34 Reported Dead over 200 injured in Belgium Terror Attacks

[Engine09]

Originally Posted by jayswin

Guys can we stop with the tired "haha do you know what you're actually doing when you say thoughts and prayers"? It's silly. Clearly in the context of great tragedy people are just sending their well wishes and expressing greif. How petty.

How silly? As silly as making empty wishes to the heavens? As silly as talking to an imaginary person and believing it will have any effect? Absurd. We are truly doomed if instead of rational, intelligent thought and reason we resort to prayer. No laughing, no one typed "haha". I am as saddened and disgusted as anyone upon hearing this news.

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by Kryzsky

How silly? As silly as making empty wishes to the heavens? As silly as talking to an imaginary person and believing it will have any effect? Absurd. We are truly doomed if instead of rational, intelligent thought and reason we resort to prayer. No laughing, no one typed "haha". I am as saddened and disgusted as anyone upon hearing this news.

You are being absurd friend. Respect the fact that people have different faiths and belief systems, and if they wish to offer thoughts and/or prayers at a time of tragedy, then let them do so without being judgmental or condescending. Telling someone their belief system is as silly as talking to an imaginary friend and hoping it will have an effect on something is quite rude if you ask me.


Guess what? Rational, intelligent thought and reason won't bring back the victims or undo what was done. And neither do thoughts/prayers/condolences. What makes your method of dealing with the tragedy better?

[calgaryblood]

Originally Posted by Kryzsky

How silly? As silly as making empty wishes to the heavens? As silly as talking to an imaginary person and believing it will have any effect? Absurd. We are truly doomed if instead of rational, intelligent thought and reason we resort to prayer. No laughing, no one typed "haha". I am as saddened and disgusted as anyone upon hearing this news.

Why are you "saddened" and "disgusted"? Don't make this about yourself.
Instead of being saddened and disgusted maybe go actually help people who need real life help, don't be so selfish feeling sad and having emotions as it has no real positive effect.

[PepsiFree]

I find myself often in disagreement with both CroFlames and calgaryblood, but on this? You both took the words out of my mouth.

[2Stonedbirds]

So anyways...

Belgium police are, I assuming, turning Brussles upside down? Reports are that they have been searching houses and neighbourhoods the last month or so searching for radicalized suspects. After the arrest of the driver from the Paris attacks one has to think this emboldens and hastens potential jihadists plans?

ISIS is threatening that this is just the start, I'd expect no less of a statement from such filth, but with intelligence agencies ramping up searches surely there has to be ongoing credible threats?

[blankall]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

So anyways...

Belgium police are, I assuming, turning Brussles upside down? Reports are that they have been searching houses and neighbourhoods the last month or so searching for radicalized suspects. After the arrest of the driver from the Paris attacks one has to think this emboldens and hastens potential jihadists plans?

ISIS is threatening that this is just the start, I'd expect no less of a statement from such filth, but with intelligence agencies ramping up searches surely there has to be ongoing credible threats?

Searching for "radicalized suspects" will be like finding a needle in a haystack. These neighbourhoods are densely packed and the police are disjointed and have little control.

It took the Belgium authorities 4 months to find the Paris attacker, despite knowing his identity and where he lived. He was being hidden by his friends, family, and neighbours. On top of that you have to deal with the plethora of undocumented immigrants and people using false identities.

A major issue is that law enforcement in Belgium is totally fractured. A good article on it here:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...ty-forces.html

Basically, the Brussels police force is divided into 6 separate police forces spread among 16 boroughs and there is little cooperation. At a federal level, the different regions within Belgium have similar issues. Linguistic/Ethnic divides among the French and Flemish have taken priority over national security. As a result Belgium is already a hub for weapon, drug, and human trafficking.

So you basically have a situation where you have a breeding ground for radicals coming into contact with a hub for weapons trafficking. How hard will it be to pull off another one of these attacks?

[polak]

If you realized the meta-data mining ability of the worlds governments then you would not think that. They have a very good idea of who and where is planning what. Obviously it's not perfect and you can escape it if you're able to completely remove yourself from any tech but then you also stand out as the one weird house without internet or a cellphone owner.

Canada is actually one of the leaders in this field. Maybe why we haven't seen any major attacks here (yet. knock on wood)

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by blankall

Searching for "radicalized suspects" will be like finding a needle in a haystack. These neighbourhoods are densely packed and the police are disjointed and have little control.

It took the Belgium authorities 4 months to find the Paris attacker, despite knowing his identity and where he lived. He was being hidden by his friends, family, and neighbours.

Yeah, he was hiding in a house a block away from the home he grew up in.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by polak

If you realized the meta-data mining ability of the worlds governments then you would not think that. They have a very good idea of who and where is planning what. Obviously it's not perfect and you can escape it if you're able to completely remove yourself from any tech but then you also stand out as the one weird house without internet or a cellphone owner.

