Scotland Yard Foils NYS Subway Plot

From the London Telegraph:

British spies have foiled a terrorist plot by a suspected al Qaeda operative to blow up the New York subway.

The plan, which reportedly would have been the biggest attack on America since 9/11, was uncovered after Scotland Yard intercepted an email.

The force alerted the FBI, who launched an operation which led to airport shuttle bus driver Najibullah Zazi, 24, being charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

...Zazi, from Denver, Colorado, is understood to have been given instructions by a senior member of al Qaeda in Pakistan over the internet.

Let's hope there were no civil liberties violations in this investigation, right?

The London Telegraph also has this about the Ft. Hood gunman:

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.

Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe.

...One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.

As allegations and/or facts like this continue to emerge, it appears that Col. Ralph Peters' somewhat emotional reaction on FNC seems justified:


More from Col. Peters on political correctness in the Army here.

FBI Discloses Counter-Terrorism Handbook

Under its own procedural manual, which some civil libertarians find "alarming," was the FBI nonetheless proactive enough in investigating the the Ft. Hood shooter?

The F.B.I.’s interpretation of those [Bush-era intelligence gathering] rules was recently made public when it released, in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit, its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide; The disclosure of the manual has opened the widest window yet onto how agents have been given greater power in the post-Sept. 11 era.

In seeking the revised rules, the bureau said it needed greater flexibility to hunt for would-be terrorists inside the United States. But the manual’s details have alarmed privacy advocates.

One section lays out a low threshold to start investigating a person or group as a potential security threat. Another allows agents to use ethnicity or religion as a factor — as long as it is not the only one — when selecting subjects for scrutiny.

...The manual authorizes agents to open an “assessment” to “proactively” seek information about whether people or organizations are involved in national security threats.

Agents may begin such assessments against a target without a particular factual justification. The basis for such an inquiry “cannot be arbitrary or groundless speculation,” the manual says, but the standard is “difficult to define.”

...If agents turn up something specific to suggest wrongdoing, they can begin a “preliminary” or “full” investigation and use additional techniques, like wiretapping.

High Court Wants Input From Napolitano On Arizona Employment Law

Awkward! DHS Secretary Napolitano may be put on the hot seat by the U.S. Supreme Court, although it's far from clear if she will actually respond to the court's request for information:

A simple query from the Supreme Court is forcing the Obama administration to wrestle with the limits of states’ authority to enforce immigration laws — and also is throwing an uncomfortable spotlight on Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

On Monday, the justices asked the Justice Department to provide its views on Arizona’s attempt to force employers to verify the immigration status of potential employees. The law being challenged in the cases was signed by Napolitano in 2007, when she was governor of Arizona.

Napolitano has stated that she believes the law is constitutional, but business groups and immigration reform advocates generally in President Barack Obama’s camp are asking the Supreme Court to strike down the statute.

...A federal appeals court rejected the legal challenges to the Arizona law. The Supreme Court has not said that it will take the case but wants the administration’s view on whether further review is warranted.

Utah Gets New Cybersecurity Data Hub

According to InformationWeek, Camp Williams, a National Guard training center 26 miles south of Salt Lake City, will be the home of a brand new NSA cybersecurity center:

The National Security Agency, whose job it is to protect national security systems, will soon break ground on a data center in Utah that's budgeted to cost $1.5 billion.

The NSA is building the facility to provide intelligence and warnings related to cybersecurity threats, cybersecurity support to defense and civilian agency networks, and technical assistance to the Department of Homeland Security, according to a transcript of remarks by Glenn Gaffney, deputy director of national intelligence for collection, who is responsible for oversight of cyber intelligence activities in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Privacy Backers Want Probe of DHS Privacy Officer

Electronic privacy supporters from the left and the right join to demand answers from the federal office headed by Mary Ellen Callahan, Homeland Security's privacy mogul:

Privacy advocates have asked lawmakers to investigate the Department of Homeland Security office in charge of protecting Americans' privacy, saying it has shown "an extraordinary disregard" for its duty.

In a letter sent Friday to the House Homeland Security Committee, 21 organizations and seven people belonging to the Privacy Coalition say the department's chief privacy officer has seen its role as enabling, rather than curbing, government surveillance and intelligence programs.

"The job of Chief Privacy Officer is not to provide public relations for the Department of Homeland Security," stated the coalition letter, whose signers included the American Civil Liberties Union, Gun Owners of America, former congressman Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.) and libertarians inspired by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), a former presidential candidate. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest group in Washington, organized the coalition.

Separately, the aforementioned Mary Ellen Callahan reached an agreement with the EU "on a set of common principles that unite our approaches to protecting personal data when exchanging information for law enforcement and security purposes." According to Callahan, the next step is "a binding international EU-U.S. agreement based on these common principles to facilitate further cooperation while ensuring the availability of full protection for our citizens."

Ft. Hood Shooting Massacre

Details are still unfolding by the minute, but multiple news media outlets are reporting that the alleged Ft. Hood gunman, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before opening fire. Also, the feds had been keeping an eye on him for about six months but didn't take any action.

On FNC, O'Reilly and Bernard Goldberg discuss media bias/political correctness in relation to the Ft. Hood murders:

Guest Blog: Why We Vote

Guest blogger Jason Tabrys of Painespeak.com shares his thoughts on Election Day 2009 and the privilege of democracy:

Another election will have come and gone today and what will it have given us, what have we retained, other then a slain forests worth of cardboard signs left sticking up out of the ground like gravestones never to be visited or removed? Why we don’t even have the excitement and mystery of election night to thrill us anymore, gone the way of the dodo, killed off by polls and analysis that pinpoint exactly who will win and exactly how they will win days or weeks before we bother to vote. Anticipation and patience, suffering the fate of other once simple riches like subtlety and reflective thought, crushed by the violent bore of technology.

Why exactly do we do it? Is it the rush of “say”? Our slight bit of power over this mammoth machine that consumes and bewilders us all. Or are we so frail, so vulnerable, so innocent as to still believe, to still hope that a word can be said and it can be a true map, a direction to a better day that supersedes the hollow delight of rhetoric and actually fulfills a promise? I know that deep below an ocean of doubt and cynicism lies a single glimmer of hope buried within me, a glimmer that cannot be found and thus cannot be extinguished no matter how hard society tries. This hope propels me toward all manner of foolishness, It propels me towards impetuousness. Toward love. Toward the feeling that no matter the trial, triumph is surely not far off. And it propels me towards a belief of heaven and a fear of hell, an open question with regards to the sky, and all manner of idealism. If this little untamed glimmer is my voice, then democracy is my song. And for all its flaws, all of its useless parts, it is far better then the frozen hell of silence.

So while I, while we, may grieve the inevitable disappointment and ready the remedies for our inevitable wounds and struggles under the thumb of those that fall short of their promise let not our sadness kill the hope for joy. Let not our glimmer relent for on the darkest day, it is the light that leads us back home.