UK Muslims reported Manchester bomber - repeatedly

[TitanTiger 20,472]

Quote

Security services missed five opportunities to stop the Manchester bomber

...The missed opportunities to catch Abedi were beginning to mount up last night. The Telegraph has spoken to a community leader who said that Abedi was reported two years ago “because he thought he was involved in extremism and terrorism”.

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, said: “People in the community expressed concerns about the way this man was behaving and reported it in the right way using the right channels.

“They did not hear anything since.”

Two friends of Abedi also became so worried they separately telephoned the police counter-terrorism hotline five years ago and again last year.

“They had been worried that ‘he was supporting terrorism’ and had expressed the view that ‘being a suicide bomber was ok’,” a source told the BBC.

Akram Ramadan, 49, part of the close-knit Libyan community in south Manchester, said Abedi had been banned from Didsbury Mosque after he had confronted the Imam who was delivering an anti-extremist sermon.

Mr Ramadan said he understood that Abedi had been placed on a “watch list” because the mosque reported him to the authorities for his extremist views.

A well-placed source at Didsbury Mosque confirmed it had contacted the Home Office’s Prevent anti-radicalisation programme as a result.

A US official also briefed that members of Abedi’s own family had contacted British police saying that he was “dangerous”, but again the information does not appear to have been acted upon...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/24/security-services-missed-five-opportunities-stop-manchester/

 

[homersapien 11,366]

1 hour ago, TitanTiger said:

 

Damn.  

Sounds like the Brits blew it.  That's a critical strategy for combating these radicals.

[Grumps 3,704]

I am really glad to see that info coming out. It is sad and wrong that many people treat all Muslims like they are radical terrorists.

[alexava 6,973]

Nothing would deter vigilance more than this inaction. So much for fellow Muslims fears of reporting the bad guys. 

[Strychnine 1,802]

My hope is that the UK government uses this as the lesson it is, rather than concentrating on finger-pointing at whomever missed it.

[AuburnNTexas 7,140]

That is really sad good people from the Muslim community did what was asked of them and because of government incompetence nothing was done. It is sad because this was preventable.

[DKW 86 7,419]

Thanks Titan. I shared that on FB. Sad how the police or POLICY could have stopped him from going thru with the attack.

[TexasTiger 12,830]

You would think there would have been a basis for tracking all communication.

[alexava 6,973]

1 hour ago, TexasTiger said:

You would think there would have been a basis for tracking all communication.

We had that here and people raised hell. Something about invasion of privacy? 

[TexasTiger 12,830]

13 minutes ago, alexava said:

We had that here and people raised hell. Something about invasion of privacy? 

Not if there's probable cause.

[Strychnine 1,802]

4 hours ago, TexasTiger said:

You would think there would have been a basis for tracking all communication.

 

The UK is a member of Five Eyes.  They get everything we have, and vice versa, on any target.

[AUUSN 823]

24 minutes ago, Strychnine said:

 

The UK is a member of Five Eyes.  They get everything we have, and vice versa, on any target.

Everything that isn't NOFORN.

 

[Strychnine 1,802]

56 minutes ago, AUUSN said:

Everything that isn't NOFORN.

 

 

NSA and GCHQ also operate their surveillance programs together.

[AuburnNTexas 7,140]

On 5/27/2017 at 0:33 PM, alexava said:

We had that here and people raised hell. Something about invasion of privacy? 

It is invasion of privacy if there is no reason for it. In this case there were multiple reasons and it would have been easy to get approval. I am one of the people who believe in our constitution and believe we have overstepped in allowing all communication to be monitored.

[alexava 6,973]

39 minutes ago, AuburnNTexas said:

It is invasion of privacy if there is no reason for it. In this case there were multiple reasons and it would have been easy to get approval. I am one of the people who believe in our constitution and believe we have overstepped in allowing all communication to be monitored.

Hell. A couple killed a dozen or so people last year and the constitutional zealots  didn't want their phones unlocked after they were dead. Hiding behind the same constitutional crap. 

[AuburnNTexas 7,140]

4 hours ago, alexava said:

Hell. A couple killed a dozen or so people last year and the constitutional zealots  didn't want their phones unlocked after they were dead. Hiding behind the same constitutional crap. 

That is not what I said. The couple should have had their phones unlocked. Almost every attack on our soil has been by people whether homegrown or imported that were on lists and could have legally had their phones tapped. I am not against spying on the bad guys. I am against spying on everybody. That is not zealotry our founders had a reason for guaranteeing the right against illegal search and seizure as that is the beginning of a government becoming Big Brother. Look at dictatorships, Communist countries, see what is happening in Turkey where Individual rights and freedom of the press are slowly being taken away. Our constitution is one of the things that has kept this country strong and safe over the years. The founders were also smart enough to allow search and seizure when there was a compelling reason. So if not wanting to give the government unlimited rights to read every-bodies e-mails, Postings, and phone conversations makes me a zealot then you are correct I am a constitutional zealot.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

 

9 hours ago, alexava said:

Hell. A couple killed a dozen or so people last year and the constitutional zealots  didn't want their phones unlocked after they were dead. Hiding behind the same constitutional crap. 

