[osint] Group to launch terrorist database

[Chris Kuethe]

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 23:45:33 -0500 (EST), Steve Thompson
<steve49152 at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> 
> They should set up a snitch line, so to speak, so that the general public
> can report, possibly even by email, incidents of small-scale terrorism and
> potential terrorism that they might witness as they go about their daily
> lives.  It couldn't hurt.  In fact, such a move would easily eliminate any
> question of institutional bias in reference to the selection criterion used
> to evaluate whether any given incident qualifies as terrorism or not. 

Quoting from http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard3.html
==========
I make a mental note of his license plate.  In fact, I did that 60
times a minute for 15 and a half minutes.  Oh dear.. oh dear.... 
Looks like another call to the DMV Database to register a vehicle as
stolen by out of town arms
dealers...
==========

So when some jackhole cuts you off in traffic, now you don't report
him as a possible drunk driver, now you can turn him into DHS as a
highway terrorist. Unless he's preemtively called you in. Everyone
remember the rules of the prisoner's game?

Anyway, you already have snitch lines.
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/oct04/seekinfo103004.htm says you can use the
online tip form, or contact your local FBI office or US embassy. Or
your police department.

> I'm not usually one to come out in favour of government database
> systems, but for something like the terrorism database (which has
> the potential to greatly enhance the security of democracy and law),
> what's there not to like about it? 

Howzabout the difficulty of sorting the useful tips out of the chaff
when you just know that some new spam network will be set up to flood
the system with bogus yet somewhat plausible tips.

Howzabout the difficulty that you - the meat blob - will have trying
to get your name out of the database after you unfortunately happened
to be within a 10 mile radius of "the real terrorists".

Howzabout the fact that in this day and age of the internet and
telephone, no one seems to have successfully managed to hack up some
little Law-Enforcement-Only forum where "They" go to talk about how to
catch terrorists. That's a people problem, really.

Howzabout the fact that all LE organizations seem to have a real hard
time working together, squealing about jurisdiction, etc. If they were
actually serious about getting the job done, they'd either put the
"juris-my-dick-tion bullshit" or there would be some presidental
directive simply ordering everyone to play nice together. I don't
think either of those are happening, based on the number of security
czars who seem to be retiring suddenly.

-- 
GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?