Quotulatiousness

September 12, 2011

The increasing militarization of the police

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

Radley Balko shows how the tools given to the authorities to fight the war on terror have instead been used to further expand the war on drugs:

New York magazine reported some telling figures last month on how delayed-notice search warrants — also known as “sneak-and-peek” warrants — have been used in recent years. Though passed with the PATRIOT Act and justified as a much-needed weapon in the war on terrorism, the sneak-and-peek was used in a terror investigation just 15 times between 2006 and 2009. In drug investigations, however, it was used more than 1,600 times during the same period.

It’s a familiar storyline. In the 10 years since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has claimed a number of new policing powers in the name of protecting the country from terrorism, often at the expense of civil liberties. But once claimed, those powers are overwhelmingly used in the war on drugs. Nowhere is this more clear than in the continuing militarization of America’s police departments.

The trend toward a more militarized domestic police force began well before 9/11. It in fact began in the early 1980s, as the Regan administration added a new dimension of literalness to Richard Nixon’s declaration of a “war on drugs.” Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to national security, and once likened America’s drug fight to the World War I battle of Verdun. But Reagan was more than just rhetoric. In 1981 he and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment. It authorized the military to train civilian police officers to use the newly available equipment, instructed the military to share drug-war–related information with civilian police and authorized the military to take an active role in preventing drugs from entering the country.

[. . .]

The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military’s job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Cops are charged with keeping the peace, and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It’s dangerous to conflate the two. As former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb once put it, “Soldiers are trained to vaporize, not Mirandize.” That distinction is why the U.S. passed the Posse Comitatus Act more than 130 years ago, a law that explicitly forbids the use of military troops in domestic policing.

Update: Also from Radley, a look inside the SWAT team leader’s world.

[. . .] note the complete disregard for the rights of the people being raided in the excerpt above. The author is actually suggesting SWAT commanders lobby to have their teams deployed in situations for which they normally wouldn’t be to ensure they’re in good practice. Put another way, he suggests they practice their door smashing, room-clearing, flash-grenade deploying, and other paramilitary tactics on less-than-violent people, so they’re in better form when a real threat arises. Never mind that there are going to be living, breathing, probably bleeding people on the receiving end of these “practice” raids. There’s officer safety and “SWAT team profile” to think about. It’s just an appalling mindset.

September 9, 2011

When drug smugglers go high tech

Filed under: Americas, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:07

Strategy Page has more information about the submarine factory that was recently discovered, and the boats they were constructing:

Colombian police recently arrested eighteen members of a gang that specialized in building submarines and semisubmersible boats for transporting cocaine from Colombia to Central America and Mexico. As police suspected, some (five) of those arrested were retired or on active duty with the Colombian Navy (which operates two 1970s ear German built Type 209 submarines). These arrests are part of an intense effort to find the people responsible for building subs for cocaine gangs. Find the builders, and you stop the building efforts.

[. . .]

The submarines that have been captured have, on closer examination turned out to be more sophisticated than first thought. The outer hull is made out of strong, lightweight, Kevlar/carbon fiber that was sturdy enough to keep the sub intact, but very difficult to detect with most sensors. The hull could not survive deep dives, but this boat didn’t have to go deep to get the job done. The diesel-electric power supply, diving and surfacing system and navigational systems of captured (by the army, while under construction) subs were all in working order. It was believed that some of those who built these boats probably had experience building recreational subs. The sub builders also had impressive knowledge of the latest materials used to build exotic boats. It had already become clear that something extraordinary was happening in these improvised jungle shipyards.

The two fiberglass/Kevlar submarines found so far were obviously built to transport cocaine to North America. Neither the United States, nor anyone else who might know, are talking about how many of these subs are out there, or believed to be in operation or under construction. Similar type boats could be built for terrorist or espionage missions.

August 22, 2011

“They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror”

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:51

The folks at Mother Jones have been conducting some investigative journalism on the FBI’s unique way of fighting terrorists:

Over the past year, Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley have examined prosecutions of 508 defendants in terrorism-related cases, as defined by the Department of Justice. Our investigation found:

  • Nearly half the prosecutions involved the use of informants, many of them incentivized by money (operatives can be paid as much as $100,000 per assignment) or the need to work off criminal or immigration violations. (For more on the details of those 508 cases, see our charts page and searchable database.)
  • Sting operations resulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants. Of that total, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an agent provocateur — an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.
  • With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings. (The exceptions are Najibullah Zazi, who came close to bombing the New York City subway system in September 2009; Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, an Egyptian who opened fire on the El-Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport; and failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad.)
  • In many sting cases, key encounters between the informant and the target were not recorded — making it hard for defendants claiming entrapment to prove their case.
  • Terrorism-related charges are so difficult to beat in court, even when the evidence is thin, that defendants often don’t risk a trial.

