Thursday, June 4, 2015

Ironic...

The day after portions of the Patriot Act were allowed to expire:

Boston Terror Suspects Plotted to Behead Police Officers

You can read in the article that the FBI had two of these men, and a third, under 24 hour surveillance.  That they had recordings of their conversations.  That they knew they were communicating with ISIS via social media.

How many people does it take to do 24 hour surveillance on one person?  On three?  How many people does it take to monitor live phone conversations and computer accounts of three people? (If you have no idea - it is ALOT of people just to follow around one person - remember, you CAN'T lose sight of him, or he may kill a cop).

ISIS claimed they had people all over America.  So far, what the public knows is that American law enforcement is 2 for 2 on attacks by these evil doers.  Garland, Texas (which was really Phoenix, Arizona) and now Boston.  The FBI is also very successful recently at arresting people as they were trying to leave the country to join ISIS, here, here, and elsewhere.

The Boston story is getting a lot of good news, good in that the public can see that ISIS was not lying, and good that the FBI is all over it.  How many do they not know about?  What happens when a police officer is publicly killed an beheaded in America?  At least police officers are armed, but what about when a soldier is attacked in America?  It happened in Great Britain. (It actually happened at Fort Hood - but that still gets less attention then the Colorado movie shooting).

The Patriot Act is not perfect - few laws are.  But are we really giving up freedom when we pay a phone company to dial a phone number to call somebody and the government has access to those records? I'm not going to belabor the point - but there has always been a "reduced expectation of privacy" when a third party (the phone company) is involved, and once the majority of the American public understands that the government can obtain the records - can't we cede that to big brother?

The good news so far, is that the ISIS in America guys are idiots.  But what if they stopped talking on the phones, used anonymous and random social media to communicate, and launched a "coordinated attack" at what seemed like random locations around the country? They wouldn't have to be that successful to change our world.

Would you suspect these people as Islamic radicals if you saw them in public?


David Wright, aka Dawud Sharif Abdul Khaliq
Usaama Rahim


Elton Simpson

Nadir Soofi


2 comments:

LL said...

Since I suspect everybody (including everyone's mother), yes, they all look like terrorists to me.

The armament level (a K-Bar) in the recent arrest wasn't indicative of much sophistication. The tactics in Garland Tx were not subtle. But I'm sure that they'll learn.

LL said...

I would like your take on FBI's classified database that includes everyone in America with a motorcycle license (Washington Post). I put it up on my motorcycle blog.

http://diavel-speed.blogspot.com/2015/06/fbi-gang-list-includes-all-licensed-m.html?showComment=1433430240769#c1457197038561459599