One Year After The Breivik Massacre, Norway Continues To Fight Terrorism With Democracy, Openness And Love

from the everyone-else-in-the-world-take-notes dept

 It's been a little over a year since Anders Breivik committed the greatest act of terrorism in Norway's history. The response to the horrific violence was completely unexpected. In a world where most countries would consider drafting major legislation and beefing up security, Norway's response seemed almost out-of-touch with the "real world."

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg pledged to do everything to ensure the country's core values were not undermined. "The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation," he said.

It's a pretty much unprecedented statement. One needs to look no further than the US government's reaction to the 9/11 tragedy to see an example of the standard M.O. Starting with the PATRIOT Act, the US government quickly turned the country into an echo chamber that subscribes to a culture of fear. This has allowed various government entities to insinuate themselves into nearly every aspect of Americans' lives at the expense of civil liberties and privacy.

One year down the road in Norway is a completely different story. As was pledged by Stoltenberg, the Norwegians have pushed forward with more openness and democracy. (via)

There have been no changes to the law to increase the powers of the police and security services, terrorism legislation remains the same and there have been no special provisions made for the trial of suspected terrorists. On the streets of Oslo, CCTV cameras are still a comparatively rare sight and the police can only carry weapons after getting special permission. Even the gate leading to the parliament building in the heart of Oslo remains open and unguarded.

"It is still easy to get access to parliament and we hope it will stay that way, " said Lise Christoffersen, a Labour party MP.

No one's rights were eroded, including the man at the center of the tragedy, Anders Breivik. He was treated no differently than any other prisoner and was given five days in court to tell his side of the story and lay out his ideas and motivations. Many critics believe this sort of unchallenged testimony would allow Breivik to glorify his actions and push his agenda, which they feared would inspire copycat acts of violence. Instead of falling prey to this mindset, officials felt that Breivik would do more harm to his own ideology by speaking openly than by being forced to sit quietly as an appointed mouthpiece spoke for him.

Cato Shiotz, a senior criminal lawyer, says having an open trial has enabled the Norwegian people to make their own informed judgement about Breivik.

"I think Breivik has done more harm to the radical right than he has benefited them," said Mr Shiotz. "His ideas now have less support than ever before."

Norway wants to combat terrorism in a new way. Rather than reacting to a terrorist act with draconian laws and increased security and surveillance, the country has opted to take the high ground and simply be "better" than their enemies. Many countries make statements to this effect, but most make the mistake of confusing a hardline "we don't negotiate with terrorists" stance with "taking the high road." Norway makes no such error.

"The only way to really combat terror is to show that we are better than them," says Jan Egeland, a former official in the Norwegian foreign ministry and now deputy head of Human Rights Watch.

"Their (the terrorists') whole point is to create shock and fear and get us to leave our liberal values…and lure us over to their shadowy part of the playing field… we should not let them win."

Unsurprisingly, Norway is not impressed with the US government's response to terrorism.

Mr Egeland is highly critical of how other countries, particularly the United States, have dealt with the terrorist threats they face, arguing that methods such as extraordinary rendition, the creation of the special prison for terrorist suspects in Guantanamo and the sanctioning of what is generally viewed as torture, have all been counter-productive.

"The whole (US) struggle against terror lost the moral high ground, You could see how public opinion was lost in Turkey, in Jordan, in moderate countries all over the Middle East," he said.

As the article points out, Breivik acted alone, not as part of a larger network. While a large network does change the dynamic of the threat, it hardly seems to justify the assumption that an isolated incident is an "act of war." Even worse, this assumption has led the US into a state of perpetual war against unseen, unnamed enemies with only the barest of threads holding the factions together. While Egeland insists that Norway wouldn't fall into the same pattern the US did post-9/11, he admits that he can't be certain the country would have "stood the test" as well as it has the Breivik massacre, if it was instead faced with a murky enemy located outside the country.

But all in all, the Norwegian response is more likely to unite its citizens against abhorrent acts of terrorism than it is to drive a wedge between the government and the governed. Openness is something the US sorely lacks, and despite 11 years and a change of presidents, there seems to be very little improvement on the horizon. No government can guarantee the safety of its citizens against unforeseen attacks, but certainly a culture of openness, democracy and love is preferable to a culture of fear and reprisal, carried out in the name of protection.

Filed Under: anders breivik, norway, openness, terrorism

State Department Wants To Troll Terrorists Online

from the because-that'll-make-them-change-their-minds dept

It's no secret that various extremists and terrorists groups use the internet just like everyone else. And, of course, there are places where they communicate. Some politicians, like Joe Lieberman, think that the way you should respond to this is by having companies censor any account that appears to be connected to terrorist organizations that he doesn't like. That this might cause such marginalized groups to feel even more persecuted and angry never seems to cross his mind.

