On the implausibility of the explosives plot
From the Interesting People mail list, the recent London bomb scare has almost certainly got the real Al Qaeda laughing so hard they’ve wet themselves. Twice. As Perry E. Metzger, a computer security expert whose gone back to school to study chemistry, analyzes the liquid bomb plot and concludes by saying:
“At some point, we’re going to have to accept that there is a difference between real security and Potemkin security (or Security Theater as Bruce Schneier likes to call it), and a difference between realistic threats and uninteresting threats. I’m happy that the police caught these folks even if their plot seems very sketchy, but could we please have some sense of proportion?”
Frankly, more or less the same thoughts (without the extensive chemical explanation) had occured to me as I watched TV clips of people tossing good stuff in the trash bins because the security regime went more than a bit bonkers. All the politicians and NeoCon pundits screaming about how this would have been a tragedy beyond imagining just set off too many buttons for me. Of course, more people are dying every couple of weeks in places like Darfur (from intertribal violence) and South Asia (from floods and earthquakes and train derailments) than would have if this plot was real and succeeded but they aren’t American or British. So who gives a fuck, right?
[via Semiologic]