“The problem with the cases we’re talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents,” says Martin Stolar, a lawyer who represented a man caught in a 2004 sting involving New York’s Herald Square subway station. “They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.” In the FBI’s defense, supporters argue that the bureau will only pursue a case when the target clearly is willing to participate in violent action. “If you’re doing a sting right, you’re offering the target multiple chances to back out,” says Peter Ahearn, a retired FBI special agent who directed the Western New York Joint Terrorism Task Force and oversaw the investigation of the Lackawanna Six, an alleged terror cell near Buffalo, New York. “Real people don’t say, ‘Yeah, let’s go bomb that place.’ Real people call the cops.”

July 28, 2011

Is Breivik sane enough to prosecute?

Filed under: Europe, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

Douglas Murray points out that Breivik’s actions even before the attacks would have marked him as insane:

Anders Behring Breivik believed himself a Knight Templar and awarded himself various military ranks accordingly. He also believed that he and other self-described Islamophobic racists had common cause with jihadis and that the USA has a Jewish problem. So even before he planted a car bomb in a civilian area and gunned down scores of young people, it would have been clear to anyone who bothered to question him that Breivik was insane.

Of course, no discussion of the Oslo massacre is complete without considering the media reaction:

But in the coverage since his atrocities first broke on to the world, two troubling tendencies have converged. The first is the search for reason in a mind that was clearly a stranger to it. The second is the tendency — particularly strong on the left — to use any horrific act as a megaphone for existing prejudices. In the aftermath of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford in January, the left-wing media and politicians hunted for the right-wingers who they claimed had inspired the attack. That the gunman was not only a loner but a psychotic maniac was largely ignored as they rushed off excitedly to attack their ideological enemies. And so it is with Breivik.

For the past decade and more, every time an Islamist has blown something up, a chorus of voices — mainly from the left — has rightly said that ‘we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions’. But this time it was different. The Labour MP Tom Harris observed, with great frankness, that a ‘palpable relief that swept through the left when the identity of the terrorist was made known… Here, thank God, was a terrorist we can all hate without equivocation: white, Christian and far right-wing. Phew.’ So never mind not jumping to conclusions. When it seemed to emerge that, among many other things, the killer also claimed to be opposed to immigration and was fearful of Islam, that jump became a great leap towards group blame.

July 25, 2011

Mark Steyn responds to accusations that he “inspired” the attack in Oslo

Filed under: Europe, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 20:30

Mark Steyn is quoted in Norwegian terrorist Breivik’s “manifesto”, and this is being used to paint him and others as “inspiration” for the attacks. He responds:

I have been away from the Internet for the weekend, and return to find myself being fitted out for a supporting role in Friday’s evil slaughter in Norway. The mass murderer Breivik published a 1,500-page “manifesto.” It quotes me, as well as several friends of NR — Theodore Dalrymple, Daniel Pipes, Roger Scruton, Melanie Phillips, Daniel Hannan (plus various pieces from NR by Rod Dreher and others) — and many other people, including Churchill, Gandhi, Orwell, Jefferson, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, not to mention the U.S. Declaration of Independence.* Those new “hate speech” codes the Left is already clamoring for might find it easier just to list the authors Europeans will still be allowed to read.

It is unclear how seriously this “manifesto” should be taken. Parts of it simply cut and paste chunks of the last big killer “manifesto” by Ted Kaczynski, with the occasional [insert-your-cause-here] word substitute replacing the Unabomber’s obsessions with Breivik’s. This would seem an odd technique to use for a sincerely meant political statement. The entire document is strangely anglocentric — in among the citations of NR and The Washington Times, there’s not a lot about Norway.

[. . .]

Any of us who write are obliged to weigh our words, and accept the consequences of them. But, when a Norwegian man is citing Locke and Burke as a prelude to gunning down dozens of Norwegian teenagers, he is lost in his own psychoses. Free societies can survive the occasional Breivik. If Norway responds to this as the Left appears to wish, by shriveling even further the bounds of public discourse, freedom will have a tougher time.