Of course, that's not the only approach. Spencer Ackerman, over at Wired's Danger Room blog, has a fascinating story about a guy at the State Department (with almost no budget) who is trying to ramp up a plan, called Viral Peace, which is basically all about using social media to troll terrorists and extremists online in the hope of convincing some to give up.

The program, called Viral Peace, seeks to occupy the virtual space that extremists fill, one thread or Twitter exchange at a time. Shahed Amanullah, a senior technology adviser to the State Department and Viral Peace’s creator, tells Danger Room he wants to use “logic, humor, satire, [and] religious arguments, not just to confront [extremists], but to undermine and demoralize them.” Think of it as strategic trolling, in pursuit of geopolitical pwnage.

While I certainly appreciate this idea more than the outright censorship plan that Lieberman seems to like, I do wonder if the program might backfire by doing the exact opposite of what they're trying to do. Trolling has its place and can rile people up, but I'm not sure it's ever effective in getting anyone to change their position. In fact, it can often make people dig their heels in even deeper...

Filed Under: online, terrorism, terrorists, trolls

EU Parlamentarian Gallo: ACTA Dissent 'A Soft Form Of Terrorism'

from the she-finally-said-it dept

Marielle Gallo is probably best known for the Gallo Report, which Techdirt described back in 2010 as a "similarly draconian intellectual property enforcement" to ACTA, with which it has much in common. So it's no surprise that Gallo has been one of the few vocal supporters of ACTA, and it was widely expected that the EU's Legal Affairs (JURI) committee she chairs would support her draft opinion calling for ACTA to be ratified. As we now know, that didn't happen, and JURI formed one of five committees that all recommended that ACTA should be rejected.

Gallo must be a little taken aback by this turnaround: from easily pushing through her Report with its harsh proposals against copyright infringement, she now finds herself increasingly marginalized within the European Parliament on the subject of ACTA precisely because of its disproportionate measures designed to deal with copyright infringement online. A fascinating interview in PC INpact (original in French) gives us an insight into her state of mind at the moment..

As you might expect, she speaks of the "the disinformation campaign we have been enduring for the past months", the standard line taken by the European Commission and its allies. She also makes the interesting claim that "We're supposed to represent citizens, but since they are busy with other things, we are supposed to think for them!" But she reserves her choicest words for the people who have dared to disagree with the pro-ACTA camp:

It's not only a disinformation campaign. It's a soft form of terrorism that frightens people. People are being scared. It's a fantasy. ACTA has become a fantasy. And that, that's propagated by the whole Internet network.

So there we have it. Anyone who dares to disagree with those politicians doing all that thinking are "soft" terrorists, making subversive use of "the whole Internet network" to spread their "fantasy." It was probably inevitable that someone would play the politicians' trump card -- terrorism – against ACTA opponents; and it's no surprise that it was Marielle Gallo that finally did so.

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Filed Under: acta, european union, gallo report, juri, marielle gallo, terrorism

Should We Want A 'Cyberwar'? It's A Lot Less Bloody Than A Real War

from the one-way-to-think-about-things dept

We've certainly written an awful lot about the ridiculousness of the concept of "cyber war." Even with things like Stuxnet and Flame, it seems silly to compare what amounts to either electronic espionage or a little hacking as "war." But perhaps we were looking at it the wrong way. In a Foreign Policy article by John Arquilla, he argues that perhaps we should be embracing this kind of "cool war" as it can be effective at stopping threats (even distributed ones like terrorist operations, rather than just centralized ones like governments), while causing minimal bloodshed:

On balance, it seems that cyberwar capabilities have real potential to deal with some of the world's more pernicious problems, from crime and terrorism to nuclear proliferation. In stark contrast to pitched battles that would regularly claim thousands of young soldiers' lives during Robert E. Lee's time, the very nature of conflict may come to be reshaped along more humane lines of operations. War, in this sense, might be "made better" -- think disruption rather than destruction. More decisive, but at the same time less lethal.

And, indeed, if we believe that reports of "cyber attacks" being used to make planes fall from the sky are greatly exaggerated, perhaps we should welcome a "war" that mainly involves hackers vs. hackers trying to disrupt each others "real" warfare capabilities. But, of course, there are plenty of other issues that come up here as well -- such as how secret hacking programs can be abused. If it gets governments to stop physical battles that lead to real lives lost, that does seem like an improvement, though I'm not sure anyone should think that continuing to attack each other through computers is ever a "good" situation overall.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, cyberwar, flame, stuxnet, terrorism

Yet Another Of The FBI's Own Terrorist Plots... Involves A Group Of Senior Citizens

from the grump-old-terrorists dept

The latest Radiolab "shorts" episode, entitled Grumpy Old Terrorists, seems like a bit of a departure in subject matter for that program -- but fits right in with something we've been talking a lot about lately. Over the past few years, we've noticed the rather disturbing trend in how the FBI keeps publicly celebrating stories about stopping terrorist plots -- but in almost every case the details show that it was actually just stopping its own terrorist plots that it feeds to hapless individuals, often nudging them and pushing them down the road to "become" terrorists, despite commonly displaying little to no aptitude for actual terrorism.

In the last few weeks, the mainstream press has started to notice this as well, with stories about it appearing in both the NY Times and Rolling Stone. However, the Radiolab episode highlights a similar, but slightly different story, that was actually covered in great detail in an article in Esquire a few months back, entitled Waffle House Terrorists -- which includes the mugshots of the four "terrorists."

The youngest one of that bunch is 65-years old. The oldest is 73. As the Radiolab episode and the Esquire piece detail, while these guys do seem hateful, they also seemed absolutely unable to do anything... until an "FBI informant" joined their pack and pushed and prodded them along, introducing them to the "contacts" to get weapons and even providing "the money" to buy said weapons. The Esquire article goes into great detail about the "informant" and his rather questionable legal history (he first contacted the FBI while in jail for molesting his wife's daughter from a previous marriage).

On Radiolab, they play the audiotapes the guy made of the plotting -- and there's obviously some crazy stuff being said. But, as they look deeper into the role of the informant, the Radiolab hosts conclude the episode by noting that the whole situation doesn't really make them feel any safer. Yes, these old guys were hateful and helped join in this plan to cause lots of death and destruction. But, so much much of the plot and the participation of these guys really does seem driven by the "informant," who does not seem like the most credible of guys. And it's this exact scenario that we keep seeing over and over again. It may not reach the level of entrapment, and it may put some people really ignorant and crazy people in jail -- but is this really the best use of the FBI's time and efforts? Creating bogus "terrorist" plots involving people who had no real means to actually do anything?

Filed Under: entrapment, fbi, informant, terrorism

Rolling Stone Highlights FBI's Fascination With Staging Its Own Terrorist Plots... While Ignoring Real Threats

from the feeling-safer? dept

We've been covering for a while now how the FBI keep setting up and stopping its own terrorist plots in order to make headlines. A few weeks ago, the NY Times wrote about this and now Rolling Stone has its own entry on the subject, which goes one step further, noting that while the FBI keeps turning hapless nobodies into terrorists to arrest and splash all over the front pages, it seems to be ignoring groups that actually represent real threats, because they just don't make nearly as interesting a story. Rather, as the article notes, the FBI seems focused on "ideological enemies" to take down, rather than those who are most likely to actually cause harm:

The contrasts are extraordinarily instructive. When federal law enforcement agencies take an affirmative role in staging the crimes, the U.S. Justice Department then prosecutes, leaving more clear-and-present dangers relatively unbothered, the State is singling out ideological enemies. Violent white supremacists are not one of these enemies, apparently – because, as David Neiwert, probably the nation’s top journalist on the subject, told me, the federal government has much less often sought to entrap them, even though they are actually the biggest home-grown terrorism threat. That is unconstitutional, because law enforcement’s criterion for attention has been revealed as the ideas the alleged plotters hold – not their observed violent potential.

At some point, you have to wonder how much longer the FBI will be allowed to keep staging bogus threats just so they can arrest people, while mostly ignoring people who are actually trying to pull off violent attacks within the country.

Filed Under: doj, fbi, rolling stone, terrorism

Fearmongering About Cyberwar And Cybersecurity Is Working: American Public Very, Very Afraid

from the for-no-clear-reason dept

Well, it looks like all the fearmongering about hackers shutting down electrical grids and making planes fall from the sky is working. No matter that there's no evidence of any actual risk, or that the only real issue is if anyone is stupid enough to actually connect such critical infrastructure to the internet (the proper response to which is: take it off the internet), fear is spreading. Of course, this is mostly due to the work of a neat combination of ex-politicians/now lobbyists working for defense contractors who stand to make a ton of money from the panic -- enabled by politicians who seem to have no shame in telling scary bedtime stories that have no basis in reality.

But it's all working. And, by working, I mean scaring the public unnecessarily. As reported by Wired, a new survey from Unisys finds that Americans are more worried about cybersecurity threats than terrorism, and they seem pretty worried about those threats. When asked about which security issues were the highest priority, survey respondents noted:

1. Protecting government computer systems against hackers and criminals (74 percent)
2. Protecting our electric power grid, water utilities and transportation systems against computer or terrorist attacks (73 percent)
3. Homeland security issues such as terrorism (68 percent)

Of course, it's likely that the vast majority of the American public has absolutely no idea what the actual risk is of any of these things happening. But they are familiar with computers, and there's been a lot of talk about cybersecurity lately, so "ooooooh, scary!" Now, here's where the mainstream press could come in and point out the lack of evidence for any real or significant cybersecurity threat and help people realize that they might be best off focusing their attention elsewhere. But talking about planes falling from the sky is much more fun.

