MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers After Paris Magazine Attack 319
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."
By all means (Score:5, Insightful)
We must give unlimited powers to the supreme chancellor!
No matter how much power we gave them ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... as long as the top level politicians are disciples of the cult of Politically Correctness the real problem, the problem with the Islamic barbarism will still remain
In fact, those at the top are secretly encouraging them barbarian to commit more barbaric acts so that they can ask for EVEN MORE POWER
Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... (Score:4, Informative)
The police officer which was murdered by the terrorists was also a muslim.
The barbarians will murder anyone they want (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:The barbarians will murder anyone they want (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
It's political correctness that LIE to the people (Score:2, Insightful)
It is not "political correctness" to differentiate between ordinary Muslims and terrorists who are Muslims
Hmm no!
It's PRECISELY because of Poltical Correctness that the Islamic Barbarism movement has sprouted
Those who subscribe to Political Correctness will label people who dare to call a spade, a spade, such as identifying the barbaric tendency amongst many Muslims "Haters"
Precisely because of Political Correctness no one dare to voice out when things started to go wrong
And when no one voicing out when things started to go wrong, the things that went wrong went MORE wrong, and those things grew and grew, un
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They were not standard terrorists, That was a military strike team. This is not the typical idiots that shoot with the gun over their heads, these guys were Navy Seal level of skills.
Yet none of the news outlets are talking about it.
Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... (Score:4, Informative)
They were not standard terrorists, That was a military strike team. This is not the typical idiots that shoot with the gun over their heads, these guys were Navy Seal level of skills.
Yet none of the news outlets are talking about it.
Yes and no.
They had *just enough* training to be comfortable with the weapons and have a plan, but consider that they went up against newspaper editors in an office, and not a hardened military squad. And yes, judging by my radio on the way in, it is being discussed (albeit on the more right-leaning shows... the left-leaning ones are too busy trying to loudly restate the obvious, as in "OMG islam is a peaceful religion and these guys are not representatives of it and OMG they're no different from Jerry Falwell when he sued Hustler!**
I mean, c'mon - we're used to bumbling fools like the frickin' underwear bomber, so any terrorist with even a small modicum of military training is going to look like a 'SEAL-Delta-Para-Ranger-Force-Space-Shuttle-Door-Gunner(!)' to the masses.
TBH, at most they probably have about the same skill and training as, say, the typical Army boot half way through OSUT training. In other words, they know and are skilled enough to pull off the stunt they did, but would most likely collapse/die/fail if they faced anything stronger than a gaggle of cops (which is pretty much the most that they'd had to go up against so far).
** No shit - some idiot commentator on MSNBC made that comparison yesterday. And they wonder why no one takes that damned channel seriously these days...
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You know, the reason why radical islamists are so powerful in middle east today is mostly western intervention. Be it Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or the gulf states... The islam is not more or less barbaric than christianity, it is just that the wrong people are in power right now, just like the wrong people were in power in medieval christian Europe.
Mankind would be better off accepting that there is a fundamental problem about most religions (not faith, mind you. I am speaking of religions) and overcome it as
Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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If the problem is with Islam itself then it seems odd that literally about a billion other muslims manage to practice it entirely peacefully.
Not only that but if the problem is with Islam in general, then why was a Muslim policeman murdered when trying to stop the attack?
Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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,
I'm uncomfortable with this. Many public persons in my country (france), being journalists, politicians, whatever, make the same claim, urging muslim to react, clearly and loudly. I mean: *more* than other people. I was thinking the same way, but I recently realized it's a trap.
This indirectly suggests that muslim people have something to do with those barbarians asses. It even go further in the direction: "if you don't yell loud enough, you're with them and against us", and that's really really bad to my opinion.
We count million Muslims in our country, and a handful of dumb asses. Yes, a handful: a few hundred people have been filed as "potentially dangerous radical Islamist". The 2 that killed journalists a few days ago were in that list. Not high enough in the list apparently, but that's another story.
Is there really a "problem with islam" ? I feel like its more a problem with a really tiny proportion of incredibly dumb people giving no value to life. They occur to attach themselves a religion, and make it a meaning of life.
We have seen fanatics in every religion in the past, the religion of the day for those guys happens to be islam. That does not make muslims potential killers. That does not make them responsible for those assholes. We should know that Islam and those dudes have nothing in common but a name. We should not need Muslims to remind us this fact more than others.
Now, you may consider that islam has in its foundations the seeds for such violence. I just don't feel this way myself.
Anyway, just my one cent feeling.
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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.
