Joe's Jottings

Category: Politics

Is this a valid test of Social Media Newsgathering?

A few days ago I came across this news story, in which a group of French journalists are to be holed up in a farmhouse somewhere with no access to normal news media but with access to Social Media – Twitter, Facebook, etc. The idea is to see whether news can be effectively and accurately reported via Social media.

It’s an interesting idea, but, just like Celebrity Big Brother, one has to ask Is there a point?’ To start with, as has been pointed out by some commentators, by announcing it in this way it’s quite possible that people will try and game the system and attempt to get some totally ludicrous story in to the news programme that these reporters will be creating in their isolated time. And there’s the lack of ability to follow up alternate sources who aren’t on Twitter, no way of getting a gut feel from the rest of the media, etc. In the last week there was a particularly persistent rumour on Twitter that Johnny Depp had died, which indicated the ‘life of it’s own’ aspect that many rumours have, only this time it was spread incredibly quickly and virally across Twitter, hence reaching, in the words of the beer adverts, parts other rumours in the past could not reach. I have a gut feel that the items that interest the vast majority of people on Social Networks are unlikely to be the content of conventional ‘serious news’ outlets. More National Enquirer than National Interest, more Geek than GATT. I can see some areas of overlap – the major big stories like Haiti, for example.

On the other hand, if by chance the news reported by these reporters reflects to a greater or lesser degree the output of the conventional media, then it has an awful lot to say about the efficacy of the ‘citizen journalist’ in pumping out on to social media outlets news that is editorially similar to that which is reported by the mainstream.

A further possibility is that ‘hard’ news stories that don’t get conventionally reported but that do appear on social networks and web sites such as Indymedia might be picked up and run with. To me, this is the most interesting outcome of all, and if the reporters and their parent stations play the game with a straight bat it could give us all an intriguing insight in to the editorial policies of conventional media and how this form of newsgathering of crowdsourced stories might start showing more sides of conventional news stories than typically gets reported.

One thing that does concern me about this sort of approach, apart from validation and verification, is analysis. Everything is a scoop; the fast nature of Social Media means that the time taken to interpret and analyse what’s happening is time in which any number of other stories will zoom by. This is a pattern we’ve already seen in 24 hour rolling news; everything is reported quickly; the facts (or rumours) are reported with no sense of context. It’s like trying to get a picture of the strategic and political importance of a military engagement from a soldier who spent the whole battle in a foxhole pinned down by enemy fire. It’s a valid viewpoint in one way, but is not a method of reporting that produces truly informed citizens.

January 29, 2010
ACTA – Why is the Government not informing MPs about this Agreement?

Have you heard of ACTA? How about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement? No? Well, you’re probably not alone. After all, here in the UK the Government won’t even put documents regarding the Agreement in to the House of Commons Library. Of course, our New Labour defenders of freedom have lots of reasons for not doing this, most of them playing the ‘National Interest’ card, but one has to wonder whether that’s all there is to it.

To give you a little background, take a look at this brief outline of the provisions and process of ACTA. Like most things that trans-national bodies come up with, they sound bland and almost useful to start with but the Devil is, as always, buried in the details. And not buried deeply here. The Horns and the tip of Old Nick’s tail are definitely visible! Nominally, ACTA was put together to prevent counterfeiting and piracy of branded goods; immediately you can see that it’s beneficiaries are likely to be big corporations. Whilst you might immediately think of dodgy Guffi handbags on the flea-market, or pirated DVDs, it also extends to less obvious things like machine parts, electronic components, drugs, etc. In fact any copyrighted goods. So far, sort of so good – but it also throws in sections dealing with piracy across the Internet and other aspects related to what might loosely be described as ‘means of piracy’, which is where the fun starts.

