Now that the staggering volume of data mined by the NSA has been revealed what inference are we to draw from the following facts?
The number of “sleepers”(eg, the Erie County Yemenis) or eager recruits (eg, the Lodi Paintballers) uncovered can be counted on one hand, really, (especially when you count the prosecutions that are later renounced by the government…)
(Only the Brooklyn Bridge Welder is actually cited as a success story for electronic surveillance.)
The overworked guardians of our Fathe—Homeland are able to find the time and energy to watch naked models in cages protesting fur sales. (ie, how bad can the personnel crush be over at the anti-al quaeda department)
(Remember, Ashcroft et al always threw around the number 10,000+ trained terrorists who have passed through the Al quaeda camps.)
Where are they? we should have caught something by now besides visa violators.
For Debate: These guys are full of shit. There is NOTHING like the level of lslamofascist activity that they trumpet, and it is proven by the fact that their fine tooth combing has come up distinctly empty. They just get their rocks off playing J. Edgar Hoover and spying (mostly) on journalists so they’ll have blackmail inventory when cash isn’t enough to buy good ink.
And this case is iffy, not only because the guy was going to cut down the bridge with a blowtorch, but because the president has cited it as a triumph of both the Patriot act and his unwarranted wiretaps. Surely it must be one or the other, but we don’t know which.
alaricthegoth, I’ve talked with people in transportation, public utilities and law enforcement and I have to tell you that you’re completely out of the loop if you think there isn’t a serious threat from terrorist activities. A lot of things happens that never makes the news. There is still active surveillance of potential targets by terrorists.
Long after 9/11 fell off the front pages we are still catching people in the act of reconnaissance. You can’t arrest someone just because they took 200 pictures of a cockpit door on their cell phone. You can’t arrest someone for surveying every visible corner of a power plant. However, you can keep an eye on them when you catch them in the act. Sometimes luck prevails and someone is caught with an expired visa and gets deported. None of this makes the papers but it doesn’t mean that nothing is getting done.
Personally, I think your post is all about politics. That’s fine, but the imbedded terrorists who carried out the WTC attack really didn’t care who you voted for and neither do their replacements.
From what I’ve learned I’m more concerned that the NSA, CIA, and FBI are not doing enough to stop terrorism. I don’t understand the current attempts to sabotage these efforts considering one of the 4 airliners was probably intended for the Capital building.
Errmm . . . Good for you, but do you happen to have an actual cite for that? Something the rest of us, who might not have any such connections, can check?
Magiver, it’s going to take another 9/11 style attack for this to end. The further that 9/11 fades from memory, the easier it is for idealism and short-term political point scoring to take place.
I read a “Doonesbury” comic a month or so ago where Trudeau was making fun of people involking 9/11 in the name of national security. The tragedy is that the same people that think that kind of idealistic head in the sand crap is gospel will be the first ones to cast stones if another attack takes place.
Wish I did. You probably have more connections than you realize and just never bothered to ask the questions. I’m in the transportation business and am usually well rewarded by starting a conversation on related (aviation) subjects. I’ve never understood why easily acquired information doesn’t make it into a news report. Take something like the recent airline accident in Chicago that killed a little boy when a plane ran off the runway. What did you actually learn from news reports? Not much. If I was a reporter I could have obtained everything I know now (but in a timely fashion). At least in this case you will eventually be able to read the NTSB report.
In order for an event to become newsworthy it pretty much needs to be the result of a crime. There are a lot of things that are not illegal and therefore not reported. It’s not illegal to take pictures of a cockpit. It’s not illegal for a group of men to suddenly rush to the bathroom when a pilot exits the cockpit to do the same. It’s not illegal for someone to suddenly act belligerently to a flight attendant while a scattered group of men watch for reactions of the passengers. Since none of this illegal you never hear about it. Someone might write a book about it but that still doesn’t make the information available to the public at large in the form of news.
The only anti-terrorist action that can be taken (besides deportation of illegals) is covert observation. In a time of war I expect this type of activity to increase as needed. Currently the attempt at doing this on a legislative scale is the Patriot Act. I support this knowing it may dip into my privacy rights because I know that the Act can be dismantled the same way it was created. I’m not opposed to politicians keeping an eye on it with oversight committees but I don’t want it to become a political hot potato during a time of war.
I would expect the memory of 9/11 to fade over time but there have been enough terrorist attacks around the world to remind people that Tru-Doh! is politically biased. I don’t object to the need to keep on eye on laws regarding privacy. But if there is another 9/11 size attack on the US there will be a huge backlash against any politician that obstructed our intelligence agencies.
Transportation: IE Airline, freight, charter, etc… My friends are pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, security officers, Customs Agents… you know, the people who actually see this stuff happening in the first person.
But hey, you’re response certainly convinced me. Very informative. All hail Diogenes the Cynic.