But there's a problem also with assuming that there's a systemic problem with a whole belief system like that. Even if it were true (which I don't think it is, and doesn't seem to be from the muslims that I know) if you start saying there's a problem with this group you single them out for discrimination which is exactly the sort of response that the extreme fringes want you to do.
http://www.juancole.com/2015/0... [juancole.com]
Fixing Islam is Simple (Score:3)
It is hard to celebrate the idea of being a martyr is you know your family is going be living back in squalor of the 3rd world as a consequence of what you've done.
It isn't hard, just attach a fair and meaningful stigma and mean business about it. You can't be toothless about it like France has a history of doing; doing nothing and looking the other way does not solve problem. And France has historically done nothing wit
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No one is calling for extremination of Islam (Score:3, Informative)
What I am talking about is the problem of Islamic barbarism --- not Islam itself
Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... (Score:5, Informative)
I have a very hard time seeing that the same problem doesn't exists in Christianity and Judaism
Yeah, all of those contemporary examples of Christians and Jews doing things like shooting up rooms full of satirical journalists, and sending mentally challenged young women into vegetable markets with bombs strapped to them - they just won't stop doing that! All of those Christians and Jews that post online videos of themselves beheading their captive hostages, lining up villagers and gunning them down, burning teachers alive for daring to teach girls to read - it's definitely just like what all those thousands of Muslims are doing, no question.
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You're just a few hundred years too late. Had the technology existed, I'm sure all the things you describe would have been happening during the Crusades.
Rest assured, a lot of people have died in the name of $religion. Thankfully, Christianity has, on the whole, evolved beyond such things )although certain outposts in the US (including the White House) do slip up from time to time). I'll leave the question of Judaism's evolution, and its effect on the Israel/Palestine region to the reader.
I think it's fair
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Umm...you realize that the Nazis where mostly Christians that tried to exterminate the Jews....Although it was never referred to as a jihad......And if you look in Africa I am pretty sure there are more recent atrocities committed by Christians towards others.
Also we should not forget the irrational hate & fear Christians have towards homosexuals (mostly in the US though)....
Christianity is not that far ahead my friend.
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Worship of and total allegiance to the State is not Christianity.
A leadership who actively pushed a pseudo-norse mythology based on ubermenchen and "racial purity" is not Christianity.
Nice try and all, but your argument fails. It fails twice over in the face of the fact that activity from the Vatican itself managed to directly rescue an estimated 800,000+ Jews and similarly-targeted folks throughout WWII (and indirectly rescued far more) - in spite of it being unarmed and surrounded.
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A leadership who actively pushed a pseudo-norse mythology based on ubermenchen and "racial purity" is not Christianity.
Yeah, that must be why Wehrmacht soldiers' belt buckles were emblazoned with the motto "God is With Us." It was Odin's fault all along, I guess.
Nice try and all, but your argument fails. It fails twice over in the face of the fact that activity from the Vatican itself managed to directly rescue an estimated 800,000+ Jews and similarly-targeted folks throughout WWII (and indirectly rescued
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"All of those Christians and Jews that post online videos of themselves beheading their captive hostages, lining up villagers and gunning them down"
You mean like this?
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/... [aljazeera.com]
Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... (Score:4, Informative)
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You are also trying to parallel collateral killings to outright civilian targeting.
It's like going duck hunting and accidentally shooting a goose that was in a flock of ducks vs hunting for the goose outright. It's not the same thing.
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Re:By all means (Score:5, Insightful)
I caught part of a review of today's papers on the BBC News last night. The comments by the two guest reviewers actually made me nauseous. One claimed to be concerned about the implications about extending surveillance powers further and that we should have some sort of debate, yet clearly thought we should just hand over whatever it takes to keep us safe. The other was just saying he didn't care who read his e-mails, didn't feel that being spied on limited his freedom of expression, and MI5 were welcome to spy on him, with no apparent consideration for the implications of that policy for anyone else who might not share his views. The host actually quipped -- in possibly the only balancing comment in the entire segment -- that the guest sounded like he was making the old argument about having nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and the guest just laughed and said he didn't think so.
So it looks like there was at least one thing Lucas got right with episodes I-III: liberty really does die with thunderous applause.
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I don't feel any different today than I did 9/10 yet there is more suspicion and animosity everywhere.
I'm fucking sick of it.
Vague article (Score:5, Insightful)
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Leaping tall buildings. X-ray vision (especially around Lois Lane)
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Mmmmmm all those sexy internal organs....
