Posts by Rich Lock
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
It’s nearly all thoughtcrime, though, like the case of the “Lyrical Terrorist”. Very few people have actually been caught with explosives or guns. When wingnuts engage in similar fantasising, which they do all the time, the cops don’t bother them at all.
True, but it’s interesting to note that even with all this surveillance, tracking abilities, monitoring of website visited, etc, four guys who fit the profile, clearly had bad intentions, and were pressing all the right buttons to get pinged…simply didn’t. The questions that that raises are potentially more disturbing than the surveillance itself.
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
It was fascinating, if a little scary given how much data we provide for free to facebook and google.
Well, 9 times out of 10 the targeted ads I get on youtube are for pop albums by acts like one direction or beyonce, hair conditioner, female skin cream, and creams for…other problems that only women get.
Given that I’m a middle-aged baldy with metalhead tendancies, I’m not currently losing a lot of sleep over it. Unless google actually knows my deepest unconscious and frankly faaaabulous desires better than I know them myself, darling.
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Simultaneously supporting and undercutting my point (hey, it's how I roll), this story from yesterday wasn't major news - it made none of the front pages of these papers.
However, as is mentioned several times in the story, the only reason they were stopped in the first place was because they 'were discovered by chance', 'counter-terrorism detectives [stating that] the group was not on their radar and that they knew nothing about the plot', in spite of the fact that 'three of them had read the terrorist online magazine Inspire', and 'on Uddin's mobile phone was a lecture in which the speaker said that it was right to wage war against the unbeliever', and 'at Hasseen's home, police found 859 files of extremist material, including some urging people to fight abroad, a digital copy of Inspire containing pipe bomb instructions and a video about IEDs'
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to BenWilson,
Currently, on the success rate of apparently nothing whatsoever
Well, to be fair, the sucesses get a lot less press than the failures. There’s been half a dozen separate stories in the UK press over the last year or so about the arrests, prosecution and sentencing of various small groups. Mostly they make the front page, sometimes not, but they’re almost always gone by the next day. Compare and contrast with the rolling week-long coverage that Woolwich generated.
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to B Jones,
It was a story about some US army war games, in which they were running some Total Information Awareness system through its paces, against one of their more experienced generals. The general came up with a bunch of simple low-tech workarounds so that his side weren’t reliant on the technology the Total Information Awareness was all over, and ran circles around it.
Are you thinking of the story doing the rounds before Gulf War 2 about the US general who 'sank' a large number of the Navy support boats out in the Gulf by using swarms of human-guided explosive-packed small boats as a substitute for guided missiles?
There used to be a saying in some circles in the military that there's still no substitute for the Mk 1 human eyeball.
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In anticipation of our return home tomorrow (Detroit/SF/Auckland)
Kick out those jams with a flower in your hair
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Hard News: Friday Music: Heavy Metal's…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Russell - belated, but I'm very pleased and quite surprised Jimmy enjoyed himself. I would have assumed an event/atmosphere like that would have been a bit too overwhelming. Has he ever shown any interest in making music? Get him copies of Cubase and Protools, and let him rip out some filthy metal-inspired dubstep.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Heavy Metal's…, in reply to Pete,
Now try listening to "Sleeping Village" off the first album and calm yo tits
Hell no - I'm listening to 'Snowblind'. Did they play it?
Nothing against Dio. I like him, I just don't like any of the music he's ever done, with or without Sabbath.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Heavy Metal's…, in reply to Pete,
When Dio was fronting them, IT WASN'T SABBATH, INFIDEL! Prepare to feel the wrath of my furry jockstrap.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Heavy Metal's…, in reply to swad,
Hmm - Mayhem weren't really that nice though eh? One band member shot and ate the other after a church burning frenzy and then became a white supremacist...
Norwegian metal bands have a reputation even amongst metal fans as being <technical term>utterly fucking insane<technical term>. That's 'insane' in the bad way, not the Ozzy Osbourne 'let me hear you all go crazy' kind of way.
A doco worth checking out is A headbanger's journey. It's Canadian, so couldn't really be any nicer (eh). But at one point, having done all these happy interviews, the maker/presenter interviews a few Norgie bandmembers. I'd be understating things if I said the upbeat tone nosedives sharply at that point.
While most metal fans seem to be able to take it both 'really seriously' and 'not at all seriously' at the same time, something got lost in translation in Norway. It's like they heard about the PMRC and backmasking and devil worship and all the rest of it, and thought they'd do their best to make Jerry Falwell's feverdreams an actual reality.
