virtuoso... sup with this?

[J @ M @ L]

LONDON - British police quickly closed in on suspects in the failed bomb plots in London and Scotland — only the latest terror investigation to display the crucial role of the country's vast network of surveillance cameras.
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The system is winning converts in the United States and Europe, to the alarm of some privacy advocates.

In New York, officials have announced plans to outfit hundreds of Manhattan buses with cameras and add 3,000 motion sensors to subways and commuter rail facilities. French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he is contemplating a "vast plan" to install more cameras on public transport.

"I am very impressed by the efficiency of the British police thanks to this network of cameras," Sarkozy said in an interview published this weekend in the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche. "In my mind, there is no contradiction between respecting individual freedoms and the installation of cameras to protect everyone's security."

Britain has about 4 million closed-circuit security cameras, and police say the average Briton is on as many as 300 cameras every day.

Video was crucial in catching and prosecuting the four would-be suicide bombers convicted Monday for plotting to detonate backpacks laden with explosive charges and shrapnel on public transport on July 21, 2005.

Chilling footage showed one bomber attempting to detonate his charge facing a mother and young child in a subway. The cameras also captured moments of heroism, including an off-duty firefighter remonstrating with the bomber.

In all, police had 18,000 hours of footage available, which was edited down to seven hours used in the trial. One of the bombers fled London disguised in a head-to-toe black veil worn by some devout Muslim women — a getaway also captured on camera.

Police investigating the latest failed attacks have also looked through hundreds of hours of surveillance footage, including images of both of the explosive-packed cars found in London on June 29, and one of the suspected drivers.

The footage apparently helped police track the journeys of the cars and make the link between the attempts in London and the Jeep that rammed into a Glasgow airport building the next day.

The trend toward greater use of closed-circuit cameras and other monitoring technologies worries some in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

The French state-funded authority that monitors the protection of privacy and personal data warned this week of a "society of surveillance."

"Technological innovation brings both progress and dangers," Senator Alex Turk, the authority's president, wrote in its annual report. "People are tempted by the comfort that it offers, but are barely aware of the risks."

In Sweden last month, a court rejected the southern city of Malmo's plan to place 58 surveillance cameras in the downtown area, saying it was too intrusive.

In Madrid, surveillance cameras vividly recorded train bombings in 2004 that killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800. But the Spanish capital is being required to seek court approval for its project to install 31 new cameras to counter prostitution.

The wave of terror plots in Britain in recent years also indicates that while surveillance cameras may be useful for investigators, they do not deter bombers determined to take their lives and kill others.

The technology is constantly being honed. Cameras in London photograph the license plates of cars so drivers can be charged for bringing them into the town center. But the day when cameras can monitor crowds for specific people may still be far away.

"It's difficult for a camera to recognize any face in a crowd of people, let alone a specific one," said David Wood, an expert in video surveillance at the University of Newcastle in northern England.

Britain was first to pioneer widespread use of closed-circuit cameras in the 1980s to monitor the movements of Irish Republican Army bombers. Footage proved instrumental in identifying the paths of massive truck bombs detonated in the 1990s in London's financial district.

Investigators were able to piece together the attacks from cameras that picked up the progress of each truck bomb as it made its way on roads in Northern Ireland, on to vehicle ferries to Scotland, and down motorways in Britain to their targets.

In Turkey, opposition to security cameras appears to have waned since they were instrumental in investigating the January murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Cameras have been installed in Istanbul and a few other cities, and authorities have announced plans to expand them to other locations and to vacation resorts to increase tourists' security.

German officials agreed last year to expand the use of video surveillance at train stations, airports and harbors, after footage helped police identify two Lebanese men believed to have placed makeshift bombs aboard trains last summer. The bombs failed to detonate. Police in Hamburg, Germany, have installed cameras in crime hotspots. A court ordered that one camera be modified because it pointed into somebody's flat.

Some 5,000 cameras film the Metro and suburban train network in Paris, and there are plans to increase that number to 6,540 by the end of the year.

In the Netherlands, one in five towns now use closed-circuit cameras. The rate rises to four in five in towns with populations bigger than 100,000, the Interior Ministry said.

