(Untitled)

[kateorman]

More fuel for the fire for those of us suspicious of the war on terrorism...

An alleged Australian terrorist has had his conviction quashed because of how his confession was extracted. According to the news item, after his arrested, he was assaulted, threatened with castration, threatened that his wife would be raped, and essentially told that if

Comments

[hiraethin]

Certainly the way he was treated initially by interrogators was shameful. Evidently they thought they were less accountable in handling suspects, and perhaps they were, but in acting the way they reportedly did they torpedoed the criminal case.

The price of having a legal system based on the adversarial model, which is IMHO the best protection for defendants, is that some prosecutions will be rendered useless by errors or even inappropriate behaviour by members of the investigative team. That means that some villains will get off, or get off lightly, despite having done bad things. It's considered a good trade for minimising the chances of an innocent man being railroaded.

WRT the scepticism of the chemistry aspect of the liquid explosives plot, I would submit that, in the event security services become aware of a group of people planning to explode liquid IEDs aboard airliners in flight, that they might consider the poor chances of success using liquid explosives to be irrelevant to whether an investigation, arrests, and tightening of security to be warranted. There's some smart comments at flyingsauce's post, too.

There is a steady trickle of plots emerging of people trying to kill, in large numbers, innocent civilians in various countries. The public has a right to question, to express scepticism, and to oppose the steps taken by governments and security services in response or in an attempt to seize the initiative. Just remember that for those in the security services, failure in their work means large numbers of deaths and then massive media and public attention on why the security services and the government were negligent, incompetent, or even complicit.

[peteyoung]

massive media and public attention on why the security services and the government were negligent, incompetent, or even complicit

del_c counters this point effectively, IMO.

[hiraethin]

My view is Australian-based (since that's where I live), but...

Australian intelligence agencies had numerous reports about imminent terrorist operations but misread the signs and failed to predict the 2002 Bali attacks..."

Inquiry finds intelligence failure over Bali

Intelligence agencies and authorities received even more warnings than first thought before the Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta, it has emerged.

Negative media attention is hard to miss when you're the subject of it.

[kateorman]

As I've said, it's understandable that the police and intelligence agencies, knowing that they'd missed warnings of previious atrocities, would be keen to follow up even the flimsiest leads. However, the Australian government hasn't been damaged by the threat of terrorism; if anything, it's thriven on it.

[irritant01]

I think you need to draw a clear division between the security services and the governments they work for. Yes, governments seem to gain from intelligence failures, but the security services really are sledged in the media when they miss things.

Certainly there was a lot of negative press against the CIA and the FBI following 9/11. Likewise ASIO and the ONA copped flak after the Bali bombings.

An article from the New Yorker on FBI and CIA interests in the 9/11 bombers prior to the attack

And it's not a surprise either - security services are (and should be) treated like any other public service organisation. If they're not doing their job properly, the people have a right to ask why, and to ask what could be done better. If it then turns out that an intelligence failure was the result of a government policy, then it's the government who should cop the blame, not the intelligence service.

[hiraethin]

This point I must concede.

The more self-aware individuals in the security services are a bit conflicted about this - terror is a bad business and frankly everyone would rather that robbery and hot-blooded murders were the worst thing about. Recent years have seen much $$ pumped into the security services. In that sense, it's been good for business. But I'd still rather it wasn't necessary.

[kateorman]

Mind you, i the money's being spent on improving intelligence, then I have no problem with it - even a cursory glance at Hersh's chapter on 9/11 makes it clear that problems like shite computers and lack of translators were impeding US intelligence.