You are a nontechnical person and stumble upon what appear to be plans for a terrorist attack. You talk to the person about it and they say "Don't worry. is computer game".
A great exploration of this is the 30 Rock episode where Tina Fey reports her neighbor for what ends up being a plan to get on the show 'The Amazing Race'.
The problem is, not knowing any better, you feel obligated to report the activity just in case. Let someone much smarter than yourself decide what is really going on. If you say nothing and someone gets hurt, can you forgive yourself?
As a hacker, I would understand this is definitely a game. But can I really expect the same from non-technical people?
No one ends up willing to stick their neck out and say, "this person probably isn't a terrorist"... just in case.
"The airport management considered the message to be "not credible" as a threat, but contacted the police anyway."
They ended up finding something unrelated to actually protecting the public from a terrorist threat that they thought would stick after it got escalated to the point where they couldn't back down. This led to a conviction (eventually overturned on appeal).
What it should mean is that you should take both probabilities and costs into account when deciding what to do, as it's often worth doing something easy to reduce the risk of something unlikely but catastrophic.
But that doesn't mean you can just avoid thinking about it! "Often" doesn't mean "always". For example, it's worth checking the tire pressure in your car on a regular basis, because incorrect pressure could lead to a blowout at high speeds which can be most unpleasant, and checking it takes little time. But it's not worth checking the car for bombs every time you drive it, at least not for most of us, because the odds of being the victim of a car bomb for most of us are indistinguishable from zero.
A little thought reveals that this case is clearly in the second category, and thus calling the police is just a waste of public resources. But if you're incorrectly using "better safe than sorry" to mean "pick the option that appears to be safe without any analysis", you're not going to apply a little thought.
On the other hand, they could have been SWATed, and it probably cost my city government five digits. I don't have an answer.
It is a good point, but I wonder when it breaks down and turns into something like McCarthyism.
And I sincerely do hope that if such a plan truly exists somewhere, the power that be have better evidences/ discovery than being informed by letting agents.
2. Or, we don't have ICBM's yet. Hoping that part of the plan will work itself out. Step 1: Collect underpants ... Step 3: Profit!
2. Maybe this terrorist is just working from home and trying to understand the larger plan. Or he could be brainstorming for a future powerpoint presentation on the subject.
Just having some fun with the idea.
What they don't like is using your rented home as a warehouse or place where customers regularly visit. That kind of thing usually needs some kind of licence from the council.
And anyway - quite wrongly! What if one works from home?
And whatever happened to fostering entrepreneurship, innovation and asking people to take their own lives in their hands by doing things like setting up their own company, all these things that the current UK conservative government claims to want and support?
The law around lettings in the UK is detrimental not just to those who rent in the UK but the country as a whole.
NB for best results, start your contract at the worst time of the year for landlords, usually just after all the students have finished moving. Also, be at least a foot taller than your letting agent.
"As a result of this consultation, we will make it crystal clear to tenants, landlords and their agents that all premium fees, over and above rent and a deposit, are unlawful." - Housing Minister, Keith Brown
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-1937...
I've done this in four out of the five places I've rented over the years (the fifth being a special case as the landlord wanted to sell) and had no problems - although I had to argue the point with one agent who initially insisted I had no choice but to cough up. Pays to know your rights :-)
Sources: This guide is great and used to be on the UK government website:
http://www.leeds.gov.uk/docs/Tenants%27%20Tenancy%20guide.pd...
Since superseded by:
https://www.gov.uk/private-renting
which sadly doesn't seem to cover as much detail.
Never actually saw a version of the contract with an updated date, mind you. I am trusting them that it exists.
To be fair using the property for work changes the insurance and tax situation.
Goes to show how dumb people can be.
In my mind the real problem is that there is nothing wrong with "whiteboarding an ICBM launch". Me or me and my friends have every right get wargame 1980 or 2014 global thermonuclear war. Its seems like it would be a fascinating intellectual exercise. For that matter why can't people wargame terrorist plots, apply game theory, etc.
Between first amendment rights and the need for academic freedom, people should and do have every right to do this. In someone saw this can became concerned, they have have every-right to investigate, but in my mind, so long as it doesn't involve anything official or contacting the people involved without tangible evidence.
After all, if I talk about what might happen in a car crash, it doesn't remotely imply I intend to go out and get into one.
Edit: for the guy below me, since I can't reply directly, find me a nuclear missile guidance system that is destination controlled by a freaking mouse clicking on a map in the Pentagon and I'll concede the point.
That's the mouse that you put in the nose of a MIRV, and when it starts clicking its teeth because it's damnably chilly in space, it's time to re-enter. Right?
I got evicted from a property years ago because they did a surprise inspection while I was out (which is, of course, totally illegal), and decided they'd found "mountains of cocaine" on the kitchen counters.