Electronic weapons to destroy other electronics

Filed under: China, Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:05

Strategy Page looks at some interesting developments in the electronic weapons area:

A U.S. government report (from the National Ground Intelligence Center) indicates that China has developed useful weapons for disabling the electronics on American aircraft and warships. This is done using high-powered microwave (HPM) devices to create something like the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) put out by nuclear weapons, which damaged or destroys microelectronics.

[. . .]

Then there’s the EMP bomb, a legendary weapon that is much talked about, but has never actually been seen. Throughout the 1990s, information came out of Russia that a weapon had been developed that could generate a short range EMP (electromagnetic pulse) similar to that created by nuclear explosions. All computers within the range of the EMP bomb would be ruined. This is a truly devastating capability. Microprocessors are found everywhere these days; in automobiles, appliances, industrial equipment, medical devices and many other devices. Military microprocessors are often shielded to protect them against EMP, but the shielding is not thoroughly tested and even some military equipment will probably be disabled by an EMP attack.

A decade ago, a British military research team announced that they had duplicated the rumored Russian device and produced an EMP bomb that can fit in a 155mm artillery shell, small rockets or bombs. Such a device was supposed to be inexpensive and could be used to destroy civilian electronics that might be useful to nearby enemy troops. What is particularly worrisome about this new development is that, in the hands of terrorists, it could do a new kind of damage. While not killing people directly, the destruction of all electronics within an urban area could cause casualties and much economic loss. But none of these EMP bombs has ever actually reached the stage where they were actually ready to use. There was always some kind of flaw discovered in testing. Naturally, China is thought to have developed an EMP bomb.

Reaction to the attacks in Norway

Filed under: Europe, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:37

Brendan O’Neill looks at the media reaction to the Oslo and Utoya terror attacks:

When it was reported on Friday that there had been an explosion and an horrific mass shooting in Norway, many observers assumed that al-Qaeda or some other radical Islamist group had struck at the heart of peaceful Scandinavia. ‘Norway’s 9/11’, said the front page of the Sun on Saturday, with the subheading: ‘“Al-Qaeda” massacre.’ Yet when it was revealed that the alleged bomber and shooter is a Norway-born, blonde-haired, farm-owning Aryan, observers quickly bought into the idea that we were faced with something very different from an al-Qaeda attack. This wasn’t ‘Norway’s 9/11’ after all, but something more akin to Columbine-on-steroids, a right-wing madman letting off steam in a most barbaric fashion. As one Norwegian police official put it: this was ‘probably more Norway’s Oklahoma than its World Trade Centre’.

Yet this simplistic categorisation of contemporary terror assaults — where violent outbursts get slotted into files marked ‘Radical Islamist Fury’ or ‘Right-Wing Anger’ — makes too fine a distinction between acts that are actually very similar. Just because something like 7/7 in London was executed by men with dark hair and brown skin who claimed to be fighting on behalf of the Muslim ummah, while the bombing of Oslo and massacre on Utoya were carried out by a white guy who claimed to be protecting European Christian culture, that doesn’t mean these are diametrically different actions. What they have in common is far more important than what separates them. And, stripped of their pseudo-political garb, what unites today’s various terror tantrums, what makes these kind of people possible in the first place, is a very powerful culture of estrangement in modern society.

In much of the media, particularly amongst the respectable broadsheet press, there was a palpable sense of relief when it was revealed that the alleged killer is white with far-right tendencies. This means he is the kind of person we can unambiguously hate. Where Islamist terror attacks, from 9/11 to 7/7, induce in some liberal observers torn and tortured feelings, where they want to condemn the violence but also feel the need to explain it as a natural reaction to evil Western foreign policy, Anders Behring Breivik is someone they can despise in an uncomplicated way. This means that while the attacks may not be ‘Norway’s 9/11’, they could well be the cultural elite’s 9/11 — in the sense that this is an act which the influential liberal classes may seek to politicise in an opportunistic fashion, to make moral mileage out of, in the same way that the right did after 11 September 2001.

July 5, 2011

Miss Taliban beauty contest called off after all contestants turn out to be men

Filed under: Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 16:01

Okay, the real story:

AFGHAN police have arrested seven armed insurgents who disguised themselves as women by wearing burqas, officials said.

Interior ministry spokesman Siddiq Siddiqi said that the men, who carried light weapons with at least one in a suicide vest, were captured in Jalalabad, the capital of the eastern province of Nangarhar.

He said the men wore the all-enveloping veil as part of their disguise and were planning attacks on government targets, but gave no further details.

H/T to Roger Henry, who notes:

Have a look at these delectable Afghan stunners, Afghanistan’s best!
I do so like the look of coy modesty, what possibly could have given them away?
They could do with a little grooming.