This BBC item from last yearindicates some of the concerns. Some of the aggressive policies put forward last year against Internet pirates (or suspected pirates) here in the UK were almost certainly a product of ACTA, and the current Deep Packet Inspection trial by Virgin (whilst hitting a few legal issues) would no doubt warm the cockles of ACTA’s stony heart. ACTA will allow for a great deal more intrusive observation by ISPs, Governmental bodies and other interested parties of our Internet traffic, will support fairly swinging penalties and because it’s a very broad-based, international agreement will have the stench of globalisation about it. And it’s not just your Internet connection that’s of interest. If you take your computer across international borders – in principle, ANY form of digital storage – then ACTA would permit it to be searched. And this might easily include the SD cards in your camera, your Blackberry, your iPod.

Concerned yet? Lots of fuss has been made about the ‘three strikes and you’re off the Net’ laws being developed in a number of countries that are likely to be signatory to ACTA when it’s finally agreed and ratified. But that’s just the end of the process. ACTA is the issue of concern as it legalises nothing more than wholesale invasion of privacy by private companies in to our personal lives.

It’s not just the UK Government keeping this business sub-rosa. Here’s a Canadian take. Fortunately, some British MPs (bless ’em) are attempting to get an Early Day motion in place to raise the issue.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised; ACTA will benefit global business first and foremost – the acolytes of massive globalisation will love it. And such agreements are often used to bring in laws that individual Governments would probably lose power over if they tried to do it themselves. National sovereignty and local governance once more yields to the faceless centre.

Perhaps it’s time to act up on ACTA?

January 27, 2010
Burying the bad news – it’s what Terror Alert Statuses are for!
I appreciate that I may be being overly cynical here, and will certainly feel a total idiot if the recent escalation of the UK’s Terror Alert Status actually was based in one of the threats reported here. But that’s part of the problem – unless the threat is carried through or arrests are made we will never know. We’ll hang around for 30 or 40 (or 70, based on a recent ruling) years until the Government determines that secret documents can be released and then we might find out. Unless, of course, the file’s pruned in the meantime.

The whole thing is like the story of the man who walks in to a pub and offers to sell anyone there some of his patented elephant repellent. When someone points out that there are no elephants in the town, our hero simply replies ‘Just shows how good it is, doesn’t it?’ And that’s the way it is with terrorism warnings and terror intelligence in general. If an arrest is made, great. If no arrest is made, the intelligence services can claim that continued awareness has saved the say yet again – without telling us precisely how. And, God forbid, should a terrorist attack be committed then it’s due to the fact that the intelligence services were not able to use all their resources adequately because of civil liberties issues, so can we have some tighter rules please.

It’s a great tool. Don’t get me wrong – I believe that we need a strong counter-terrorism and counter-espionage capability in the UK, along with a strong military to adequately defend this country. But I also believe in these institutions being under control and open to inspection and examination. The last decade of Bush in the White House and New labour in Downing Street has made it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for the typical UK citizen to trust Government. It’s no longer enough for our Government to say ‘We know best’ with regard to what information is released or not released. When trust has been lost, it needs to be regained and one way in which this could be done is for the Government to tell us more of the reason as to why the terrorist alert level increases and decreases.

I’m not suggesting operational information is released; just a general warning – ‘An attack related to an airport is expected’, ‘Hijackings are being planned and may occur at any time’, etc. No doubt the authorities would suggest many reasons why this can’t be done:
- Pushing the terrorists in to launching an attack early – well, as soon as the announcement that the terror alert has increased goes out, it would surely provoke the terrorists as well.
- Scaring terrorists off – and this is a bad thing?
- Disrupting investigations – the idea of counter-terrorism is to disrupt terror attacks and catch or kill terrorists. If an investigation is under way and those under investigation suddenly start running around like scalded cats, then again it must indicate that the attack has been disrupted.
I genuinely cannot see how telling us more could hurt matters; it would begin to rebuild lost trust and realistically terrorism will never be defeated unless state and citizen trust each other. Reducing the Fear, uncertainty and Doubt associated with the current method of attempting to alert UK citizens about terror attacks must be a good thing….unless…..