Canada is actually one of the leaders in this field. Maybe why we haven't seen any major attacks here (yet. knock on wood)

I really disagree. There are many parts of the world where governments have little to no control. Our government is also very reliant on people cooperating with them.

It took the combined forces of the best intelligence agencies in the world a decade to find Osama Bin Laden. As previously mentioned, it took 4 months to find Salah Abdeslam, the Paris attacker. This was despite knowing his identity and approximately where he was. The only reason they found him was stumbling across a finger print in another raid. They then monitored local fast food establishments until they found an unusually large pizza order indicating that there might be a safe house.

This was far from some kind of high tech sting.

Canada simply does not have the same issues. We don't have huge sprawling ghettos of tens of thousands of people who reject and/or are rejected by the mainstream. It's much easier to use intelligence to thwart disjointed groups with little resources.

[polak]

Oh I don't disagree with that. Plus hiding out is a lot easier than actively planning and remaining undetected.

Just saying, if the rumors about some of these metadata programs are true then they can essentially listen to any conversation that has taken place near a speaker that is connected to a public network. Even if they didn't know about the conversation when it was happening, they can recall it as they're constantly recording. Pretty intense stuff.

I just think "needle in a haystack" was a bit of a stretch.

[2Stonedbirds]

Originally Posted by polak

If you realized the meta-data mining ability of the worlds governments then you would not think that. They have a very good idea of who and where is planning what. Obviously it's not perfect and you can escape it if you're able to completely remove yourself from any tech but then you also stand out as the one weird house without internet or a cellphone owner.

Canada is actually one of the leaders in this field. Maybe why we haven't seen any major attacks here (yet. knock on wood)

Data mining is a great tool if it's proven to work, the issue is that these people are planning their attacks off the data grid. When you have large swaths of the ethnic population congregated in segments of cities ect, they can as we have seen effectively hide people and defeat police tactics with such simple stuff as using fake flipping names, I doubt it would be hard to plan, organize and carry out and attack without the use of technology at all. You just simply talk to your neighbors.

And I'm sorry, but I take offense to your last point. I'd call a lunatic killing a soldier in front of one of our most revered ceremonial sites in the country and proceeding to have a shoot em up in parliament pretty major.

[polak]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

Data mining is a great tool if it's proven to work, the issue is that these people are planning their attacks off the data grid. When you have large swaths of the ethnic population congregated in segments of cities ect, they can as we have seen effectively hide people and defeat police tactics with such simple stuff as using fake flipping names, I doubt it would be hard to plan, organize and carry out and attack without the use of technology at all. You just simply talk to your neighbors.

And I'm sorry, but I take offense to your last point. I'd call a lunatic killing a soldier in front of one of our most revered ceremonial sites in the country and proceeding to have a shoot em up in parliament pretty major.

Didn't mean to offend. I meant it wasn't major as in it didn't take much planning. Hard to catch or stop someone if they just decide to go on a shooting spree.

[PepsiFree]

Yeah, I took polaks version of major to mean organised, coordinated, large scale attacks. Of which we've had none.

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by polak

Just saying, if the rumors about some of these metadata programs are true then they can essentially listen to any conversation that has taken place near a speaker that is connected to a public network. Even if they didn't know about the conversation when it was happening, they can recall it as they're constantly recording. Pretty intense stuff.

I just think "needle in a haystack" was a bit of a stretch.

Where do you think that such a massive quantity of data would be stored and how would it be monitored? How long is this stuff stored for? Every conversation on or any conversation near a speaker on a public network? The space required to store that kind of info for an hour would be insane, much less for an "undetermined period of time."

[polak]

Information on this is obviously varying but I've heard they store it for up to two years.

Wiki says the NSA stores information collected by Signet for a year.

Think about how big those micro SD cards are. Now fill an entire office building with them. Now build a ton of those around the world. You could store quite a bit of info.

[northcrunk]

Originally Posted by polak

Oh I don't disagree with that. Plus hiding out is a lot easier than actively planning and remaining undetected.

Just saying, if the rumors about some of these metadata programs are true then they can essentially listen to any conversation that has taken place near a speaker that is connected to a public network. Even if they didn't know about the conversation when it was happening, they can recall it as they're constantly recording. Pretty intense stuff.

I just think "needle in a haystack" was a bit of a stretch.

Used to work with CSIS agents. Those guys know what they are doing and do a great job detecting any threats. We are lucky in Canada to have them. It really is amazing how they do their jobs.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

Where do you think that such a massive quantity of data would be stored and how would it be monitored? How long is this stuff stored for? Every conversation on or any conversation near a speaker on a public network? The space required to store that kind of info for an hour would be insane, much less for an "undetermined period of time."

Utah has an NSA storage facility, it can store 20 to 30 exabytes conservatively, doubt that's the only site.