Much terror out of a mobile phone and a plastic bag

We too are now in it

One has at times commented about how the large and influential country of the Netherlands sometimes adopts a “me too” persona, to as it were, appear involved, relevant and at the centre of issues.

The Netherlands is in many cases quite influential in many ways, the international courts of justice are resident here; for a country with such little land space we are one of the largest food exporters; we used to be the most tolerant and liberal democracy and society amongst other things.

What has changed is that we now have little-minded politicians and leaders whose lack of initiative, foresight and stature projects the face of the Netherlands in less grander terms than when leaders of greater standing and stature ruled this beautiful land.

It is my prayer that come November when elections take place, a better crop of politicians come forward to lead this land; though, that is not to say that society itself has not changed to accommodate the mediocre over the better qualified.

A flight of fantasy

Just to illustrate how this war on terror has become an irrational fear of terror exciting hysteria, histrionics, and subjective conjecture we have now had our own flight scare which involved aborting a journey to Mumbai (Bombay) with the return to Schiphol and the arrest of 12 passengers.

Apparently, several passengers were fidgeting with mobile phones and plastic bags in what the Minister of Justice has now said is behaviour not normally seen amongst average passengers.

The cabin crew observed the behaviour in which the pilot and captain of the aircraft would have acted; the decision to turn the plane back would have been taken after some consideration and consultation with airport security – this led up the chain to the Minister of Justice who probably in conjunction with other cabinet colleagues like the Defence and Internal Affairs ministers scrambled two F-16 fighter planes to escort the plane back to Schiphol.

The F-16 fighter planes could have under certain circumstances been permitted to shoot down the plane that contained 149 souls and the crew, thankfully, that did not happen.

However, before landing, a good deal of the jet fuel was let out over the IJsselmeer to lighten the aircraft.

It now transpires that this terrorist scare might have been an overreaction to a perfectly normal situation where coincidences might have appeared as some pre-planned activity – the 12 would be freed and released without charge.

The big questions about air travel

My concern with this new event highlights a few issues that need serious analysis.

• What training have cabin crew all around the world received to appreciate possible terrorist threats from normal behavioural patterns to be expected from people in an enclosed space on a long-haul flight?
• What really constitutes normal average flight passenger behaviour in this day and age? Everyone is tense and anxious, these emotions could very well becloud observation and vigilance.
• What evidence would have been required to shoot down the plane along with its “innocent” passengers and crew and where would it have been shot down, since the flight path towards Bombay would most likely have been over land?
• What are the consequences of releasing thousands of litres of kerosene fuel into a lake which has active wildlife and human usage?
• Have captains on flights the requisite skills to make objective assessments of potential terrorist situations which are quite different from passenger irresponsibility situations?
• What has happened to the joy of air travel in the last few years?

The world, a bigger place

In the end, if air travel is to become so fraught with uncertainties, the world which became a smaller place in the 20^th Century is on the verge of becoming a much larger place in the 21^st Century as we switch back to land and sea travel.

Basically, what is required is greater sophistication in passenger screening before they board flights, but this all has to be in proportion without infringing on rights and freedoms and subjective profiling.

The complexities and logistics of airport security are illustrated in the Air Travel Security Planning Map on pages 4 and 5, there is no doubt that there have to be new ways of doing things for air travel to return to a pleasurable and exciting experience – that could be a long way off.

References

Donner plays down terror link after Schiphol scare

BBC NEWS | Europe | Jet alert suspects 'to be freed'

An Air Travel Security Planning Map (Pages 4 & 5) [The Wayback Machine]

Back to James Blake and Rosa Parks - 1955 to 2006

Losing the religion of liberties

I would not be speaking too soon if I suggest that all the freedoms and liberties we fought for and gained in the last 50 years of the 20^th Century are disappearing into the cloud of the war on terrorism that fosters profiling, discrimination, segregation and suspicion amongst people who had heretofore been neighbours expressing all manner of civility.

Rosa Parks must be turning in her grave as news arrives that blacks were asked to give up their seats for white kids by a school bus driver.

This in the self-same United States of America – Read on (unfortunately the Shreveport Times has killed this link).

As the story goes, this happened in Coushatta, Louisiana on the 24th of August 2006 where 9 black kids were asked to give up their seats for fellow white students on a bus. I have included a transcript from the CNN about the event. (Search for Coushatta on the page to land within the text of the matter).

This town has history.

Updated 11th March 2008

London police in an institutionally culpable homicide

Crime headlines as I left

I leave London saddened and hardly elated by news that arrived on the Evening Standard paper.

You will recall that last week I noticed within a 5-minute walk, signs seeking information about grievous crimes that created a sense of insecurity about the city from the first night.

So, I left, I got a copy of the Evening Standard and the front page read, “Father is killed by teenage gun gang”. One could almost dismiss this as a typical drug dispute situation, but the detail reveals a deeper malaise in society that I am not sure is easy to address.

Standing up to be killed?

The father killed was a 22-year-old young man father of a 3-year old son and he got killed doing what we as a society has lost sight of and stopped doing – standing up to anti-social miscreants who menace our peace, property and lives.

Hardly 7 months before, a group of kids were throwing stones at his car, he came of his house and confronted the gang; he got stabbed in the neck that the stabbing just missed his jugular vein.

A rotten police for a rotting society

The police took calls from his fiancée every day for 5 weeks and still did not end up taking a statement from her, and after the police were supplied with the details of the perpetrators and so on, but no one got prosecuted for the crime that the kids deemed themselves untouchable.