Well…unless the FUD is a necessary requirement that can be used to distract us from ongoing issues in our country’s governance? It could be coincidence that we are now sitting at ‘Severe’ when the following are issues in the news:
- Blair will be questioned at the Chilcot Inquiry this week.
- Information from the Inquiry suggests that legal advice was given to the Government that the war in Iraq was illegal.
- Papers to do with the death of Dr David Kelly to be kept secret for 70 years.
- Gordon Brown will be questioned at the Inquiry before the UK Election.
- The Foreign Office is being forced to deny that some anti-terrorism projects are being cut.
Perhaps a ‘Severe’ anti-terror warning is just what the Government needs to try and distract us right now….
January 25, 2010
Why this US Supreme Court Ruling affects ALL of us.
Sometimes the stuff that changes the world starts quietly. On September 9th, 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, was assassinated in a suicide bombing. A few months previously he’d warned the West that a major terrorist atrocity was on it’s way, and it was thought that the assassination by supporters of the relatively unknown Osama Bin Laden might be payback. Two days later, after the attacks on the US, it began to look like the assassination was part of the same plot, designed to remove a major opponent of the Taliban regime.

The world hasn’t been the same since. Billions of dollars spent and lost in destruction, millions of lives lost or damaged.

On 21st January, 2010, the US Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favour of allowing unlimited Corporate and Union Campaign contributions in campaigns for President and Congress. Go take a look. No matter where you live in the world, it’s pertinent and relevant. What happens in the process of US Governance has a massive impact on everyone in the world, because of the sheer scale of US influence. This ruling now allows:
- Corporations and Unions to spend their funds on producing campaign advertisements.
- Issue related advertisements to be allowed to be aired right up to an election.
The legal decision was drafted in terms of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, that refers to freedom of speech and expression. One of the judges basically stated that the existing laws banning theabove effectively stifled free speech and expression. I guess that Corporations and Trades Unions here are being regarded as living, breathing entities with Constitutional rights. The cynics amongst us (me included) might argue that this effectively enshrines those Constitutional rights to those who have big enough wallets to by the advertising time….

Whatever the legal reasoning, this means that the special interests of organised Labour and of major Corporations will have the ability to use their resources to promote their special interests, target particular candidates they don’t particularly like, promote special interest laws – basically buy political influence. And who buys political influence in the US, effectively buys it across much of the so-called ‘Free World’.

This is scary; the potential budgets available to these organisations would allow them to buy up advertising right, left and centre, thus effectively censoring any alternative points of view. And it’s almost inevitable that the interests and demands of a corporation are likely to be rather different to that of the electorate as a whole. It’s very scary. This could very easily be the start of a new world in which the political mindset of the US is set even more heavily by the big Corporations and special interest groups.

Take a good look around you. Your world just changed.
January 23, 2010
Obscene – selling useless bomb detectors to Iraq

Today is a bad day for anyone who likes the idea of integrity and common decency.   Take a look at this news story from the BBC about the ADE-651 bomb detector. This baby sells for up to $40,000 a pot and has been sold extensively to Iraq. So extensively, in fact, that the Iraqi authorities bought $85 million dollars worth of them. So, what do you get for your money? Some sort of hand-portable spectrometer that can detect explosives residues, perhaps something like the GSS 3000? Or maybe an EVD3200, particular noted for it’s ability to detect the ‘popular’ terrorist explosive TATP?

Not really. You get a gadget described here.  Basically something that supposedly works according to no widely accepted scientific principles from a company who were, at the time of writing, under official investigation.

The method by which these devices are supposed to work is akin to dowsing; now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen dowsing work and as a technique for certain things it can be pretty effective. But to be honest, this doesn’t appear to be one of them. that’s not just my viewpoint – whether the ‘new age’ science that is reportedly behind this box of tricks is effective or not I have no idea, but when they can’t detect a bag of fireworks a few feet away, then the detector certainly seems to have some major failings.

So….the Iraqi authorities pay $56,000 a shot for something that doesn’t work, that uses techniques that the FBI warned didn’t work a decade ago.   These gadgets are a widely used tool at roadside checkpoints in Iraq, and one has to wonder how many bombs they have let through. The buck for this sort of thing is a pretty enormous one; apart from the company selling the device, there are the people who’ve requisitioned it, the people who OK’d the purchase, right up the line. Is it possible that no one, anywhere, in this process actually got one of these gadgets out of it’s box and tested it by the simple expedient of having a couple of squaddies who’d been handling explosives walk past the sensor?

If that didn’t happen, then it’s an abysmal dereliction of duty. If these tests were done and the device passed, then we need to ask about the tests that were carried out; if the tests were apparently passed when other tests have not suggested that the device is effective then it looks like incompetence of an incredible level. If the tests were failed and the results ignored, then it’s gross negligence or fraud.

The problem is that people DIE when these gadgets don’t work. It’s believed that the vehicles involved in some of the recent car bombings in Iraq have gone through checkpoints that may have relied on these devices to check equipment. A non-working security device is the worst of all possible worlds; it doesn’t work but if it doesn’t indicate it’s not working then it gives false security. The reported failures of this gadget ‘in the field’ where many people know it’s as much use as a chocolate fireguard have been blamed on the operators – talk about adding insult to injury.

How many explosives sniffing dogs could be provided with this money? Or real explosives detectors? Somewhere along the way someone is making some serious money flogging something that couldn’t cost much more than a hundred quid a time to make for $56,000.

And I hope that if found, that someone rots in Hell.

January 22, 2010
Is ‘elf and safety’ destroying community responsibility?

The other day I was browsing the online edition of the Sunday Times and came across a brief quote from Jeremy Clarkson :

“I mean, if you really want to serve the nation, you could stop whining about the council gritters and shovel some snow off a school playground yourself.”

This set me thinking back to when I was a child. Yes, we had bad winters back then and one of the things I remember clearly is being equipped with a shovel and sent out to clear our garden path of snow, then clear the stretch of the causeway from our gate to the next door neighbour’s fence post. I think that part of it was probably a maternal exercise in keeping me busy, but it seemed to be an activity that was done by a number of householders and shop keepers in the town where I lived.

As I got older, it seemed to happen less, and then somewhere along the way I heard that one of the reasons why people no longer did this was that by clearing the causeway you laid yourself open to being sued if someone slipped on your clear patch. Leaving the causeway to the tender ministrations of the local council didn’t leave you open to this risk. Whether this is true or not I have no idea, but it seems to be widely believed.

Moving on a few years, one day I was walking past the gates of the local maternity hospital when I noticed a chap, rather worse for wear, sitting bleeding in the church-yard next door. I poked my head in to the hospital lobby and mentioned it, expecting a nurse to perhaps pop out to take a look. Instead, I was told that I would have to call 999 and a nurse couldn’t be made available because ‘it wasn’t their job and they might have problems if someone sued’.

Have you noticed an emergent pattern here? Don’t do anything that might be helpful to people in your community – what you might call exercising community responsibility and your part of what was once called the ‘social contract’ – because you may get sued. There’s also the call to ‘Elf and Safety’ – that’s the thing that’s been used in the past to prevent the collection of extra bags of rubbish from the roadside – it’s against health and safety regulations for the bin men to lift the bags. People wishing to volunteer for charity work may have to have a Criminal records Bureau check because of the small risk that they may be a child molester. Again – something of a breakdown between local government and citizen and community.

Which brings me to my point – are Health and Safety and the generally risk averse culture we seem to have generated over the last 15 years or so – unsurprising mostly the ‘Big Nanny’ years of New labour – leading to a breakdown in community greater than anything managed by Thatcher in her years in charge? The general expectation in society has become ‘someone will deal with it’ – usually the Government, Local Council, ‘them’. This may work well when ‘they’ are actually delivering the goods, but today this is becoming less and less common. More often than not central and local government. along with big business, the banks, etc. are failing to deliver whilst at the same time legislating to prevent us from helping ourselves.

