Tuesday, October 17, 2006

 

I Hear Them Jackboots Marching

So, obviously, the government is closing watching the web, and would like the police to do it, too. Michael Chertoff, secretary of Homeland Terror—er, Security, says that the web could be a training camp for terrorists right here in America. It’ll be interesting to see if the man ever says something about books; probably not: censorship only aims at the “hottest” media of the moment. But, well, the government already checks our library records, expenses, light bills, eating habits, demonstrations we go to… So, perhaps a database of the disaffected who "might" do "something." Never mind what, just something. What the hell, huge databases are easy, anymore.

It’s about control and power. The more control they have, the more they experience power. Kind of like a rapist: the control over a woman’s body is perceived by the rapist as power. That’s also like the ccntrol the fundamentalists want over a woman’s body. Control leads to power, as the authoritarians perceive it. They don’t understand there’s another form of power that has absolutely nothing to do with control. That’s the kind of power that’s real; the other is just illusion.



Reuters

Web could be terror training camp in U.S., politician says
Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:49 PM ET

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-10-16T204853Z_01_N16404472_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-CHERTOFF.xml&src=r0ss

BOSTON (Reuters) - Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday.

"We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet," Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.

"They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination," Chertoff said. "Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites."

Chertoff pointed to the July 7, 2005 attacks on London's transit system, which killed 56 people, as an example a home-grown threat.

To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into "intelligence fusion centers," where they would work with local police agencies.

By the end of the next fiscal year, he said the department aims to up that to 35 staffers.

© Reuters 2006.

Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?