Under a Gibbous Moon

I would have never guessed it.

I do love how the headline picture is not a bullet proof vest. I hope nobody told him. He looks proud of himself.

Not Body Armor

Body Armor

Hopefully, this clears up any confusion.

Of course, real body armor is heavy and uncomfortable. Even those without ballistic plates. Kevlar does not breathe well which is why they sell anti-odor spray for your Kevlar carriers.

The article blames this fad on Jack Bauer but more than likely it is merely that posers are more afraid than ever that they are going to get shot.

<RANT>

I would have just put up the picture of the Vin Diesel wannabe but you know how news agencies are about their photographs. Fair Use be damned.

</RANT>

Hat tip to Straight Forward in a Crooked World.

Matthew has brought attention to the recently signed Executive Order 13525. While it does not seem to give INTERPOL agents carte blanche to act against American citizens, it does effectively remove them oversight by our own law enforcement agencies.

The ramifications of this could be very disturbing. An excellent analysis of this Executive Order can be found at ThreatsWatch.

There is a bit of interesting math from Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight.

He pulls some statistics from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and uses them to compute the odds of being on a flight on which a terrorist event occurs. Oddly enough, this is the same thing (with less hard numbers) I was trying that I’ve been trying to explain to my in-laws.

According to Wired, Reps. Peter T. King (R-New York), Charles Dent (R-Pennsylvania) and Gus M. Bilirakis have requested that the Department of Homeland Security look into the public and poorly redacted TSA’s Aviation Security Manual.

In my reading of their letter, I disagree with Wired’s statement that they are looking to press criminal charges against the sites that have posted the manual but instead that they just want take down notices sent to the sites. I do agree, though, that this Congressional involvement is a bad idea.

They  want to make it a crime to post this kind of information in the future. The reason why I find this to be a problem is that this is not some hacked file or a stolen document nor was it classified. It was posted in a way that to any reasonable person would think that it was legitimate.

Such legislation would create a climate of fear among those who provide access to government documents. Criminalizing the reposting (reposting being the key word) of government documents would decrease public access to them. Since you could be arrested for posting documents that were publicly available you would most likely avoid doing so.

of course, what this boils down to is blame. Trying to shift it from the government officials who provided access to these documents to those who then accessed them. While the TSA officials who made posted these officials will probably lose their jobs, no one is talking about sending them to jail.

Today, Bruce Schneier discusses the faults with a statement in an AP story about how terrorists are drooling over the chance to target high profile events.

Essentially, he argues that virtually all terrorist attacks are on mundane targets on average days. I agree with him but he does not go into why this is the case.

Simply put, terrorists are out to create terror and disruption. Sure they could blow up the Super Bowl but, unless you spent your life savings or are wealthy, you won’t be there. The average person watches the Super Bowl but only a small and non-representative percent actually attend.

Because of this, blow up the Super Bowl and life goes on. So therefore you have to hit things that everybody does and where everyone goes. Crash planes into office buildings. Most people fly and millions work in office buildings. In Europe they blew up train stations and subways. In the middle east, shopping centers and Mosques/Synagogues are popular targets.

What this accomplishes is that it makes people afraid to go outside. To live their lives. That is a real effect. If you hit something “big”, yes everyone will see it and it will be a tragedy but simply put it won’t have the same impact on people’s lives.

What this simply means is that all the money that is being spent on hardening these targets is money that is being diverted from places that are much more likely to be attacked.