Folks – you centralists can’t have it all ways. If you wish to control all aspects of our society then deliver the goods. If you can’t deliver, then stop playing ‘dog in the manger’ and allow us to start helping ourselves.

Because we will help ourselves, soon. With or without your agreement.

January 19, 2010
Bust the brainy kids – you know it makes sense!

Although this little gem of a story happened in the US, I have no doubt that given a few more months it’s likely to happen here. Well…I don’t know…at least the Yanks encourage science and technology enough to actually organise things like science fairs… However, back to the story. Smart kid builds a motion detector from some electronic bits and puts it in a bottle. Bottle is picked up, sensor triggers. Cool. Good future ahead of a bright kid like that – some technical education, quite possible a Gates or Jobs of the next generation…

That would be what I would be saying were I not living in Stupid World, where the kid’s teacher called in the FBI and the bomb squad, put the whole place on lockdown and suggested the kid and his parents needed counselling. Hello? WHO needs counselling? If this is the standard of management that is present in US schools then God help them. At a time when we need to encourage bright thinkers and hopefully generate a new generation of technologists, scientists and educators that can get us out of our current hole, this dimwit sets in motion a series of events that will probably encourage the kid to never show initiative again and stick to playing X-Box games and watching TV until he can graduate to drinking beer, playing X-Box games and watching TV.

Tragic.

I was like this as a kid – fortunately with one exception I had support from my teachers, and always had support (or at least quiet acceptance!) from parents, aunts and uncles and in latter years my wife! I built radios, movement sensors and any number of electronic gadgets. I accidentally jammed local TV sets whilst working on a radio control gadget, generated more smells than I could shake a stick at and learnt more about science and technology in my own time than I probably did at school.

Today, with what appears to be terror hysteria in the US and ‘Elf and Safety’ silliness in the UK it’s increasingly difficult for proper ‘hands on’ science education to be done. We really should be working hard to encourage this sort of practical approach to science and technology, both in in schools, colleges and via technical hobbies such as the practical approach fostered by amateur radio, robotics, astronomy, etc. Unfortunately the UK does not seem to be doing this through educational policy. This item from a few years ago points out exactly what is wrong with modern science education in the UK – it’s too wishy-washy and based around social awareness and ‘scientific literacy’ whilst moving away from teaching separate science subjects and encouraging education in the ‘basics’ of science – the scientific method, practical lab work, etc.

Whilst the literacy and social awareness issues are important, it’s critical that they are secondary to a scientific education that prepares our future scientists and technologists by educating them in basic, practical science and technology, so that they can approach the more advanced stuff from a position of having firm foundations. I hear all the voices saying that it’s important to engage students with science; but there is absolutely no point at all in engaging students in a watered down, multi-media based representation of some of the most practical and critically important subjects around.

January 17, 2010
Myleene Klass, ‘PC’ and PCs

This is a long story in celebrity terms…but stay with me. It’s one of those tales where we can’t tell who’s version of what happened is actually the right one – so many versions of what happened it’s like a Celebrity Rashomon! It starts some weeks ago when Myleene Klass commented that immigrants to the UK should actually learn to speak English in order to help them assimilate better. This is such a common sense suggestion that it actually beggars belief that it’s worth reporting on. Klass’s own family background suggests that this is a good move; her mother is from the Philippines and Klass herself has clearly managed to fit in to the UK. She also dared to make a few comments about issues that are frequently referred to as being ‘politically correct’ – and that’s probably the point at which she started showing on the liberal / media establishment radar as someone to keep a weather-eye on…

Time moves on – a few weeks later, 2 local teenagers trespassed on Klass’s property, apparently attempting to break in to her garden shed. She was alone in the house with her young child, and did what most of us would have done – told the little scrotes to go away, unfortunately for her whilst holding or waving a kitchen knife. From within her house, through the window.