Re:Vague article (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Vague article (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
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Let me be clear: it's awful what has happened. But so is the death of a child hit by a drunk drivers car.
Actually, those people killed were the last people in the world that wanted a government with more snooping powers. Warning: Some of these drawings may not be work safe. http://www.le-livre.fr/photos/... [le-livre.fr] http://www.le-livre.fr/photos/... [le-livre.fr] http://www.iconovox.com/blog/w... [iconovox.com]
That head of MI5 is just an idiot opportunist with a very poor sense of taste and timing. Of course, MI5 can't guarantee that it can stop a muslim extremist terrorist attack. No one can guarantee that, except may be North Korea.
Re:Vague article (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Vague article (Score:4, Insightful)
"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."
Yeah, but it looks like they also checked all the flags for troubled kids. You'll find lots and lots of foster home boys(which those were) who are kind of attention-seekers, kind of flirting with various radical political cults, kind of narcissistic, kind of sociopathic/antisocial. What are you going to do?
There are tons, tons of people who fit your 1 and 2. And much as they may be personality-fucked up people who go on to cause a lot of suffering for people they encounter, the vast majority of them are not terrorists. Surveilling them is not free, and is not without consequences in itself.
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"Surveilling them is not free, and is not without consequences in itself."
Regardless, it's a far better step up from surveilling everybody and makes the data set of targets for more detailed analysis far more manageable.
It's ultimately a question of whether profiling is ever acceptable. I believe it has to be acceptable at some point else you might as well just disband the security services altogether. In terms of human rights I don't think narrowing the surveillance set from "everyone" to "violent criminal
Parent is NOT insightful (Score:3)
Rubbish. Whilst I agree that a lot of the recent abuses of power are inexcusable, the job of the security forces is not easy.
Lack of resources mean that they cannot be physically watching every suspect all the time, (probably a good thing, you might say).
So, what do you do with the people who meet your criteria, (and there are many of them). Detain them without trial?
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We are not saying their job is easy. We are saying they are doing a very bad job with what they have. Giving them more power would be just enabling more of a bad job.
Take the no-fly list for example. You have allegedly identified people whom you are afraid to let fly, even though the claim is that flights are perfectly safe now. Why in hell are you letting these allegedly fearsome people roam about freely as long as they don't fly? Not only does it make no sense, it is so daft as to beggar belief.
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"Lack of resources mean that they cannot be physically watching every suspect all the time"
So if they're so short on resources why have they been expending so much time monitoring people who aren't suspects and aren't even threats?
Let's take the Lee Rigby case an example. The security services have been harvesting the communications of each and every citizen in the UK as far as possible, they claim this is to help detect threats. Given this, why do you believe that whilst this implies they have the capacity
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Just because someone is known, doesn't mean anything can be done.
What should have been done with these guys before they killed people? Have them watched indefinitely? Imprison them because they may cause a crime? Limit their freedoms in any other way?
The world governments know a lot about a lot of individuals. It's just that most of what they know is circumstantial and not actionable information.
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It's not really a case of incompetence, it's a case of not being able to prevent every single attack in the same way that we would never expect the police to prevent every single crime or doctors to prevent every single disease.
It might be possible to stop more of them with greater powers. The argument is that because there are checks and limitations on spying it is harder to track every person of interest, so we should all just open up our Facebook and Gmail accounts for them. If we have CCTV in every livi
Re:Vague article (Score:5, Interesting)
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".
Re:Vague article (Score:5, Insightful)
So when you can't monitor the obvious threats you already know about the solution is to add more and more to the pile ? Really? Why not ask for more manpower to monitor the known threats? Or are they busy monitoring politicians and journalists ? Who the fuck knows how they are burning manpower but the Paris incident shows that they can't do threat assessments nor properly monitor who they know about.
If they knew these guys were a threat, then they can get a warrant already an scoop up everything. Phone locations etc. No one objects to monitoring via a legal process known threats. But with current powers available, they did not. So adding more and more powers leading to more and more data is in my opinion not a solution.
Potentially the whole world flies under the radar.
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This may be true. Personally, I think the vast majority of people working for these organisations probably are just normal people trying to do an important job under difficult conditions.
However, I don't think you've undermined Xest's point: if a perpetrator of a violent act was already well known to the security services for both their views and their violent disposition, but for whatever reason the perpetrator had not been effectively monitored or contained despite that knowledge, why would we rationally
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It doesn't have to be. It's good enough to have caught the most atrocious attacks since 9/11 and that's drastically better than what we have now which is apparently just gathering more data without the slightest clue how or if it's possible to make any kind of use of it all.
