If terrorism requires an audience, than the recent mainstream adoption of social media has given violent actors a bigger stage than ever before. There are many reasons people lash out at the world, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that becoming the center of the attention could be a factor pushing some to commit atrocities. Our retweets could be delivering their messages of fear. → Read More
Last week tens of thousands of migrants from India’s northeast region fled urban areas as rumor ricocheted through text messages and social media that Muslims would attack them after Ramadan. Fake photos added to the rumors’ credibility.
Given how forward button happy we can be in the U.S., I can’t help but wonder if a similar panic could happen here. I spoke with Shlok Vaidya, a former… → Read More
Last week’s airplane terror incident has raised new concerns over how much sense it makes to have Wi-Fi and the ability to use mobile phones on aircraft. While the companies that provides these entertainment options have said there’s nothing to worry about (well, besides them worrying about losing money), other security experts argue otherwise. → Read More
If you look closely at this shot of the bombs allegedly sent from Yemen to Chicago you’ll notice what looks like a small camera up in the corner. Slide down the side and you see the volume buttons and I suspect the silver area is where the battery holder once stuck to the circuit board. It’s clear that this was a phone – probably of modern vintage – so which phone is it? → Read More
This is the lede, verbatim, from a story that appeared in The Hill yesterday: “The Internet allowed extremists to contact, recruit, train and equip the suspect responsible for the attempted Flight 253 bombing on Christmas Day ‘within weeks,’ a top Pentagon official told lawmakers Wednesday.” What’s the implication, that because someone used the Internet to plan something, something bad, we should… → Read More
I’m safely ensconced in a ski hut in Austria but I’ll be traveling back to the US of A shortly and I look forward to not being able to use electronic items in the last hour of my nine hour flight. After all, that is the magic hour, the hour during which most intercontinental planes are circling over US soil and would, therefore, apparently make the biggest impression on a scared and… → Read More
Does your passport look like this, with a strange-looking symbol on the bottom? Then you’re in luck, for your passport contains an RFID tag! Now, we’re not exactly the tin foil hat types, but news that one of those security researcher types has managed to copy sensitive data off various passports in San Francisco without the owners’ knowledge does annoy us. What’s worse is that the pertinent… → Read More
The terrorist attacks in Mumbai last year brought any number of technologies “under the microscope”: Twitter can be used by terrorists to coordinate attacks; Google Earth can be used to map out possible attack routes, etc. Too bad Google completely disagrees with this slipshod logic. → Read More
The terrorist attacks in Mumbai have once again put Google Earth in an unfavorable light. The one (“baby-faced”) terrorist that police caught has said that the terrorists used Google Earth the help plan the attacks. (That they also used everyday cellphones, GPS and other technologies appears to be lost on the ban happy Indian officials.) In order to prevent future attacks, so the line of… → Read More
Just in time to be horribly inappropriate, some folks have discovered BrickArms, a company that makes cute little Lego men with realistic weapons. Here we have the White Bandit (not, not a terrorist) who is very angry and carries a rifle, what looks like a Luger, and some grenades. Not offensive enough for you? Try the SS man. → Read More
Last week’s attacks in India have reminded us all of the keen danger that terrorism poses. But one tool that was to be employed at airports to combat terrorism, those body scanners that sometimes reveal a person’s, well, person, came under criticism. Fighting terror (inasmuch as you can fight it) is great and all, but should people literally be exposed in the process? The Germans say… → Read More
From the Courier Mail: Among their arsenal of weapons are bags of almonds and BlackBerry mobile phones – almonds to keep their energy up, and the mobile internet connections to stay one step ahead of police and the military. These fuckers turned our tools against us and it’s an embarrassment – and a reminder – that the tools that make our lives easier and, dare I say it… → Read More
You know how these days at the airport you can only take a clear plastic bag with 3oz bottles of liquids or gels? Remember the panic that precipitated that? Well, the trial is underway and they’re revealing their dastardly methods. Apparently they were going to mix Hydrogen Peroxide and Tang, then detonate the resulting mixture with a disposable camera. Does this sound like a national… → Read More
[photopress:30_mukasey_lg.jpg,full,center] That version of Photoshop that you bought from a dude on the street in West Hollywood last night is going to finance terrorists who will destroy your city and burn you and your family alive to death, or so says the AG, Michael Mukasey. Mukasey argues that terrorists are increasingly using tactics of organized crime syndicates to finance their… → Read More
Let us not forget that it was exactly one year ago today that a couple of innocent marketing pranksters in Boston were confused with dangerous terrorists due to the DIY LED sign you see above. They placed a few all over the city, a nod to Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a type of harmless techno-graffiti, but a type that was considered a bomb threat by the clueless Man. We’d like to take a moment… → Read More
Standard issue in any young girl’s arsenal. This $1000 custom-made AK-47 assault rifle has a hand-crocheted stock and a hot pink paint-job. Terrorists in Badtz Maru outfits not included. Hello Kitty assault rifle [Boing Boing] → Read More
We try, however implausible as it may seem, to say we’re anti-piracy here, step-by-step how-to articles notwithstanding. That will not stop me from, once again, pretending to be anti-piracy. These collection of ads tell us, in so many words, that supporting piracy in its myriad forms will bring about the Death of the West and the collapse of representative democracy. → Read More
Here’s an interesting list of 10 “inconvenient truths” that the IFPI released yesterday in regards to the EU’s latest figures on counterfeit products that were confiscated in 2006. According to the reports there were 23 million phony CDs and DVDs confiscated last year and 93 percent originated in China. The music industry’s international trade group goes as far as saying that the… → Read More
I suppose I can somewhat understand the tactic of blowing one’s self up in a place like Iraq, but an Internet cafe in Morocco? Some nutball terrorist was trying to enter a web cafe in Morocco so he could check out the latest and hottest terrorist sites (I personally recommend “Barely Legal Marxists”). When the cafe owner’s son didn’t let him in, the dude blew himself… → Read More
Warren Ellis has written a breathless report from Second Life where horrible little geeks unleashed a terrorist attack on thousands of unsuspecting people who sit in desk chairs for far too long. He describes it thus: Materialising on the Integral Castle grounds, I found myself in the middle of a rain of small boxes, all of which were trying to load themselves into my inventory (where the objects… → Read More
If you’re like Blake, then you’re concerned about germs, bio-terrorism, standard terrorism, bird flu, SARS, hippies, dust mites and anything that ends with the word “Pox.” He is going to love the technology in this new phone from Gentag if it ever makes its way into production. As it’s a concept, it has no real spec list, but it appears to be a fairly standard… → Read More
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