[virtuoso]

Hey JML I wrote a thread on this once, long time back not sure what I titled it, but of course there are real terrorists and in hindsight I was wrong regarding my observations when it came to my comments about the incident in Scotland, due to the fact that i had not read enough about the incident itself. In hindsight it looks like the incidents in London and Scotland were the masterwork of moronic idiot wannabe terrorists. They had no sophisticated explosives, the incident in Scotland involved the individuals attempting to smash into a terminal with a car packed call of gasoline. Also of course analyse what Larry Johnson has said regarding the London incidents. he has said it was not a sophisticated car bomb in the least and in fact would have led to a big bang rather than carnage. Regarding the mentioning of July 21 dunce bomb as it has been described, well there once again you have some what were described as retarded individuals who did not have the know how expertise and seemingly were not able to call on any real terrorist group for help, so much for the Al Queda theory on that one.

However what the media ahs done in both of these events is to use them both to attempt to scare the shit out of people with convoluted stories riddled with lies, poorly investigated parrot official statements and constant reptitions of a car on fire. In fact if you were to take the media at face value, you would think there was terrorists on every corner but if you look up what terrorism is defined as, then the media is guilty of terrorism. Once again this has allowed a platform for Gordon Brown to grand stand and call for people to be locked up without charge, without evidence for 90 days. I know what people do when they acknowledge this, they justify it by saying yes but only a few will be affected by this. However firstly that is not the point because this is meant to be a country which sees itself to be civilised and prides itself upon it's justice system, but more importantly the view I just mentioned comes from the stand point of assuming that it will never be used nefariously. Of course this could only be implemented with a major catalyst, however what this push does is lay the ground work for a future point, people have a habit of simply compartmentalising things down.

I believe the purpose of this thread was to point out that real terrorism exists, yet assuming the point of that was to debunk in some way the many holes in Sept 11 which have been highlighted by former prime ministers, politicians, aviation experts and former intelligence agents. as well as the July 5th bombings, then that does not hold weight. If you want even recent example of state provateured and or state sponsored terrorism, then google Kevin Fulton, he was a member of the intelligence services and also undercover with the IRA. He has revealed many interesting aspects of this time, namely that all of the top guys were informants, (as is also documented in Stakeknife) that it was the FRU as well as the other intel branches who were the real bomb makers (he was also) and how no one wanted to know about his warnings concerning the Omagh bombing. It is also ironic that there would be mention of the 4 million CCTV cameras in London, when none of them were working that day, that is to say no CCTV on the trains, on the bus and supposedly none of the executed John Mendez.

Just going back to Sept 11m from a practical point of view, it was only possible for those planes to have reached their targets courtesy of the war games that were going on that day, as well as the other drills. If this were not the case, then September 11 would have happened a long time before, this of course is also ignoring the fact the attack orders were on the desk of George Bush to sign to agree an attack on Afghanistan pre Sept 11, this is ignoring the desire of the PNAC documents which very conveniently have been able to execute their desires, ignoring the fact that the Taliban would not agree on the oil pipeline, ignoring the fact that the Pentagon has dozens of cameras and yet for some reason they refuse to release the tapes, even ignoring all of these facts, the first point is probably the most important.

I could also go into the many inconsistencies which have been publicly documented about the London Bombings but just as a general question being thrown out there, re the hijackers, the BBC has reported that 5 of the hijackers are still alive. The debunking response is that the individuals could have used other peoples passports, however this is just bizarre in the extreme because that means they could not have captured the 5 people on tape at the airport and if so, why did they say these men are the hijackers?

Aside from the state sponsored complicit terror in Northern Ireland, Operation Gladio is another historically documented series of terror attacks which included bombing buses, car bombings in which many people were in fact killed. This series of teror attacks was blamed of course on right wing groups in Italy and was finally brought out in a court of law. Also again re Sept 11, Operation Northwoods, is a deeply chilling document, which has been covered by ABC News and still can be found on their web site which details how the U.S were contemplating something very similar to what happened on September 11 to justify a war in Cuba. Fortunately this plan never came to fruition because it was rejected by Kennedy. Again the debunkers have a field day with this and react with gleeful giggling, pointing out that it never happened, so what is the poiint in mentioning it, but the point is, it shows the mindset of those in power. Oh and a recently published British intel document has suggested that Shinbet were behind the 1976 hijacking of an israeli bound plane, not that they would so such a thing to destabilise the palestinians of course.