Thursday 28 February 2008

A question of Security

Bruce 'shits unbreakable ciphers' Schneier has commented on a report on how and why some terrorist attacks fail. He has picked out his favourite quote:

One phenomenon stands out: terrorists are rarely caught in the act during the execution phase of an operation, other than instances in which their equipment or weapons fail. Rather, plots are most often foiled during the pre-execution phases.
And who am I to disagree, this is why the hysteria over the climate change protestors getting onto an airplane (and to a lesser extent the palace of Westminster) and the furore of Andrew Gilliagan's "liquid bomb" is all a lot of hot air. Helping both the terror groups and the government in their aim of keeping the public scared.

On a similar note, Jackart is down on Matt Drudge for revealing where Prince Harry is, yeah keeping a secret was a good plan, but if that was the only plan for keeping him and his squadron safe then someone isn't doing their job right. We know this isn't the case, there are big intelligence operations going on out there as the Taliban are trying to attack the mobile phone networks to get them shut down as they think the big operation to find them is using that technology to track them. Not satellites of course?

No comments: