Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Model Rocketry and Other Terrorist Indicators

Uncle has a post up on an FBI pamphlet stating that paying cash at an internet cafe is a potential indicator of terrorism.

The stupidity continues in their other industry specific pamphlets including Surplus which we've talked about earlier. Some other 'indicators':

Reading about 'weapons'.

Reading 'Revolutionary' literature.

Not wanting people to read over your shoulder.

Being a model rocket or plane enthusiast. If you're learning about it and don't know much yet? That's also an indicator.

Wanting to start a paintball team.

Building a paintball course.

Wearing a backpack in warm weather.

While this comes as no surprise from the agency that declared referencing the US Constitution is a sign of 'extremism', one wonders how much further into ridiculousness the FBI can go before people pay as much attention to them as they did to the DHS 'Threat Level".

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9 comments:

John Richardson said...

OMG! I must have gone to a terrorist training school and didn't know it. As part of my graduate education in project management, we built gas-powered RC aircraft to learn how to manage a project.

I could just see some young
FBI agent asking my advisor - a retired USAF bird colonel - about the project. The agent would have gotten an evil eye that he wouldn't soon forget.

Divemedic said...

Even worse, there are some indicators that are impossible to avoid.
SCUBA diving without certification is a no-no, but so is getting SCUBA training in order to get a certification.

There are quite a few:

http://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2012/02/everyone-is-terrorist.html

Pyrotek85 said...

"Wearing a backpack in warm weather."

What, do I need to get a man purse now? Are high capacity assault bags a no-no?

Jl said...

Oh no I did all of those

Daniel in Brookline said...

When will they learn to focus on behavior -- and better yet, behavior patterns -- rather than on THINGS?

A terrorist will not always have a gun, or a box cutter, or a bottle with more than 3 oz of fluid in it. But a terrorist will always be a human being, behaving like a human being with someone to hide. That's the bottleneck, and that's what's worth testing.

What makes me sick about this is that we knew this, after 9/11 and even before. We could have spent the last ten years learning to apply such techniques. We could have been developing smart AI systems to flag faces in a crowd, so that only one in a hundred needs to be questioned at length. We could have learned to scale such systems upward to handle American air traffic loads.

Instead, we developed X-ray gadgets to take naked pictures of grandmothers... then decided that wasn't enough, she needs to get groped as well.

Maybe someday, someone will look back and wonder at the billions of dollars wasted, pushing hard in the wrong direction. I greatly fear that the history books will assume that we've all lost our minds. And they'll have reason to think so.

Will said...

Daniel:

they have had the facial systems for many years in (formerly)Great Britain, and have had bupkis results from it. They have cameras EVERYWHERE. People there say that when you step out your door in the morning, you should expect to be on camera at all times, the density of cctv is so great.

A significant number of .gov people are monitoring video there, and they can't even stop crime-in-progress, let alone catch terrorists with those systems. Just more money down the rathole of the

War On Citizens/Peons/Subjects/Drugs/Society/Whatever(tm).

Mr Evilwrench said...

It isn't about solving a problem. It's about manufacturing a problem, setting up a system that has no potential to solve it, fleecing the taxpayers to finance it, and acclimating the populace to every sort of indignity to fail to solve it. We're being conditioned, not protected. And we (and our grandchildren) are required to pay for it. Not required as in being sent a bill; required as in they take it from us with no consent. Conditioned as in trained to do as the man with the uniform tells us. How well do YOU want to fit into this world?

Anonymous said...

There's one teensy, weensy little problem: you CAN'T ignore them. They have guns and the authority to send you to a nice MAXSEC prison in the high Colorado desert.

They can make the most absurd claim in the world ("breathing in oxygen and breathing out CO2 is a sign of terrorist intent") and it still doesn't detract one iota from this basic fact: they have the power, and all you have is the right to do as you're told.

But, hey, the terrorists hate us because we're free, right?

Anonymous said...

Using the .gov standards we now have 313 million potential terrorists in the U.S.
Thats a lot of poeple to keep an eye on
Paul in tEXAS