The thing no one seems to understand about this is that there is no such thing as creating a backdoor for only the good guys to use and know.  There is no such thing as creating a way to unlock only bad guys' phones that won't work on everyone else.  You either have privacy and encryption on your sensitive and personal info or you do not.  Period.  There is no golden key that the FBI gets to use on terrorists that doesn't eventually end up in the hands of hackers and international crime and puts us all at risk.

Phones these days aren't just filled with your contacts list of emails and phone numbers and a few photos of your cat.  You have passwords to your bank, your stock accounts, your emails, health data, your fingerprints.  Unless you want to go back to the days of the flip phone (and there is no putting that genie back in the bottle so it's futile to even think it), the only way to protect all that data from those who would steal your identity and do all sorts of damage to billions of people is to encrypt it and not leave a vulnerability (because that's what a 'backdoor' or 'golden key' is - a flaw in the operating system's encryption that you're purposely leaving in).  And when you find a vulnerability, patch it quickly.  The end.

[alexava 6,973]

1 hour ago, TitanTiger said:

 

The thing no one seems to understand about this is that there is no such thing as creating a backdoor for only the good guys to use and know.  There is no such thing as creating a way to unlock only bad guys' phones that won't work on everyone else.  You either have privacy and encryption on your sensitive and personal info or you do not.  Period.  There is no golden key that the FBI gets to use on terrorists that doesn't eventually end up in the hands of hackers and international crime and puts us all at risk.

Phones these days aren't just filled with your contacts list of emails and phone numbers and a few photos of your cat.  You have passwords to your bank, your stock accounts, your emails, health data, your fingerprints.  Unless you want to go back to the days of the flip phone (and there is no putting that genie back in the bottle so it's futile to even think it), the only way to protect all that data from those who would steal your identity and do all sorts of damage to billions of people is to encrypt it and not leave a vulnerability (because that's what a 'backdoor' or 'golden key' is - a flaw in the operating system's encryption that you're purposely leaving in).  And when you find a vulnerability, patch it quickly.  The end.

Sucked in.^^^^

[TitanTiger 20,472]

2 minutes ago, alexava said:

Sucked in.^^^^

Nope, I just understand encryption.

[alexava 6,973]

10 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Nope, I just understand encryption.

So do the hackers that got in that phone eventually.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

8 hours ago, alexava said:

So do the hackers that got in that phone eventually.

Because it was an older model that didn't have the updated hardware encryption that the newer ones have, plus it hadn't been updated to the newest OS version.

[DKW 86 7,419]

Even the best designed systems have flaws and believe it or not, even the best encryptions are still at the mercy of computer power, time, and often, just good luck. There is nothing that cannot be hacked. Nothing. Our company was just hacked by some dime store ransomware. It infected 100s of users. No amount of planning by anyone is going to be able to be 100% safe against any human interaction. With all the million$ we spent on security, we were still swamped and taken down by idiot users clicking on an email link. In an ideal world, you can be very secure, but never totally safe.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

7 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Even the best designed systems have flaws and believe it or not, even the best encryptions are still at the mercy of computer power, time, and often, just good luck. There is nothing that cannot be hacked. Nothing. Our company was just hacked by some dime store ransomware. It infected 100s of users. No amount of planning by anyone is going to be able to be 100% safe against any human interaction. With all the million$ we spent on security, we were still swamped and taken down by idiot users clicking on an email link. In an ideal world, you can be very secure, but never totally safe.

The difference is, the time it would take to hack something isn't worth the investment of time or money when the other side is constantly finding the security vulnerabilities themselves and patching them, making all that effort worthless and forcing you to start over time and again.  But when you purposely leave a vulnerability in there and do not patch it, it increases the likelihood of it being exploited exponentially.  Saying that we should be ok with this is like saying that because no home is safe from a determined burglar, we shouldn't bother investing in better deadbolts, stronger doorframes, or installing a security system.  The point isn't that any of these things makes security 100% impenetrable, it's that it makes breaking in not worth the effort or the risk of being caught.  It greatly decreases the likelihood of you being targeted in the first place.  They'll just move on to something easier.

No, no one is safe from their own stupidity - weak passwords, dumbly trusting fake email links, etc.  But for those who do practice reasonably safe practices with their accounts and devices, leaving a purposeful backdoor is disastrous and idiotic.

[alexava 6,973]

Not as disastrous as giving terrorist security in communications. 

[TitanTiger 20,472]

3 hours ago, alexava said:

Not as disastrous as giving terrorist security in communications. 

The terrorists will have security in communications regardless.  International criminals and terrorist organizations have been developing third party end-to-end encrypted apps for a while now.  They'll simply shift everything over to those homegrown options while the rest of us become easy prey for hackers.  You guys are living in a dreamland if you think a vulnerability left in the OS on purpose is going to make us safer.