Re: "Lone terrorist" bill
At 01:12 PM 4/9/03 -0700, Tim May wrote:
(Also a good time to get rid of those teflon-coated frying pans.
Better dispose of that freon-filled fridge, too.[1] You don't have a pool, do you? That muriatic acid and chorine powder is a WMD just waiting to be deployed. Hate to be an Arab-American pool maintainer.. And Allah help you if you work at a metal plating factory. Metal cans make excellent timers, too. [1] In college, long ago, we had a fridge whose freezer regularly iced up solid. Some folks decided to use a propane torch to rapidly defrost. Luckily there was a chem major who wandered in.
On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Metal cans make excellent timers, too.
In local Police Museum, back during the communism era, there was an exhibition of the tools of "capitalist saboteurs". One of them was a device for delayed electrical ignition of haystacks. The timer was a pot with a lid. There were two contacts mounted on the lid, and a metal plate in the pot, laid on the layer of dried pea. You added water, the pea sterted to swell and rise the metal plate. When the plate touched the contacts, you were far away. ANYTHING can be used as a "terrorist tool". The world is crammed full with such toys, all you need is to keep your eyes open. The time of fear and suspicion comes into the neighbourhood. A workshop in a garage can become a set of terrorism tools, a bookshelf with computer security books can find itself turned into a "proof of conspiring to commit an act of cyberterrorism", and gods forbid you ever studied chemistry and possess any "forbidden knowledge". And even if you get a "fair process", a good prosecutor can paint you as an "armed and dangerous for the entire world", as the jurors are usually everything but tech-savvy... :( But maybe there is a grain of hope here. If the accesses to informations are monitored and the suspects are being apprehended according to the informations they look up, what about the "possible terrorists" posing as journalists[1]? Journalists have to look up data for their stories, so it is part of their profile - so let's match or mimic the other parts. Journalists have the key to the Public Opinion, or at least its part. If they will start matching profiles, and being monitored and considered dangerous, they will get pissed. If enough of them get pissed, their articles and/or news coverages could reflect it, with trickle-down effect on the Sheeple. This of course presumes we manage to guess the apprehension algorithms of TIA. Something like profile jamming. Could it work? Or is the idea taken out of the oven too soon and is still raw inside and inedible? [1] Journalists can be even unregistered ones, amateurs, bloggers, anyone with significantly wide public reach. Of course, if the registered ones, the ones pertaining to the Big Media, will start getting into hot water, it could have much better impact.
On Thu, 10 Apr 2003, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
In local Police Museum, back during the communism era, there was an exhibition of the tools of "capitalist saboteurs". One of them was a device for delayed electrical ignition of haystacks. The timer was a pot with a lid. There were two contacts mounted on the lid, and a metal plate in the pot, laid on the layer of dried pea. You added water, the pea sterted to swell and rise the metal plate. When the plate touched the contacts, you were far away.
That's a pretty nead idea for a detonator. Especially in a haystack :-)
ANYTHING can be used as a "terrorist tool". The world is crammed full with such toys, all you need is to keep your eyes open.
Exactly. So can anyone be painted as a terrorist.
The time of fear and suspicion comes into the neighbourhood. A workshop in a garage can become a set of terrorism tools, a bookshelf with computer security books can find itself turned into a "proof of conspiring to commit an act of cyberterrorism", and gods forbid you ever studied chemistry and possess any "forbidden knowledge".
This is where hacking becomes an interesting terror weapon.
But maybe there is a grain of hope here. If the accesses to informations are monitored and the suspects are being apprehended according to the informations they look up, what about the "possible terrorists" posing as journalists[1]? Journalists have to look up data for their stories, so it is part of their profile - so let's match or mimic the other parts. Journalists have the key to the Public Opinion, or at least its part. If they will start matching profiles, and being monitored and considered dangerous, they will get pissed. If enough of them get pissed, their articles and/or news coverages could reflect it, with trickle-down effect on the Sheeple. This of course presumes we manage to guess the apprehension algorithms of TIA. Something like profile jamming. Could it work? Or is the idea taken out of the oven too soon and is still raw inside and inedible?