There's always going to be terrorists that will slip through the net, I agree with that assessment by MI5's chief. The problem is we're not even dealing with the ones for which there's no reason they should be slipping through the net be
Powers (Score:2)
It doesn't say what new powers he wants. It makes it hard to decide whether this is good or bad, because general surveillance of everyone is very different from powers to monitor those who are already under suspicion - with prosper controls like court warrants, etc.
I suspect that he needs an alternative to what he has been doing, because Snowden blabbed about the surveillance techniques used and so the bad guys know how to evade them
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A watch list of subversive academics who could be teaching real crypto courses. More staff with Russian skills to find Russian plots to request more fundi
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If we make it too easy for him, we don't need him at all. We'd need maybe 10 police officers for the whole country, and they only need to be 'plod' and not some sort of highly trained super-cop. They'd just wait for the computer to text them the name and address of a 'criminal' and they'd go fetch them and throw them in the back of the van.
Honestly, if I need something in order to do my job and stop some systems falling over constantly, I ask for it. The difference is that if my management agree with me and
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It doesn't say what new powers he wants.
All of them
Please tell me that these include... (Score:3)
Please tell me that these include being faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!
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Who says the events are connected? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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He was, but now he is using the death of brave cartoonists who defended and exercised our right to freedom even in the face of fire-bombings and other terrorist attacks to further his goal of reducing our freedom. He is seeking to use their deaths to undermine the very thing they risked their lives and ultimately died to defend.
Re:Who says the events are connected? (Score:4, Funny)
Good point.
Bad point.
Counter point.
Numberwang!
MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Corner cases? There numerous exampled of people being falsely accused, convicted, given the death penalty and even wrongfully executed. Wrongful accusations and convictions are not corner cases.
Fuck the Nanny State (Score:4, Insightful)
An attack on the UK was "highly likely" and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said.
I, for one, would rather be shot or blown up than live under a government that can 100% guarantee my safety. Better to live under a Sharia theocracy than a tyrannical nanny state.
Re:Fuck the Nanny State (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fuck the Nanny State (Score:5, Funny)
Why?
Neither would be my first choice but if they were the only options I'd take the one with beer.
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Why?
Neither would be my first choice but if they were the only options I'd take the beer.
FTFY [brewdog.com].
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0.5%? That really is tyrannical.
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It seems that the practical implementation of sharia IS a tyrannical nanny state.
Re: Fuck the Nanny State (Score:2)
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I, for one, would rather be shot or blown up than live under a government that can 100% guarantee my safety.
So would you rather be shot or blown up than have governments (say) issue passports and check incoming passengers' details against known terrorists? or have a police force?
It's not a black or white thing, because while obviously no government can 100% guarantee your safety, they can do certain things which increase it greatly.
I believe even libertarians admit the need for a country to have a military, for instance.
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The US is anomalous in terms of its murder and violent crime rates, of course. There are other nations where the general population is also allowed or even required to have firearms that do not suffer the same level with violence, suggesting that the problem may be one of culture rather than tools.
Still, the statistical question is a fair one. Given that routine carrying of firearms by the general population would almost inevitably lead to some level of extra deaths, if only through accidents, and given tha
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When you say "arming the population", that implies you think the population wants to be armed, I live in the UK and in general people are much happier without these weapons. Guns are designed to kill, that is there one and only purpose. We don't (and wouldn't for long) have enough natural animals to even hunt where they would have any other use, so the prime use for guns would be to kill other people. That's it.
I think being an island nation we have always taken for granted that it is easier, than say being
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The people want it to stay this way and a massacre or two will not change that.
Although crazies keep voting for UKIP, who have said they want to legalise firearms...
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We already knew this was a possibility (Score:2)
It's unlikely that anything short of 100% surveillance would have prevented this, and the last islamist extremist attack in the UK was a nutter armed with a car and a machete. Is there really anything MI5 could have done to prevent that?
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"Is there really anything MI5 could have done to prevent that?"
Yes an awful lot given that MI5 had been told by Kenyan authorities about how they'd tried to cross into Somalia to take part in Al Shabab's jihad there and so knew full well what a risk to the public those two were.
Of course you could argue as others do that "they can't keep an eye on everyone", but if that's the case they might as well just give up and go home right now.
Attention all (potential) subversives (Score:2)
Go dark NOW. All communications must be wetware-to-wetware and randomised. Electronic communicaitons will not be acknowledged nor will they be responded to. All previous arrangements are now void, all meetings vacated.
