The Mod with the Migraine
My understanding is that catching people like this is from one of three causes:
1) Their friends, family, neighbors, or someone otherwise close to them notices their behavoir, and notifies the authorities to look into them. I think this is the least common way for them to get caught; I think it's human nature to engage in denial when faced with the possibility that someone you know and like is planning to be the next Mc Veigh.
2) They screw up somewhere along the way, such as associating with criminals, browsing monitored terrorist websites, talking about a bomb in front of the TSA, so that they get put onto a watch list and have their own activities monitored until there is sufficient evidence that they are seriously planning something (as opposed to being yet another person grumpily mouthing off on Facebook).
3) Sheer dumb luck. I'm not sure if this is more common than #2 or not, but you definitely hear about it more.
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
V
That was how a planned terrorist attack was discovered here in Britain
— the car was impounded for being uninsured:
Police estimated there could have been as many as 750 EDL supporters in attendance, as well as dozens of police officers and passers-by.
....
However, the men arrived after the EDL rally had broken up because the right-wing group had insufficient speakers to carry on later into the afternoon.
The would-be attackers left the town but were stopped by a traffic police officer on the M1 motorway for having no car insurance. Days later, when the impounded vehicle was searched, the weapons were found - sparking a manhunt across Birmingham.
Lost in Space
The vast majority of would-be terrorists stupid themselves to death or prison. Like that idiot above who got arrested at a routine traffic stop because the patrol officer noticed he had a gun despite his denial of same.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
I think it's possible that the techniques and technologies that have been implemented to catch terrorists are indeed working, but the authorities don't make much noise about it - as they don't want other terrorists to figure out how the last guy got spotted.
I know we do the same with some of our anti-troll stuff. If we don't tell anyone how we caught troll A, it will be harder for troll B to figure out what patterns or tactics he should avoid. So trolls get caught all the time, flying under the radar of everyone except the Mods.
edited 9th Jan '14 8:46:42 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
V
On that subject, here are two articles from The BBC:
Keep Rolling On
Queen of Good Things, Honest
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
This. It makes law enforcement agencies' jobs harder when they publicize a capture, because the media circus tips off other criminals not to make the same mistakes.
If there were only, like, 5 terrorists, then making a fuss over each one caught wouldn't be a problem. But when there's hundreds or thousands of them, announcing, "HEY GUYS! Here's a boneheaded mistake you should avoid in your next attack!" with each individual capture would be remarkably counterproductive.
edited 9th Jan '14 3:28:52 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
If they me as a taxpayer and voter to support their use of these techniques, then they need to release summary data indicating how well their program is working, without giving away any of the technical details.
Indiana guardsman stopped for speeding in Madison County had 48 bombs, prosecutor says
(the Columbus Dispatch)
Andrew Scott Boguslawski, 43, also had a remote-control device to detonate the bombs, Madison County Prosecutor Stephen Pronai said. Boguslawski’s civilian job is as a groundskeeper at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in south-central Indiana. Prosecutors could not say definitively yesterday whether the blueprints in his car were for the facility where he worked.
Massive cache of explosives, bomb manuals found in Maryland home
(NBC News.com)
The man, Todd Dwight Wheeler Jr., 28, of Glen Burnie, near Baltimore, was held on two counts of making explosives, two counts of possessing explosive materials and one single count of reckless endangerment. Federal charges were pending.
Anne Arundel County police said they had no idea what Wheeler might have been planning, because he's refusing to cooperate, but "what is clear is that these materials were capable of maiming, killing or injuring human beings," Anne Arundel County Fire Chief Michael Cox said at a news conference Tuesday.
This is not a thread for discussing the politics of the suspects mentioned above. The US Politics thread
is thataway, or you can get on Facebook and comment at Charlie Pierce's blog on Esquire, where I first learned about these cases.
Now, seeing as we just narrowly dodged a repeat of the Oklahoma City bombing twice in one freaking week, I figured that a thread to discuss the news was justified. If anyone has further details on the stories, or insights from local news sources, that'd be great.
But more critically, I'm worried about the detection of such threats, so I turn the discussion to this question. The first guy was caught because he was speeding, and the second only caught thanks to a lucky tip from a neighbour. While I'm always glad to see a major threat get caught by normal police work in a way that repudiates the so-called necessity of NSA ubersurveillance, I'd really like to know of a more reliable way to catch such people. How do we detect these nutters.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.