How Can We Improve Security?
Over the years the security services and the police all over the world have made many basic mistakes which have meant that people have lost their lives. I should also add that there have been lots of cases of domestic violence and child abuse which were not picked up, which also resulted in death. I could also add in things like misdiagnosis in hospitals.
It’s all part of the same problem.
The evidence in many cases is there, but no-one can put it together to find the correct or even deadly link.
So the first thing that must be done to improve security or in the NHS’s case patient diagnosis is to make sure that all computers can talk properly to each other.
As an example of this, the DVLA can check quickly that vehicles are taxed, insured and MOT’ed instantly. The benefit to the general public is that it is now a simple process to retax a vehicle over the Internet. But to the police it is a valuable tool to check whether vehicles are legal. I suspect that the number of untaxed vehicles has also reduced and the tax take has increased. The only downside of this linking of databases is that because of the on-line purchase of road tax, Post Offices are getting less revenue and this doesn’t help their financial situation.
We still are nowhere near getting a decent patients’ record computer system and I’ve also heard stories about how police computer systems are all different and sometimes need the same data to be entered more than once. I hope most of the stories I’ve heard are wrong. But I doubt it!
All my life I’ve been a maverick kicking against complacency and the status quo.
Any organisation handling data should employ people like me. Well not me, as I’m too old and well past my sell-by date.
But I know that some of my software and other similar systems have been used in very sensitive applications to link data together so that police and others can target criminals, problems or epidemics. This type of software is used outside of the computer mainstream and to many so-called computer managers it is a pain. I can understand their point, but they should see that these analysts are on their side. It could be argued that the collapse of several of the banks in recent months was because senior managers knew better and ignored the well-researched facts and opinions of analysts with minds much sharper than their own.
So every organisation should have a group of people, whose job is to analyse and question the data in every way possible. Unfortunately, these type of groups are the first to be got rid of in times of financial restraint. They are always a pain in the arse to so-called managers.
I should put a bit of history in here. Years ago in ICI, I worked in a Computer Techniques section, that had free rein to poke its nose into problems in the Division. It was very successful, but had it not been for the diplomacy of those that ran it, it would have been very unpopular. I was at one time, when I told a chemist that he was barking up the wrong tree. But then he wasn’t using any mathematics for his reactions and I was!
I also believe that we rely too much on conservative techniques. I sometimes think that some of the problems with the banks were caused because too many people looked at them all in the same way, with the same software.
So if the maverick groups are to be effective, they need to be able to purchase software and services, that may not fit the policy of the organisation. They also need to have access to specialist programming resources. I would say that wouldn’t I!
I would also make the watch lists much more publicly available.
Let’s say that you are a check-in clerk for an airline. Someone turns up and there is something you don’t like about them. You should be able to flag the guy quickly with just a single key stroke. Perhaps, you can now, but if you can’t then you should be able to. If the watch list was able to be checked at that moment, then it would help airport security ascertain if the person was just nervous of flying or a bomber.
But the key to better security is that everyone should be on watch for anything suspicious. After all one of the biggest failures in the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab case, is the fact that his father reported him and no-one did anything about it. We need a system that allows the public to contribute to the data, when they have suspicions.
But our biggest problem is that all of these security services are closed and secretive organisations, so they tend to believe all their own methods, publicity and hype. I am reminded of a friend, who in the 1950s needed to be cleared to work on top-secret radar systems. The fact that he was a member of CND should have precluded this, but the security services never knew, as they never asked him.
Have they got any better?
But what will we get?
Probably a lot more restrictions on our lives.
Security? What Security!
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a Nigerian man, who attempted to blow up an airliner flying between Schipol Airport at Amsterdam and Detroit.
The fact that he got as far as he did is a complete failure of security.
- He had been put on a security watch list.
- He bought a ticket from Ghana to Detroit in cash.
- He was making a two week trip to the United States with hand baggage only.
- He had visited countries like Yemen.
But he was allowed to board the plane with virtually no security at Schipol, when he transferred to the Detroit flight.
Any of the facts above, should have meant that he was properly searched. But then we don’t do profiling, as it might upset some people.
So now we have the knee-jerk reaction by governments to add more levels of security, which will result in large queues in terminals all over the world. As Patrick Mercer, has just said on television, that will create a nice soft targets for these lunatics.
Paul and Rachel Chandler
Paul and Rachel Chandler are the couple who were seized from their yacht by Somali pirates. This is the last piece of news about them in The Times on the 13th of December.
These two paragraphs admit the truth about the Navy’s non-involvement.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) yesterday admitted that Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, had authorised a Royal Marine unit that witnessed the kidnapping to intervene. But it said it was the ship’s commander who decided it was unsafe to attempt a rescue.
The RFA Wave Knight was within 50 yards of the pirates and had a marine unit and a Merlin helicopter aboard. But Sir Mark Stanhope, the first sea lord, claimed the ship did not have the expertise required for a hostage rescue.
After that nothing has been reported!
Whether or not the commander should have intervened is open to question, as every squaddie I’ve ever met, would have been up to do it.
But perhaps the question that should be asked is why were the Marines on that ship without the equipment and training to intervene in a safe and successful manner?
On a wider point, Somalia is an absolute basket case and is yet another legacy of the incompetent Dubya. Read what was said in The Times yesterday.
This is the first two paragraphs.