Ah…flight attendants and baggage handlers. Obviously you know people with some extremely high security clearances. Some hysterical stewardess imagines that she sees some middle eastern looking guy take a picture of a cockpit or being belligerant “to see how other passangers will react” and in your mind that guy is a “terrorist” doing “reconnaisance.” Forgive me if I fail to be paralyzed with fear.
Lets, see, I didn’t mention baggage handlers but I did mention Pilots, Customs Agents and Security Officers. And the Flight Attendants who are briefed on security issues would be happy to know the great Diogenes the Cynic knows more about the subject. After all, without interviewing a single person in the industry he’s an expert.
Looks to me like you’re trolling this thread so I’ll leave you to convince everyone else that all the terrorists have departed for warmer climates.
If someone has somethijng of substance to offer to this discussion, I’d be pleased to see it before I close down this thread. If all we’re going to see is personal bickering, then we will not see it in this Forum. (And accusations of trolling and personal insults are doing nothing to instill in me a desire to keep it open.)
why, in the absence of any remotely efficacious action by any security agency?.(witness their abject failures anytime there is a test of security practices by an inspector general)
For the same reason that the tigers don’t attack whenever the witchdoctor draws a circle of salt around the village.
Does anyone in this thread seriously believe that there was never any terrorism in the US before 9/11? Or that all that’s needed to stop it forever and ever is pure virtuous effort by law enforcement and intelligence agencies?
The only thing 9/11 did was remove the delusional cocoon that some Americans had held, that the repercussions of their past foreign policy decisions wouldn’t affect them at all. Using 9/11 as a bogeyman to turn the nation into a newfangled police state makes as much sense as using hurricane Katrina as an excuse to move everyone into huge underground warrens, where we’ll all be safe from the ill effects of bad weather.
Agreed. Furthermore, if there was this massive underground organization of sleeper cells awaiting the chance to strike out at American cities and infrrastructure, they’d have already done so; indeed, they would have done so on or soon thereafter the attacks on September 11th.
Instead, we have vague but dire warnings of “unspecified terrorist activity” in major areas with no evidence of specific conspiracies or actions diverted. The claim that terrorists are being prevented but the information unpromoted due to security reasons is absurd given how willingly the Adminstration throws out press releases including tactical information–some of which would probably be better kept under wraps, or at least not published in the Washington Post–whenever they do have a military or intelligence success. And while the American press cooperates with the mythmaking–wanting, after all, to profit on the tide of enthusiasm, anxiety, fear, whathaveyou exhibited by the American public–the news services in other nations are not so forgiving. If you check out the Beeb–an organization never wanting for criticism of its own home government, and utterly unforgiving in pursuing descrepancies between official pravda and objective information–their take on American activities with regard to fighting terrorism and so forth is substantially different that the 30 second propaganda blurb Tom Brokaw wet-nurses to the American viewing public.
The September 11th hijackings/crashes are an example of what game theorists call low opportunity cost actions, or more colloquially, low hanging fruit. The relatively insecure domestic air travel combined with the high profile and structurally vulnerable targets resulted in an easy score for nineteen semi-trained dogmatists in a plan ripped straight out of a bad Tom Clancy novel. Despite holes in the TSA system, it is extremely unlikely that this, or something like this, will happen again; the public awareness of the consequences is enough that an attempted hijacking will be met with a vigorous resistance. We could, and do, expect other cheap shots, such as cafe and nightclub bombings as has been common in Europe and Malaysia, but oddly we’ve seen none of that within our borders, indicating that either the alleged terrorists are biding their time–unlikely, as waiting to strike increases the chance of a security leak–or that the threat is massively overstated.
I’d like to believe that the majority of supporters of the Patriot Act and domestic survelliance are sincere in their belief that this is done strictly to fight terrorism, but as we’ve seen in the past (i.e. programs like COINTELPRO) such an unchecked authority, even with the best of intentions, leads to legal abuses, uncorrected errors, and increasing corruption. And I’m too much of a pupil of the likes of George Orwell, Graham Greene, and David Mamet to dismiss the notion that some people will take the opportunity to conceal information as a chance to spin what press is released in such a way as to enjoin public opinion to support their cause, candidate, or behind-the-scenes political and fiscal interests. Our Man In Havana is probably more representative of intelligence gathering observations than the CIA or NSA would care to admit, and films like Wag The Dog and Spartan are often disturbingly parallel to actual events.
There are certainly people out there who would like to destroy Western civilization. Some of them are even willing to give up their lives to do so. A few manage to combine the means and opportunity to strike out, albeit generally in a way that is more akin to Boris and Natasha than Ernst Stravo Blofeld. The massive, secretive underground cell of highly-trained, well-equipped, professional operatives run by a ruthless mastermind is mostly Hollywood mythmaking, with just enough of a link to reality to give viewers a chance to pause.
But, like the infamous “missile gap,” it is a convenient threat if your goal is to justify jingoistic appeals to patriotism and flexing military strength.