mattd

Current Alert Level

by mattd

Nine Hundred and eleven days later

As a terrorism expert, I was immediately confronted by the fact that under certain calculations, the bombings in Madrid last week were 911 days after September 11, 2001. Snopes.com provides on of the best explanations on the coincidence that I have seen to date, including the following explanation for why we care:

So why do some of us continue to find significance in these types of coincidences? One answer is that it gives us back a sense of control over a world gone mad. Other than cower in our homes, we can do little to protect ourselves against an enemy who might strike against anyone, anywhere, at any time. Being able to find patterns, even obscure ones, between terorrist-related activities allows us to think that we can take back some measure of control; that we can indeed discern when and where the next attack might come if only we stay alert for hidden messages and use the proper keys to decode them.

by mattd

Quote of the week

"This is not like the Gambino crime family, a Mafia family, where if you just arrest the leaders it goes out of business," said Peter Bergen, a CNN terrorism expert. "This is more like a mass movement, and you can arrest as many people as you want. But it's very hard to arrest the movement of ideas."

by mattd

I was only kidding about the terrorists folks...

But this analyst can't resist.

"With the open source community, there are a large percentage of tinkers and 'ankle biters' who are trying their hand at hacking. Some are even communicating with each other. So it only takes one or two of these groups sharing information to be able to pull something off. When you have this type of passion, it's hard to fight because these people are like virtual suicide car bombers."

by mattd