Surveil *that*, motherfuckers.
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The point of going dark is to make surveillance expensive. You want "them" to spend as much money as possible. Currently, just about everyone sends plaintext through the Interbutt, for example. Archiving all of this in a building in Utah and using search technology to sift through it, building "instant dossiers," is well within the budget capabilities of many governments.
If everyone uses encryption, there isn't enough computing power in the universe to sift through all of that. At that point, "they" wil
Would that help? (Score:3, Informative)
9/11 came with a massive increase in power, and what has that done for us?
Aparently there is no such thing as lessons learned for these guys.
Even more so with these guys. So what we must do is try to understand the underlying problem.
In my opinion that's religion. It blocks people's ability to think rationally about something because of indoctrination.
We should stop supporting religion. People are free to believe whatever they want, but they should pay for it themselves.
More police power just reduces the freedom we have, which is exactly what these terrorists want.
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Re:Would that help? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Extremism CAN be fought with violence, one just needs to quit pissing about and get it done.
The problem is, we're too nice. We go into a conflict with rules of engagement whereas the enemy operates without them. This puts us at a huge disadvantage right from the beginning. Is why we can't win a gorilla style conflict. We have too many rules. They know this and use it to their advantage. As long as we continue to play by their rules, we'll always lose.
As for an example of vio
"They always want something more..." (Score:4, Insightful)
"They always want to meet; the SS love to meet, and they always want something more, 'til they have everything."
— Dr Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, Conspiracy
Insult to injury (Score:5, Insightful)
I was just waiting for some dick head in the establishment to show the same sort of insecurity that led those self righteous arseholes in Paris to murder cartoonists.
In they step over the bodies and blood looking for the best spin, angle and outcome for their own agendas.
They didn't stop these deluded morons this time and their laws won't stop the next ones. There, sadly, will always be a next time.
What pisses me off is that they patronise us with their "we'll do something about preventing it happening again in exchange for you giving up some of your rights and freedoms".
The truth is they (the establishment) are as afraid and insecure about all of us as the few violent extremists that are out there.
What happened in Paris in 1793 at the Place de la Révolution is probably of more concern to Andrew Parker than what happened to Charlie.
No thanks (Score:2)
No thanks. I'd rather keep my freedom. I find the governments intrusion/power grab much more scary than terrorists.
(Sadly the people I vote for who are against it, are in a minority thanks to the fear mongers in politics and the news media)
Normal stuff, isn't it? (Score:2)
It's getting so annoying that I would include it in all constitutions. So they just fill in a form and get new powers.
thank you snowden (Score:3, Insightful)
At this time, we may simply have to acknowledge that AQ and Isis are about to bring major terrorism to the west.
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MI5 chief seeks new powers (Score:2)
By all means - expose him to really high does of gamma radiation and see what kind of superpower(s) he gets
Well it worked for the Fantastic 4 and the incredible hulk
Can't guarantee? (Score:2)
An attack on the UK was "highly likely" and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said.
So, if he gets these new powers, he will guarantee that they can stop the attacks? Suuuuuuuuuure.
why not old powers? (Score:2)
Are you looking to replace Austin Powers?
what's wrong with the process (Score:2)
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... to snoop on the real terrorists.
Does he really think that terrorists are going to send each other emails, tweets or Facebook messages expressing their intentions?
The problem is that if the terrorists do send each other a plain text message saying "tomorrow we bomb X" or whatever, and the authorities do not intercept and act on it, everyone will accuse them of incompetence when the bomb goes off at X.
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Because people still equate two French nationals with a particular belief with the Middle East because of racial stereotyping?
It's like saying that some neo-Nazi born in the US committing a terrorist act is because of the deterioration of German laws.
And if you really want to get into the answers, try working out why you have to bomb an entire country to oblivion, including civilians, because a terrorist group from there bombed you once. It's akin to the UK trying to nuke Washington because the KKK came ov
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I suggest Cwmbran, in Wales.
I dislike murdering psychotic religious fanatics as much as the next man, but...WALES?
We're supposed to be better than the terrorists.
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I am speculating however that if even 2 or 3 of the weekly's personnel carried (and used) the odd .38 or 9mm, it would have mattered substantially in the outcome
There were two armed and highly trained policemen guarding them, and that didn't help much.
If all the staff had been carrying machine guns, the terrorists would just have bombed the offices instead. In Afghanistan and Iraq there are a lot of armed people around, so the terrorists use car bombs.
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The fallacy of the fairy tale you WISH were true.