Would-be terrorists advised to pretend to be gay

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:42

A link from Jon, my former virtual landlord, discussing a document that fell into the hands of the Sunday Mirror:

al-Qaeda fanatics in Britain are being taught to avoid detection — by pretending to be gay.

A new terror training manual tells Islamic extremists to lie about their sexuality if a woman approaches them in case she is a “honeytrap” spy sent by security services.

The handbook, which was uncovered by a Sunday Mirror ­investigation, says: “Many hotels — especially in busy UK cities — have women hanging around the lobby areas in order to attract men.

“A young beautiful woman may come and talk to you. The first thing you do to protect yourself from such a ­situation is to make dua (prayers) to Allah for ­steadfastness.

“The second thing is to find an excuse to get away from her that is realistic and sensible, such as you having a girlfriend for the past few years and you are loyal to her or you are ­homosexual.”

The suggestion is one of many tips in the manual, called Class Notes From The Security and ­Intelligence Course.

Of course, if they were drawing their recruits from Pashtun tribesmen, they might not have to pretend much.

June 11, 2011

QotD: OPEC’s 50-year fishing trip

Filed under: Economics, Government, Middle East, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:56

The petroleum-exporting countries have kept America as a gigantic fish on a steel line for nearly 50 years, reeling it in slowly, and letting it out (relaxing oil prices), when the United States made purposeful noises about raising domestic production, cutting consumption, and going to alternate sources. As soon as OPEC fine-tuned the fishing reel, the great fish went with the docility of the addicted consumer back to its default position mainlining on foreign oil at steadily increasing prices and in ever larger quantities. Every president starting with Richard Nixon warned of the danger in this addiction, but none has done anything useful about it. There must be an emphasis on cheap and plentiful natural gas, more nuclear (with maximum safety standards), more off-shore drilling (with maximum environmental-protection arrangements), and higher gasoline taxes to raise revenues and restrain use. All of this will bring down the international price and reduce the amount of money available for the Iranians, Saudis, Venezuelans, and others to finance terrorism around the world, and will ultimately reduce U.S. defense costs. None of this has been done, though the need for it has been obvious for decades.

Conrad Black, “Why America is suffering”, National Post, 2011-06-11

May 22, 2011

The Tory “omnibus crime legislation” overview

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Kathryn Blaze Carlson looks at the likely form of the new federal government’s “tough on crime” omnibus bill:

The Conservative government’s omnibus crime legislation, due ‘‘within 100 days,’’ will mark a watershed moment in Canadian legal history, imposing many controversial changes to how police and the courts operate, experts say.

The bill is sweeping in scale and scope: It is expected to usher new mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes — growing five marijuana plants to sell the drug would automatically bring six months in jail — and for certain sexual offences against children. It will expand police powers online without court orders, reintroduce controversial aspects of the Anti-Terrorism Act that expired in 2007, end house arrest for serious crimes, and impact young offenders and their privacy.

“This bundle of crime legislation represents the most comprehensive agenda for crime reform since the Criminal Code was introduced,” said Steven Skurka, a Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer.

As always, when the government bundles together a lot of bills, there are some good and some bad ideas all headed down the chute at the same time. An especially bad bit is the preventative arrest provision that expired with the original Anti-Terrorism Act, and another one is the one allowing the police to demand internet records from ISPs without a court order (or, one assumes, notice to the people whose internet records are of interest to the police).

May 15, 2011

US had prepared to fight Pakistan over Bin Laden raid

Filed under: Asia, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:16

Strategy Page reports that the US military had made contingency plans to cover Pakistani military intervention in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden:

On May 2nd, the United States was prepared to go to war with Pakistan. The American raid on that day, which killed Osama bin Laden and seized a huge mass of al Qaeda data from his Pakistani hideout, was carried out without informing Pakistan beforehand. Although Pakistan had years earlier agreed that the U.S. could enter Pakistani territory in hot pursuit of terrorists fleeing Afghanistan, or to grab high ranking al Qaeda leaders, it was always assumed that the U.S. would let the Pakistani military know what was coming. But because the Pakistani government was full of bin Laden fans, the U.S. did not inform Pakistan about the raid until it was underway. Apparently, that message included a reminder that if the U.S. troops in the bin Laden compound were attacked by Pakistani forces, there would be instant, and far-reaching, consequences.