It's a good recipie. A hacker can make someone look like a terrorist. Good targets would be children of aparatchitks. They would have access to lots of "dangerous things" and they'd be near privledged info (even if they don't know that). After a few 100 15 year olds get busted who are all related to "powers that be", the conspiricy theorists might notice. But until it happens to a few 1000, nobody will take it very seriously. After all, the corruption is so deep right now that when governor's daughters get caught with coke, nobody cares. But being sent away with no hope of ever seeing daylight again might make the recipie a touch more tasty. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Mike Rosing wrote:
with a lid. There were two contacts mounted on the lid, and a metal plate in the pot, laid on the layer of dried pea. You added water, the pea sterted to swell and rise the metal plate. When the plate touched the contacts, you were far away.
That's a pretty nead idea for a detonator. Especially in a haystack :-)
Together with mechanical (or, even better, chemical) ignitors you can achieve a timer construction completely without metal parts. Doesn't have to necessarily serve as a detonator. If used to control some mechanical setup, can trigger virtually anything that needs gentle pushing of something. A bit medievalish technology, but can withstand an EMP hit. Which could one day become a nicely sized advantage...
On Wednesday, April 9, 2003, at 05:06 PM, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Metal cans make excellent timers, too.
In local Police Museum, back during the communism era, there was an exhibition of the tools of "capitalist saboteurs". One of them was a device for delayed electrical ignition of haystacks. The timer was a pot with a lid. There were two contacts mounted on the lid, and a metal plate in the pot, laid on the layer of dried pea. You added water, the pea sterted to swell and rise the metal plate. When the plate touched the contacts, you were far away.
ANYTHING can be used as a "terrorist tool". The world is crammed full with such toys, all you need is to keep your eyes open.
Yes, but our side was using these freedom-fighting tools because we were freedom-fighters, not terrorists. When our side blew up the civilian Air Cubana airplane it was an act of freedom fighting, not terrorism. When our side mined the harbor of Managua, Nicaragua it was an act of freedeom fighting, not terrorism. (The Nicaraguan citizens had held a democratic election and had elected Daniel Ortega, a socialist, not the right-wing drug industrialist we had favored. So we mined their harbor.) When our side infiltrated Czechlos--whatever--vakia to burn hay lofts with the time delay system you describe, or to poison water supplies, or to sabotage factories, it was an act of freedom fighting to prove that the Czech system could not work. Sort of the CIA's version of "Unbearable Lightness of Being." Remember, when we assassinate and mine and blow up airliners, it's all part of the freedom fighting techniques taught at the College of the Americas CIA campus. (As a libertarian, and as one who read "1984" when I was 14 and "Atlas Shrugged" when I was 16, I am no friend of either socialism or communism, so don't misunderstand my comments above to mean that I support either Castro or the former USSR satellites, etc. But, befitting my exposure to "1984," I despise doublespeak and doublethink even more than I dislike Castro, for example. I favor freely trading with Cuba as the best way to implement "regime change" there. I believe locals need to change their regimes. If they won't, then they deserve what they get. There is great "moral hazard" involved in bailing out people or nations for their unwillingness to study, to learn, to defend themselves, etc. Apply this point to either American negroes and their degenerate status or to 1930s Eastern European Jews who were more intent on rocking and swaying and reading Torah scriptures than they were in preparing.) --Tim May
At 08:16 PM 04/09/2003 -0700, Tim May wrote:
I favor freely trading with Cuba as the best way to implement "regime change" there. I believe locals need to change their regimes.
The trade embargo and immigration and travel limitations have been an amazingly well-organized method of keeping Castro in power for 40 years. Soviet control of East Germany fell partly because people didn't want it any more, and partly because everybody figured out they could just go on vacation and not come back until the regime was gone. The Coast Guard use of military force to stop refugees is a crime against humanity. If we wanted to get the Cubans to choose capitalism, allowing trade, US tourism, and import of cheap televisions would take down the Castro regime rapidly. "Lone Terrorist" Bill
participants (5)
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Bill Stewart -
Major Variola (ret) -
Mike Rosing -
Thomas Shaddack -
Tim May