Afghanistan and Iraq have monopolised the headlines but Somalia is arguably an even greater victim of George W. Bush’s ill-conceived and lamentably executed War on Terror. America’s interventions have proved so catastrophic that its best hope of salvaging something from the wreckage is a president it chased from power three years ago, who controls a few square miles of a country three times the size of Britain.
It has delivered a people that practised a moderate form of Islam into the hands of religious extremists. Its efforts to combat terrorism have turned Somalia into a launchpad for global jihad. Somalia is now the ultimate failed state whose mayhem threatens to destabilise the region and whose pirates maraud the vital shipping lanes off its shores. Its people endure Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis.
What I find so sad about Somalia, is that in the past I’ve done business with quite a few Somalis over telephone billing systems. I’ve always found them a quiet and mild people, who were a pleasure to work with.
What went wrong?
Let’s hope that the Chandlers get a quick solution to their ordeal.
But I suspect that will not happen as the impass between the British Government and their kidnappers is just too great.
Should we pay a ransom? I’m afraid that I agree with the Government here, in that if we do, then any UK national will then be at risk. And not just in the troubled parts of the world, as there an awful lot of criminals all over the world, who would see kidnapping as a nice little earner.
Photograph a Chip Shop and Get Arrested
There has been a spate of officers arresting people for taking photographs in public. The Telegraph details it all here.
Here’s one example.
In the summer, Alex Turner, another amateur photographer, was arrested after he took pictures of Mick’s Plaice, a fish and chip shop in Chatham, Kent, evidently a building of great strategic importance to the jihadi godfathers in Waziristan.
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I take a lot of photographs. Perhaps, I should be hung, drawn and quartered for taking a photograph of a secret radar station!
The police should remember that they are a police service and they serve the public. How many people stopped for doing innocent things, will in future look the other way and ignore a suspicious package?
If At First You Don’t Succeed…
The full quote is.
If at first you don’t succeed, then try, try and try again.
Strangely, I can’t find the origin on the Internet, although there is a version, which adds “Then Quit” to the end.
But obviously, Prudence’s law officers don’t have quitting in mind, when they consider the case of three accused of a bomb plot to blow up airliners. They are dint to try, try, try and try again until they get the right result.
I don’t look at this with any view of justice, but it strikes me that if they’ve failed twice to get a conviction, that there’s every chance that a third attempt will fail. Especially, as it will be impossible to find a jury that has not heard of the case.
I think now is the time to give up!
A Legal View on Megrahi
My posts on Megrahi seem to be getting a lot of hits, as obviously and quite rightly people are concerned and interested in the case.
I found this post by Jonathan Mitchell, QC. It covers the law and some of the reactions in detail. This is the opening paragraph.
If Megrahi was indeed rightly convicted of mass murder, which I doubt, it is not in doubt that he acted on the orders of the Libyan government. He was a senior member of its intelligence service. Yet both the UK and US governments have for some years been on friendly terms with the people who, they say, ordered the destruction of PanAm 103. They dine with them. They have cocktails with them when they meet at mutual friends. The week before Megrahi’s release, as reported in the Washington Post, a delegation of four American senators led by John McCain met with Colonel Gaddafi to discuss the sale by the US to Libya of military equipment. In April, Hilary Clinton welcomed another member of the Gaddafi family, the régime’s National Security Adviser, to Washington. She said “We deeply value the relationship between the United States and Libya. We have many opportunities to deepen and broaden our cooperation. And I’m very much looking forward to building on this relationship. So, Mr. Minister, welcome so much here.”
Read the full article.
Libya, the West and Al-Megrahi
This is the headline of an editorial in the Khaleej Times, which is an English language publication in the UAE.
It sums up the issues well and doesn’t really take any particular point of view. But it does add a fact that a lot of people seem to be forgetting in the last paragraph. That is the shooting down by the USS Vincennes of an Iranian Airbus.
Most Western intelligence services saw the bombing of Pan Am 103 as an act of revenge, which obviously it was. The US warship Vincennes had shot down an Iranian Airbus five months before the Pan Am bombing, killing all 290 mostly Iranian passengers, and the Iranians were seen as getting even. Of course, this is not to suggest Teheran had been behind the bombing. As we have argued, there was no dearth of America’s enemies then, just as there’s no dearth of them now. Just about any body could have done it. This is why the Western nations and Libya would do well to exercise restraint. They mustn’t undo all the good work that has been done to bridge the gulf between the Arab country and the West.
The last point is also put very well.
What’s done is done and although it was horrific beyond belief, we all owe it to the world to move on.
Prudence Stays Silent
Gordon Brown has said nothing so far about the Megrahi affair.
Is he being Prudence?
I think though it is interesting to look at reactions on both sides of the Atlantic. Here we put the emphasis on justice and as I said in a previous post, I don’t think anybody got that. But a lot of the comment in the US seems to ignore the truth and put the emphasis a lot more on vengeance.
English Wimps
So the English badminton team has pulled out of the World Championships in India.
The Scots and Welsh have stayed and the head of Scottish Badminton has been quoted as England have perhaps overreacted.
In my view they have.
A few months ago and a few weeks before the attack in Mumbai, I was in the Taj Mahal Hotel. Do the attacks mean I won’t go back to India again. Of course not!
I just worry for all those wonderful people in that hotel, whose lives will never be the same again. And how many of them died in the attack?
Remember if you want to be safe in a country like India, you are better off mixing it with the local people. They don’t want trouble and will make sure you don’t get it.
The Anonymous Widower 