothered asking whether or not such a declaration of war legitimizes Americans as targets instead of innocent civillians. If he doesn't, he'd be shredded by reporters, Congressmen, and so forth, all screaming for blood.
Let's see if he acts hastily, such as lobbing Tomahawks at Kabul without regards to civillians there.
Y'all should watch out, then. If any extremists in the anti-glob movement *do* rally, you can bet that reporters will flock to it, just as they focused on the most violent protesters at the various WTO/G8 meetings -- except that I think it'd be an even worse public-relations nightmare now that the population's got its bloodlust going.
It should be possible to take a middle road. I'm far from being a Green, but that doesn't mean that I'm in the "nuke 'em till they glow" camp, either. Clearly, a "kill all Arabs" policy is irrational, immoral and, frankly, impossible.
Most Arabs in the world have better things to do -- like live their daily lives -- than conspire with Al Qaeda, and most -- being human -- likely view killing civillians en masse as a deplorable act, even if they believe that US foreign policy is misguided.
I'd say it's more rational to consider what measures and attitudes need to be changed, such as whether it's really clueful for airport terminals to have stores selling lots o' potentially deadly objects *past* the security checkpoints, or if the government should act less unilaterally, or if international arrivals need to be screened more carefully. This won't end even if bin Laden and all of his lieutenants get simultaneously turned into grease spots by a multiple bolts of lightning on a clear day.
He's not saying that Democrats don't care about privacy; he's saying that comparing cryptography rights with the Second Amendment is not a good argument with Democrats, since that particular party is known for having a most restrictive issue of that particular amendment.
*shrug*
Considering that most of them portray themselves as in favor of the country (the right-wingers, anyway; they claim to uphold the people, and just oppose governmental abuses), it's not impossible. Some of the militias have assisted government manhunts in the past.
The anarchists, the most extreme Greens, and isolationists, on the other hand -- I wouldn't be surprised if they sat this one out, or even (quietly, or from hiding...) cheered -- the WTC could be taken as a symbol of global corporatism, and the Pentagon as the ultimate symbol of the military-industrial complex.
I believe that the Chinese hackers sentenced to death were employees of the bank. It was embezzlement -- an inside job. The government there knows that they have a reputation for being corrupt, and minor employees like these are disposable when it comes to appeasing the people -- especially if they a happened to be having an anti-corruption Strike Hard campaign.
This kid didn't do that much more than the equivalent of wide-scale vandalism and blocking traffic -- interfering with trade, and all that. 8 months, as long as it includes education and counseling, doesn't seem unfair to me, barring a serious prior record or other compelling evidence that he won't reform.
Oh, there's a difference. To my knowledge, the Native Americans never deliberately stalled peace talks in favor of annihilating the newcomers, and never talked peace while smuggling in Katyushas, AK-47s, mortars and SA-7s.
Those were private contributions by individuals, mostly. Aid to the Afghan Mujahadin (sp?), however, was public policy in an attempt to tie down Soviet resources.
Convenience, and perhaps a bit of fatalism.
It's a bit tough to spot, say, a ceramic knife taped to one's thigh, given reasonably loose clothing.
You only need the money and the motives to subvert a sub crew, not ownership. The question, then, is -- can one be sure that they're all incorruptible (either through money, or drugs, or threat to family?).
Or, you need to be willing to take the hit, anyway. Saddam Hussein seems generally willing to risk major damage to his people, and might not be particularly restrained if he got a nuke -- although in that case, he might first try Tel Aviv.
Ah, but don't forget that Saddam Hussein isn't the sort of person who seems to _mind_ being bombed -- he's decently safe himself, as long as his close associates decide not to assassinate him and his troops stick with him.
After all, there was an Iraqi plot to assassinate President Bush early during President Clinton's first term, if memory served. Trying to kill an ex-POTUS is pretty vengeful, and had it succeeded would have incurred a LOT of retalliation I'm sure.