Here’s where it gets interesting; the police who arrived allegedly gave her the telling off for waving the knife, which was referred to as an offensive weapon. The police later denied this, but the media storm was unleashed with folks coming down mainly on her side of the argument. The police behaviour was reported by Klass’s spokesman. Life now gets complicated; it appears from a report in The Guardian that Klass’s agent and Klass herself both called the Police, and that the only comment made by the police (according to the Police) was that Klass should have contacted them sooner.

If you take a look at the comments following the Guardian story, it’s pointed out how it’s rare for The Guardian to take the Police side of a story at face value. There were also a few comments from the Grauniad readers that, to be honest, were snobbish. Comments on the ‘classiness’ of someone’s name shouldn’t reflect on how the story is reported, after all. Complete with ‘Sun’ style photo mock-up of Ms Klass wielding a knife. hello? I assume this is ‘ironic’. It just appears to me that the Guardian writer was using the trespass issue to take a swipe at someone for daring to criticise political correctness, and that a lot of ‘liberal’ readers of the Gruadian found a useful ‘two minute hate’ topic for the day. Can we expect the same standard of reporting from the Ruardinag when one of it’s favourite (and oh so politically correct) luvvies hits the news like this?

No? Why am I not surprised. There seems to be a sequence of events here that indicates one of three things to me;total coincidence, incompetence in the way that the story has been handled by media, police and Ms Klass’s PR people, or a non-too subtle attempt by the current establishment to slap a celebrity for saying the wrong thing. A warning that although you’re a celeb, say the wrong thing and we can still swat you like a fly.

In other words, coincidence, cock-up or conspiracy. You choose.

January 16, 2010
Google does the right thing (for Google, that is)

For a long time I’ve taken the mickey out of Google’s famous slogan ‘Do No Evil’. I mean, most companies and individuals go through life with their ethical and moral compass intact and manage to perform this simple piece of behavioural calculus every day of their lives. To me, it takes a particularly arrogant bunch of people to make this slogan a selling point. And it leaves you open to a lot of pot shots form people like me when you get caught with, figuratively speaking, your hand in the cookie jar. And I know the irony of my position, being a Google user. Please, Microsoft, get Bing sorted!

And so it has been for a while with Google and the People’s Republic of China. Google’s presence in China – Google.cn – was only sanctioned by the Chinese Government if the search results were modified (after all, censored is such an evilword) so as to suit the political world view of the PRC. So a search on ‘Tiananmen Square’ might return lots of touristy stuff but certainly wouldn’t bring back stories about student protests, tanks crushing demonstrators, etc. Google’s stand on this always seemed to be rather against their loudly stated intention to ‘Do No Evil’, but in this case it was pretty clear to everyone except those who’d imbibed of the springs at Mountain View that Google were supping with the Devil with a long spoon.

Until this week. This week Google announced they were re-considering their positin in the PRC after the company had detected what it described as “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure”in efforts to get in to the Gmail accounts of Chinese political activists. This is almost certainly Google speak for “We know the PRC Government is behind this but can’t provie it / don’t want to say it in public’. As a result, Google have stated:

“over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law”.

which at first glance seems pretty brave of Google – looks like they might be following through on the ‘Do No Evil’ stuff and are facing up, toe to toe, to the creators of the Great E-Wall of China. It would be nice to think that Google’s ethical sense has finally determined that by running the filtered service in China they’re actually compromising their own integrity and also supporting a totalitarian regime.

However, I think it’s most likely that Google will use this set of events as an excuse to get out of China altogether. Why? Google are second string in China; the locally developed search engine Baidu has largest market share, with Google apparently being most popular for technical stuff. Google are losing face by their inability to get to the top of the tree in China, even after compromising their integrity. In the West, Google are losing the lustre of ‘Do No Evil’ – in some quarters they’ve overtaken Microsoft as the Corporation you love to hate – certainly for me they’re a larger threat to my personal privacy than Microsoft have ever been in the whole history of that software house.

