No John, I would be surgical. Take out the chiefs and the minions follow. Most minions are just disillusioned and disaffected and easily led astray. It is the herders and the shepherds that I would aim at. I would not allow borders to stop me. I also understand Neimollers poem. But that applies to genocides. Not to protecting your national security. Of course there must be checks and balances and my post was a generalisation. That poem was written with the rise of nationalism in mind. Not to protecting your own citizens and freedoms. I'd aim at foreign nationals and homebred nut jobs. This would not be about removing the Scargills of this world.
America is one if the most paranoid nations on earth, this article is simply a visualisation of that paranoia. Nothing in the above link puts up any valid argument as to why it's any concern of mine at all if my technology is intercepted. By the time my door is knocked on in the middle of the night there will hardly be a door in the world that's not been knocked on. I have nothing at all to fear.
Are you trying to be obtuse about this Phil? Of course it might not affect you personally. But then global warming might not affect you personally. Child labour in the far east may not affect you personally. Drug testing in third world countries might not affect you personally. Environmental pollution might not affect you personally, or acid rain. is your world really that small?
Not at all, when presented by mountains of data, you gave to sift out the important from the unimportant. 99.99999%will be unimportant. Why go you think no one knew it happened? Because it made no difference at all to the regular person. Been quite a few foiled terror plots though, might have saved a few lives? Heaven forbid there nay be a case for data monitoring under some circumstances.
A terrorist is an individual who plans to kill non-combatants with no consideration to collateral damage or the legitimacy of the target. A terrorist publication would be one that encourages and provides assistance in carrying out these kinds of acts. It actually has nothing to do with your political beliefs, just what you plan to do with them. The NSA and the CIA and the UK intelligence agencies do fantastic work in keeping people safe, and by keeping it a secret they do it in such a way that mass hysteria doesn't break out. I have no opinion on Edward Snowden's act. He has done what he has done, but it only makes me shrug my shoulders and carry on with my work. I'm happy knowing that the reading of my emails will in some small way mean that a bomb will not blow up my children on their way to school.
The article quoted a few posts above involved a lot of "what ifs" and hypothetical situations. What does really irritate me is when the paranoid conspiracy theorists suggest you are somehow blind un enlightened or small minded because you simply don't share their paranoia. They are perfectly entitled to be concerned by monitoring, but that doesn't mean I'm ignorant because I don't consider it a threat. I'd also welcome greater CCTV coverage of all public places, it makes perusing and capturing criminals far easier - it is especially effective against rape and robbery.
In exactly the same way you'd have to be a serious clear and present threat to get wrestled to the floor of a tube train by the Met and then have seven bullets put through your head. Serious clear and present threat or a Brazilian. Still if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear.
You are providing that incident without the context which justifies it. Unfortunately he was killed by mistake, but there was a serious, realistic and immediate threat to the general public, shortly after several bombings on the underground network. You wouldn't be so quick to criticise if he had been attempting to blow up a train.
A horrible mistake which cost a man his life. However I'm convinced without the work the security services carry out, we'd be talking about much larger loss of life more frequently.
I wouldn't be so quick to criticise the treatment of Stefan Kiszko, Barry George, Sally Clark and the Bridgewater Four if they'd been guilty as well. But they weren't so I do.
An interesting statistic that came out after 9/11, and unfortunately I can't remember it exactly, was that within a year or so (?) of 9/11 more wives had been killed by their husbands in the US than all of the people that died in the twin towers. I realise that one side of that comprises of random violence and the other is an attack on the fabric of the nation but it is an unsettling perspective.
my mate (the fore mentioned bob watson dumb ass) lived next door to the doctors that attempted to blow up glasgow airport, they didn't walk about with terrorist stamped on there forehead houston and crossle isnt exactly some terrorist training ground, so what do you suggest. if interweb is the method of communication what media should they spy.
So I had to go and look at all of those people to know what you were talking about. Although they were all miscarriages of justice, not one of them was in relation to national security at a time of heightened threat. So I can see how their treatment is hard to justify, but you can't compare it to the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes. He was an unfortunate victim of circumstance and his killing could be considered justifiable in at the moment of pulling the trigger. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but you can't have it until you have already made your mistake.
I suggest the security services follow the rules of gathering evidence, if they have a good reason to suspect someone take that reason to a judge and apply for a warrant to check their emails / phone / mobile phone. They should not check everyone all the time on the off chance they stumble across Osama Bin Laden's successor sending his latest plans to destroy the infidel unbelievers to his acolytes.
So they should miss the only clue they might have had a chance at finding, letting hundreds of innocent people die in the process, just because you don't want your emails to be read, which don't contain anything incriminating any way? Slightly selfish?
Looking at the almost comically pathetic attempt they made I doubt whether there was much planning either on or off the Internet. Taking your wider point, they should be allowed to intercept suspect emails but only under the permission of a court order, much like the police can come and look round your house in the detection and prevention of crime but only with a warrant, not as some random search in the hopes of uncovering villainy.
terrorist noun 1. a person who uses terrorism in the pursuit of political aims. terrorism noun 1. the unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. I appreciate that you're coming at this from an different/extreme viewpoint, but just wanted to be clear on the definition of terrorist and terrorism and how it doesn't necessarily mean to kill, doesn't necessarily mean to include non-combatants, doesn't necessarily disregard collateral damage or target legitimacy.
Reading your emails is hardly as invasive as coming round your house and looking through your drawers. And they're not even read by a person, just scanned for keywords, so i really don't understand what the issue with it is.