Filed Under: cispa, cybersecurity, cyberwar, terrorism
Companies: unisys

FBI Stops Yet Another (Yes Another) Of Its Own Terrorist Plots; This Time: Anarchists!

from the anarchists-running-amok dept

Following our post about the NY Times highlighting how the FBI seems to spend an awful lot of time foiling its own terrorist plots, some of our commenters pointed us to the news that the FBI has done it again (just in time to coincide with our story), arresting five individuals in a plot that appears to have been coordinated by the FBI itself. Even though some of the "anarchists" arrested expressed concerns about how resorting to violence would help, the FBI helped supply fake explosives and that appears to have convinced the group to move forward with its "plot." Prior to that, they seem to have had little actual ability to do much of anything, other than thumbing through The Anarchists' Cookbook and talking about what they'd like to do.

Filed Under: anarchists, fbi, terrorism

NYTimes Realizes That The FBI Keeps Celebrating Breaking Up Its Own Terrorist Plots

from the not-quite-as-impressive dept

Over the last few years, we've noticed that nearly every victory the FBI celebrates against terrorism is actually about stopping its own terrorist plots that it feeds to hapless individuals, often nudging them and pushing them down the road to "become" terrorists, despite commonly displaying little to no aptitude for actual terrorism.

Add the NY Times to the newspapers who are beginning to question the FBI's penchant for setting up its own plots for the sake of a high profile arrest of some clueless individuals.

The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years - or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.

As the article makes clear, claims of entrapment rarely work in these cases, but it certainly raises questions about whether the FBI is actually protecting us from real plots or spending time creating publicity stunts that leave some people in jail. No doubt, some of these setups bust people who could potentially be interested in taking part in attacks if they had any real opportunity to do so. But, in most cases, it doesn't seem like they would ever have the opportunity (unless the FBI was helping). In one case, the judge -- even as she was sentencing the guy to decades in prison -- admitted that the guy wouldn't be a "terrorist" if it weren't for the FBI:

"Only the government could have made a 'terrorist' out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope...."

This is the same guy who laughed at earlier attempts by an FBI informant to get him to get involved in a plot.

There's no doubt that there are real plots being attempted. But wouldn't the FBI be better off focusing on those, rather than play acting all the time?

Filed Under: fbi, informant, terrorism

Sarkozy Seeks To Criminalize 'Habitually Visiting' Websites About Violence

from the thought-police dept

Wizz points us to a speech that French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently gave in response to the death of the suspect in the Toulouse murders after the police shot him as he tried to escape, when they raided his apartment after a 32-hour standoff. As part of the speech, Sarkozy decided to use it as an opportunity to push for more anti-internet legislation, including a plan to criminalize visiting certain websites too often. Here's the video in French, with his comments coming around 2:20. Translating the key line, he says:

Anyone who habitually visits Internet sites that advocate terrorism or carrying calls for hate or violence will be punished under criminal law.

It appears that there is already a law in France that similarly makes it a criminal offense to "habitually" visit child porn sites, and this is a push to expand that same law to terrorism, hate and violence sites (original French). Of course, there are all sorts of problems with this. Obviously, accessing child porn is a strict liability kind of thing, where it's clearly illegal. Merely reading about terrorism, hate or violence is not.

Also, there's a question of how do you know if someone "habitually" visits such sites, raising fears that Sarkozy wants to implement a pretty broad deep packet inspection spying system to make this work. This has, quite reasonably, raised significant concerns among human rights/free speech activists (original French) about just what Sarkozy is actually planning. Others point out that such a law almost certainly wouldn't pass French constitutional scrutiny.

Either way, just the idea is quite a dangerous leap. Criminalizing the visiting of websites because they contain information? If the content itself is illegal, go after those who create the website. Going after people for reading it reaches towards the level of establishing thought police. It also seems to greatly overestimate (as many politicians do) the power of a simple website to convince people of certain things. We see the same thing in the US with Senator Lieberman's grandstanding against terrorist content, which he wants banned and blocked in the US as well. It seems to assume that people are all complete suckers who, as soon as they read a terrorist pitch, automatically become terrorists. In reality, all they're really doing is legitimizing much of this ridiculous content, by suggesting that it really is "dangerous" and somehow must be criminalized.

Filed Under: censorship, dpi, france, hate speech, nicolas sarkozy, surveillance, terrorism, violence, visits, web sites