No, Google will pull out of China, or seriously reduce it’s exposure there, not for ethical reasons, but because it suits Google’s market strategy. They need to save face out there, and regain some of the moral high ground at home. This latest Chinese exploit will give them the excuse they need to exit and try and maintain that it’s all ethics, when it’s actually all market.

For Google’s deal with the Chinese Devil, the spoon they supped with just wasn’t long enough.

January 15, 2010
Over-reaction or Appropriate Response?

The recent arrest of 2 men on an Emirates Airlines flight for making a verbal bomb threat and for being drunk and disorderly is really nothing new; it’s happened a few times since 9/11. Up until about 1999, I was one of those smart alecs who would make the witty comment about being careful with my bag because I had an atom-bomb in it, but around the end of the last century (even before 9/11) everyone was getting jumpy so I just started being sensible.

Obviously, after the Christmas Day bomb attempt people are naturally ‘twitchy’, but is it really that difficult to tell the difference between a bunch of drunks and a genuine bomber? Bombers tend not to joke about their bombs. Bombers tend to wait until the plane is in the air. Bombers do not tend to be middle aged white men in Western clothes – especially DRUNKEN middle aged white men. This doesn’t detract from the absolute feckin’ stupidity of the individuals concerned – after all, they could have easily been shot by the security services. However, it did set me thinking as to whether this case, and our whole reaction to the threat of suicide bombers on our air routes, has been met by over-reaction or appropriate response by the authorities.

I think in this particular case, given the proximity of the Christmas Day attack, I’d go on the side of slightly hysterical appropriate response. Over-reaction would have involved the men being shot and killed on the spot rather than arrested. However, the wider picture is much more worrying. Let’s take a step back and look at the situation.

Profiling – we’re told that our intelligence service profile travellers and put bombers on watch lists. The Christmas Day bomber got on to such a list and still managed to get on the place. these fellows would never have been on such a list. So…profiling is ignored in the Heathrow case – these men didn’t fit the profile but were still treated as bombers – and the result of accurate intelligence profiling and listing was ignored due to error on Christmas Day. Perhaps we need to be told just how many bombers profiling / no flight lists have prevented boarding with explosives?

Acceptable Risk – if you want to avoid any risk of bombers downing an aircraft, easy. Don’t fly. If you want to fly, then everybody goes on board in paper pyjamas and is strapped in to their seat – or maybe anaesthetised for the fight? And your baggage is either flown in unmanned drones or separate cargo aircraft. Daft, isn’t it? But by introducing new measures all the time whilst existing measures are either not being followed through or are being ignored, this sort of daftness is becoming more likely.

Privacy – forget it if you wish to fly. You will now be scanned at a level of intrusion that have raised fears of images of children being regarded as child pornography by some legislation. Your travelling history is already reviewed. You may be interviewed based on your race, creed, religious beliefs, the book you’re reading.

Basically, the reaction to the authorities to the threats of terrorist bombers on civilian airliners increasingly seems to lack common sense and ‘follow through’ of existing policies and procedures, with repeated attempts to improve security after any incident by a combination of technological fix (Gigahertz Scanners, for example) and sociological / procedural changes (no hand baggage, profiling, etc.) Whilst any deaths from terrorism are unacceptable, just what price do we intend to pay within our society to try and meet the unreachable target of zero risk?

Because it’s unlikely that there will ever be zero risk when you fly on a plane that it won’t be downed by terrorism. It’s a dangerous world, and we need to realise that, and ascertain what are reasonable risks that we can deal with against increasingly intrusive and authoritarian powers invoked by the State to try and meet the nonsensical target of ‘zero risk’.

In his ‘Art of War’, Sun Tzu states : “Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” Our Governments spend a lot of time, effort and money and very little judgement and common sense on trying to win every battle, and are effectively doing the work of the terrorists for them by reducing the freedom of citizens inch by inch.

January 11, 2010