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Schneier on Security: Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot
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Schneier on Security: Terrorist Special Olympics in the UK
I was going to comment on the Schneier post “Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot” anyway, but when reading Chris Applegate’s look at the most recent terrorism attempts here in the UK I thought I’d jump to it rather than put it off any longer. My initial thoughts on Schneier’s original piece was largely in agreement. One thing that irks me is that the label “terrorism” gets bandied around far too often; after all it helps with introducing draconian laws (what happened to the paedophile threat?) and selling newspapers!
Terrorism is, in reality, an extremely complex issue. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter and the line between them can be extremely fine and will depend largely on whether one agrees with the status quo or not, but we can see just how often the label is applied when, in my opinion at least, it’s really undeserved. Those who make idle threats to our freedoms are not terrorists (a good number of the so-called terrorists hadn’t even got as far as attempting to buy the required equipment) and a good many of the others are nothing but common criminals who should be treated as such.
The events of last week and over the weekend haven’t changed much. As Chris points out (initially - he followed it up with a more serious post) the best response to these people is a combination of pity and contempt, mixed with a good dose of “Ha Ha” (Nelson style). Schneier’s second post backs this up and returns us to the point - whilst we paint terrorists as idiots by misusing the term there are always those who’ll make the label stick by actually being idiots.
As usual, the response to these “attacks” has come in two different forms - the general populace of the UK, already struck with a real terror of floods leading to abandoned homes, overflowing resevoirs and loss of life have responded with the classic “stiff upper lip” method whilst our Government has responded with some talk about checking professional immigrants more thoroughly - especially those working in the NHS. Horses and stable doors spring to mind.
This is exactly the sort of thing that has been derided in past - the reactive method will not work as terrorists can be (unless they’re stupid) resourceful and will find ways to get around our defences. If we ramp up protection at airports then what’s to stop them from targeting hospitals, schools, railways or any other public facility? My favourite quote attributed to Gerry Adams seems particularly apt.
We only have to be lucky once, you have to be lucky all the time
On this day..
- Facebook & Identity - 2007
- People Aggregator - 2006
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