It was fucking Ajax kitchen cleaning powder. Still, they didn't care. The police (who they contacted) thought it was laughable, but couldn't do anything about the fact they were evicting me.
A tenant can only be evicted for rent arrears if they have over 2 months rent due (and bringing the arrears under 2 months at any time invalidates any court action), landlords cannot evict if they have not legally protected the tenants deposit and landlords have no rights to enter a tenanted property unless it is an emergency.
As a tenant - a student tenant, no less - your rights are virtually squat.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_th...
Everything "unusual" becomes suspicious. See a guy taking photos at an airport? Must be a terrorist! Can't be a photographer and aviation enthusiast, no!
As Bruce says, the CYA angle is also horrific. Landlord sees something, thinks it might be nothing, but just in case, tells the local cops. Cops figure it might be nothing, but just in case, calls the FBI. Branch office figure it might be nothing, but just in case, gets regional / national HQ involved. Somewhere in the chain someone inadvertently gets word to the other 3-letter agencies, and the effect is magnified.
... and every time it's escalated, people figure "well, the people below me wouldn't have escalated unless they had reason to" ... while at the same time thinking, "well, I'm not sure, but I'm also not going to be the scapegoat if I fail to neutralize a potential attack and something does happen."
Everyone in the chain has plenty to lose and little to gain for not escalating to the next level -- nobody wants to be the guy who missed an opportunity to stop / neutralize a threat, especially in the unlikely-but-possible scenario that an attack does occur.
Regarding "if you see something, say something", Rick Moranis had an intelligent take on that at the beginning of his guest column in the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16moranis.html?_r=...
Was sitting on the runway and the cockpit door was open. Saw a really cool view out the window with the pilots and such, so I grabbed my DSLR and snapped a shot (I'm a photo geek).
Stewardess gave me issues about it and started telling me she didn't think it was allowed (it is to my knowledge), but I held my ground and it was fine.
I'm probably on some list now just for wanting a cool shot.
The 'problem' is that all of us - everyone - has a number of ways in which their life is 'unusual'. Aberrant (deviating from the norm) is not inherently suspicious, because everyone is aberrant in some aspects of their life. Nobody is truly 'normal'. In fact, if you thoroughly investigated someone and found nothing that was 'abnormal'[0] in some way, that would be suspicious!
Most people's individual personalities and quirks aren't suspicious if you look at the whole picture, but when someone's entire job is to find evidence of 'abnormal' or 'suspicious' things about someone it means that they can construct a suspicious narrative about anyone, as long as they have the motivation or interest to[1].
In other words, it simply becomes a game of finding evidence that confirms one's own (or an organization's own) cognitive or systemic biases.
[0] More than 1 or 2 standard deviations away from the mean, etc.
[1] CYA is a common 'motivation' in this sense.
I've heard spies are sometimes caught this way. Their life-profile is so deliberately normal that, having no quirks, they actually do stand out as such.
Its sad how sensationalist and afraid we have become.
I think "cautious" is white-washing of the highest caliber.
“Except… the person who did the inspection did have some concerns about one thing. There were some… whiteboards? And some… drawings on them?”
“Ah shit! Yeah I totally forgot about those! You mean the nuclear attack thing, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Yeeeeeah…. Sorry! You see…. It’s for this game I was making! It’s like, a web thing and it uses Google Maps to simulate a nuclear war.”
“Ahhh, okay! We kind of thought it had something to do with gaming!”
Apparently somebody was still worried about the idea of a realistic nuclear attack simulation game. Reminds me of the time some kid was arrested for making a Counterstrike map based on his high school.
Nobody seemed to mention this, and I feel quite old saying its, but "Global Thermonuclear War" was the name of the simulation Matthew Broderick's character played in "War Games", which should have been another clue to the authorities or whoever that it's just a game.
This is even more ridiculous. The kid could reasonably obtain weapons and bring them to school. The likelihood of obtaining an ICBM is nil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Cyberpunk#.E2.80.9CThe_b...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
Title is "Dont Talk to Police" from 2008. Henry Smith should probably watch it.
bit.ly/dont_talk_to_police
I wanted to see more of your posts, so trimmed the URL down to "http://henrysmith.org/blog/" and got an error message "Included file 'navbar.html' not found in _includes directory" at the top of your page. Clicking your name in the left directs me to henrysmith.org which doesn't have this problem.
I'm not sure whether he has any legal recourse over this. I doubt it, but he has potentially been materially disadvantaged (if indeed, it goes "up the chain" and he finds visas being denied).
At the very least, he needs to enumerate to his landlord the various ways in which this could seriously affect him, and ask for a rent reduction.
