London's Metro Cops need their head examined
(Seen on BoingBoing and Thomas Hawk at roughly the same time)
London's Metropolitan Police have a new "keep your eyes open" campaign.
Guess who the scapegoats are? Well, there's people with too many phones, your funny-looking neighbors... and photographers.
I'd like to make a challenge. So, going through Wikipedia and looking at the terrorist incidents in this decade in the UK, I came up with:
- 7 bombings placed by the IRA or other Irish dissidents.
- 2003 January 5 - Wood Green ricin plot - Evidence gained by torture
- 2003 October - Man arrested because of traces of explosives on his socks and an incriminating book
- 2004 March 30 - Instruction from Al Qaeda intercepted
- 2004 August 3 - 2004 Financial Buildings Plot - Cell disrupted by a double agent
- 2004 September 24 - Four men arrested for trying to buy "Red mercury" from a newspaper reporter
- 2005 July 7 - London bombings - Plot discovered when the bombs went off
- 2005 July 21 - London bombings - Bombs failed to detonate properly, therefore revealing the plot.
- 2005 July 22 - Man shot in the head because he looked funny
- 2005 July 28 - Man arrested because he looked funny
- 2005 September 28 - Political activist ejected under terrorist laws from political conference
- 2005 December 22 - Man arrested with starter pistol being modified to fire bullets and incriminating information, no idea how they found him
- 2006 June 2 - House raided on "Specific information" but nothing was found.
- 2006 Aug 9 - A terrorist cell arrested in the early stages of planning to plant liquid explosives on aircraft.
- 2006 August 23 - Several people arrested for collecting information about potential targets and funding terrorist groups
- 2007 Jan-Feb - Miles Cooper letter bomb campaign - Unknown how they found him, although his neighbors said that they didn't believe he was capable of it
- 2007 February 1 - The 2007 plot to behead a British Muslim Soldier was stopped because they finally purchased a video camera
- 2007 June 20 - London car bombs - Bombs discovered before they went off
- 2007 June 30 - Glasgow International Airport attack - Plot discovered when the bombs went off
So far, we've got a lot of arrests on "specific information" that turned out to be nothing. We've got one person shot in the head and killed and a few other people shot in the process of being arrested. Most of the times where they rushed in ahead of time, there was some doubt as to if the plan would actually work... like the liquid bombings. (See Bruce Schneier's take on this)
My challenge is this: Can anybody actually provide any evidence that any terrorist groups have been caught simply because of their cameras or cellphones?