...at least to those of us who believe there are protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, or any sort of right to privacy. The NSA has -- with the cooperation of AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth -- collected the phone records of most anyone who made a telephone call, anywhere! Remember those statements by the president asserting this program was constrained to suspected terrorists making an international, and that they are only done after a warrant was granted? I can't imagine any administration more dishonest than this one.

The one tiny bit of good news in this is that Quest managed to stand up for the privacy of its customers, even in the face of an administration willing to exploit both fear and nationalistism for such unamerican means.

There is no bigger story than war. And a war whose major premise -- the threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction -- turned out to be unsupported is an even bigger story. That the administration presented this threat to the public with such a strong, yet false, sense of certainty -- including the imagery of mushroom clouds -- is an even more important lesson for all of us about big but not well-examined decisions. How did a country on the leading edge of the information age get this so wrong and express so little skepticism and challenge? How did an entire system of government and a free press set out on a search for something and fail to notice, or even warn us in a timely or prominent way, that it wasn't or might not be there?

---Michael Getler, the departing ombudsman for the Washington Post (who is, by the way, the incoming ombudsman for PBS)

This is a question all American journalists should tack on a wall, a computer monitor, a bathroom mirror, or any place they're going to stare at all day.

Not the Bong Dude who I remember from a forum where I posted comments and a story outline once, but Richard Reid. Remember him? He was the wannabe airline terrorist with explosives in his shoe. Here at SterlingManor, he got that nickname because there was no published picture of him where he didn't look stoned. Also, you'd have to be pretty stoned to even try to get away with an attack involving an airplane.

But why bring up the fact that he was British? Simple, when you start profiling, criminals learn to recruit the unprofiled. If you start profiling the Arab-looking men, then the terrorist organizations start recruiting lighter-skinned women. And while that's happening, you begin to piss off the Arab-looking men, innocent in all, except the mind of public opinion. That will hurt us more in the long run.

Continuing on, shortly after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, a stupid little meme formed. "If [insert course of action here], then the terrorists win." I think we're about to enter where that saying actually isn't pablum. New York City and Atlanta has started random bag checks on subways, and our Washington Metro is considering the same. That's going to work as well as random police stops have worked to catch HOV violators in this region, or random ticket checks on the Baltimore Light Rail. Hell, London is cameraed up and down, and they still managed to get hit twice in its transportation system in the span of two weeks. Now, back to random checks, unless you plan on posting guards at every stop, well, you'll have the same success as the Virginia State Police has with HOV violators (see earlier link). But then again, let's place every cop we have at every subway stop. Let's break the system in the same way we wrecked airline travel. Then we can marvel in the horror when they hit us using another method. Bolt the doors, and they'll break in through the windows.

That said, if you want more reading on profiling, why it's bad if you're working on nothing more than his skin is too dark it's bad, but it's better if it's based on the fact he's acting weird, here's a longish piece by Bruce Schneier.

It's good to hear the news that British police may have caught some suspects in the latest round of subway bombings. However, that doesn't lessen the terribleness of learning that the guy police shot and killed over the weekend was an innocent bystander -- at least in the concerns of terrorism. The man, whom the cops must have thought was a suspicious Muslim man was a Brazilian man. Two posts ago, I probably wasn't dismissive enough over the idea of racial profiling. If you thought I was for profiling, I'm not. I should know by now that my style of sarcasm doesn't come across through text.

But that horrible case of mistaken identity, nee assumptive identification is reason enough to pause and resist the urge to endorse racial profiling.

at the Stockwell station, so says the police.

( Read more... )

If there could be but one good thing to come from the latest attacks, is that the attackers gave the London authorities many more clues, hopefully more than enough to stop this terrorist ring and to apprehending the remaining members.

CNN for more info.

This is jaw-droppingly insane. The London subway and transit system is again attacked. Two weeks ago, America woke up to the carnage that London suffered through its morning rush hour. This time, it appears to have happened during the middle of the London day. This bombing appears to be less destructive, possibly because the detonators didn't successfully detonate the payload.

You know, things like this make me feel so much better that we decided to take the fight away from Al Qaeda. Thank you sir, for taking the eyes off the prize.

(3 hours... I didn't think I'd last that long before making a critical Bush comment...)


OK, Blair is back on, with Bush and Chirac standing right behind him...and the other G8 leaders as well...

Yeah, I just realized how similar this is to the Madrid bombings of last year.

I just woke up to see Tony Blair give a speech on the apparently coordinated explosions in London on the bus line and subway. He believes they were related to the G8 Summit, which is occurring in Scotland. Though there are a number of other events occuring in London this week as well, plus they just won the 2012 Olympics. Yeah, this makes me a bit uneasy in having to ride the Metro later today. I'm not going to say anything much, as I think most information coming out during the first twenty-four hours is bad.