The extent of those consequences have since been pieced together, from unclassified information. By May 2nd, the U.S. had assembled a huge naval and air force in the region, that was pointed at Pakistan. This force would attack any Pakistani troops or warplanes that went after the U.S. forces in the bin Laden compound, or who might be able to do so. The U.S. had assembled three aircraft carriers, hundreds of air force aircraft in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, and dozens of helicopters, and thousands of troops, in Afghanistan. Most of these troops didn’t know what they were alerted for. Such alerts happen all the time, often for no reason (as far as the troops are concerned.) But this time, as word of the bin Laden raid got out, it became obvious (at least to those who know how these things work) that the alerts throughout the region were to prepare for the possible need to quickly get the American raiders out, and destroy any Pakistani forces that sought to interfere.

May 2, 2011

Radley Balko: “He won”

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:58

A distressing round-up of the lifetime achievements of the late Osama Bin Laden:

We have also fundamentally altered who we are. A partial, off-the-top-of-my-head list of how we’ve changed since September 11 . . .

  • We’ve sent terrorist suspects to “black sites” to be detained without trial and tortured.
  • We’ve turned terrorist suspects over to other regimes, knowing that they’d be tortured.
  • In those cases when our government later learned it got the wrong guy, federal officials not only refused to apologize or compensate him, they went to court to argue he should be barred from using our courts to seek justice, and that the details of his abduction, torture, and detainment should be kept secret.
  • We’ve abducted and imprisoned dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in Guantanamo who turned out to have been innocent. Again, the government felt no obligation to do right by them.
  • The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are complicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.
  • The government illegally spied and eavesdropped on thousands of American citizens.
  • Presidents from both of the two major political parties have claimed the power to detain suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, based solely on the president’s designation of them as an “enemy combatant,” essentially making the president prosecutor, judge, and jury. (I’d also argue that the treatment of someone like Bradley Manning wouldn’t have been tolerated before September 11.)

The list, unfortunately goes on.

Yes, bin Laden the man is dead. But he achieved all he set out to achieve, and a hell of a lot more. He forever changed who we are as a country, and for the worse. Mostly because we let him. That isn’t something a special ops team can fix.

Location of Bin Laden’s hideaway difficult for Pakistan to explain away

Filed under: Asia, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:59

From the BBC News website:

More details are emerging of how al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was found and killed at a fortified compound on the outskirts of Abbottabad in north-west Pakistan.

The compound is a few hundred metres from the the Pakistan Military Academy, an elite military training centre, which is Pakistan’s equivalent to Britain’s Sandhurst, according to the BBC’s M Ilyas Khan who visited the area.

Earlier reports put the distance at about 200 yards (182 metres). Pakistan’s military says the compound is 4km (2.4 miles) away from the academy.

But it lies well within Abbottabad’s military cantonment — it is likely the area would have had a constant and significant military presence and checkpoints.

Pakistan’s army chief is a regular visitor to the academy for graduation parades.

Someone very well placed in Pakistan’s army or intelligence organizations had to have been aware of, and actively protecting Bin Laden’s hideout. There’s no way he could have lived that close to high security military establishments without active collusion with high-ranking officers or intelligence chiefs.

April 20, 2011

Logic, consistency not strong points for this would-be terror gang

Filed under: Britain, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:30

A group of would-be terrorists were discovered before they could put their plans into action partly because of their disdain for “infidel” technology:

Recently, a British Moslem (Rajib Karim) was sentenced to 30 years for attempting to use his job at British Airways to help plan, coordinate and carry out terrorist attacks. One reason Karim was caught was the refusal of his terrorist cohorts in Yemen and Bangladesh to use modern cryptography for their communications. The reason was that the modern stuff was all invented by infidels (non-Moslems). Instead the group was forced to use ancient (over 2,000 year old) single letter substitution codes. The group’s implementation of this was accomplished using a spreadsheet. Unlike modern ciphers, like PGP and AES, the ancient substitution methods are easy to crack with modern decryption techniques.

A major shortcoming of Islamic radicalism is its disdain for modern, particularly non-Moslem (Western) technology. This often causes problems, like the one Karim (a computer specialist with British Airways) had with his less educated fellow terrorists in Yemen and Bangladesh. But what Karim encountered was another major problem for Islamic radicals, the fact that these groups tend to attract a disproportionate number of poorly educated recruits. The Islamic world, in general, is less educated and literate than the West, thus giving Islamic radical groups a poorly educated pool of potential recruits to begin with.

The disdain is highly selective, unless spreadsheets were also part of the Arabic cultural heritage.

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