The question is how kids end up with knives that they can be such a danger to society having had parents whose dereliction of parental responsibility has lead to the creation of these treacherous monsters who because they are under 18 never see enough of the toughness of the law when they offend.

The news we now have is, this very young family was terrorised since then to the most recent situation where the young father who had returned home after a confrontation with that self-same gang stepped out and got shot by a member of that gang.

The next obvious question as we learn that a 14-year old who cannot be named is arrested is how did a kid end up with a loaded gun with which he has wasted away a life?

A rotten police and a rotten job

Now we hear that the police are sorry for the way the initial investigation was conducted, well, they cannot be half sorry; the life of a young family has been ruined because the terminal point where the crime-investigation-prosecution-punishment chain should have kicked in at the first crime was left unaddressed because of police inaction.

One cannot begin to imagine what might have been going through the minds of the police when the young lady tried to report the first crime – could Canning Town in East London have been such a hopeless crime-ridden place that no crime was worthy of police attention?

Have we become so obsessed with prospective terrorist attacks that more intimate crimes no more attract interest and service?

Could, as in the case of Steven Lawrence a policeman detective have been manipulating and thwarting the investigation in favour of the suspects such that they can get away scot-free?

Taking back our society

We cannot begin to talk of the kind of people who brought forth this brood of vipers who have become a scourge on our society, who from youth have no concept of the value of life or property and have become a law unto themselves.

Sorry, is just not enough, relieving some senior policemen of their duties cannot begin to assuage the pain of that loss, in fact, apart from the prosecution of those youths; there should after a review of all the investigations of the police into the first crime charges of negligence, dereliction of duty and probably culpable homicide in seeking to address this murder should ensue.

We need to win our society back from the situation where it has become the playground of reckless criminal abuse and non-consideration for others.

Once kids get onto the first rung of a seemingly criminal existence they should be brought under strict supervision which in some cases should include confinement as well as monitoring, mentoring and vocational training – there is no scope for a politically correct assessment of this problem – society cannot afford to paper over deep seated social problems.

The parents should not only be named and shamed for allowed discipline and control to fail in the upbringing of their wards; whilst no one goes to parental school for childrearing; it is no excuse for unleashing devils unto our streets.

Institutionally incapable police

The police having been labelled institutionally racist are also becoming institutionally lazy in dealing with serious crime, it is unlikely that one can retain confident in a leadership that allows such serious issues to become headlines because requisite action has not been taken as needed to resolve crimes.

Just as I read on African Shirts a few days ago, I do not think London with all its culture, attractions and beauty is not close by far to the safest city in Europe

The heightened perception of vulnerability to crime needs to be addressed better as the deluded Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police suggests we can leave our front doors unlocked because of lessened crime, we find that we can still get shot at our doorsteps which it could have been prevented if the earlier stabbing had been given full police attention.

References

Telegraph | News | Young father shot dead as he challenges teenage yobs

Teen questioned over gun killing

Police sorry for inquiry 'hurt'

To London to see the Queen

Hand me the lipstick – Now!

Indeed, my blog has been deafeningly silent, I have been in London and this is my last day before I leave for Amsterdam en route Brussels – by train.

Well, now, they have really banned cosmetic through Heathrow, many who got away with rouge and mascara would have to consider something permanent – Botox, face lift, whatever keeps that look young, sexy and less affected by the strain of negotiating airport security.

The war on terror is now terrifyingly real amongst us and the terrorists only have to think up the next ploy to get us into a tizzy. Now, 11 of the suspects have been charged, it is shame that their attack being so imminent, the evidence is still far from being gathered enough to expect a trial for another 12 to 18 months.

Six nights of 60 hours and still not done

My Oyster card has been screaming at me for the last 2 days that it is about to expire; fine, but really, I do not intend to spend another day in London, I have spent 6 nights and if I may say, tourists do end up spending 6 nights in London.

However, coming from a continental European country where standard of living is higher and the cost of living is considerably lower, I do wonder how they get people to pay the prices I see about the place – it is atrocious to say the least – even with the doubling of prices after the introduction of the Euro, we have a cheaper existence than what Londoners have to put up with.

My 6 night sojourn has been an eye-opener if not experience, I only informed 8 people I was visiting and managed to meet just 6, even in those cases I was pressed for time and opportunity – if I had informed a handful more I would have been stressed beyond the limit in trying to satisfy the needs of meeting, visiting, seeing and staying.

This is only with 6 years away from London, imagine 16 years away from Nigeria and that would be a logistic nightmare requiring an updated version of management software from NASA expeditions – I am definitely not yet looking forward to that prospect.

Left driving for the right side

Many times I get into the argument about whether driving on the left is right or driving on the right in Europe is wrong or less popular around the world.

A good few countries drive on the left, including India, Australia, Canada and Indonesia. Some have switched sides as you will see from the link.

Imagine my consternation to the subconscious predilection to the right-side driving ideal when I find that I am on the wrong side of the road waiting for a bus or I notice that the driver is to my right when I get into a car.

Worse still, sitting in front, my eyes and head are in conflict as I expect to see cars going in one direction and they are not, this especially at turnings.

Then we got on the bus and I can claim priority seating on public transport because I do use a cane; I must note that London is a bit more tolerant compared to our Amsterdam when people with assisted mobility embark.

Do sit in my seat

Twice, at least, I was offered a seat on the tube, but when we got on a bus, a “lady” with more plastic bags than a Sainsbury’s counter got on and simply barked my friend off his seat beside me demanding to sit down.

At first we thought he had occupied reserved seats, but that was not the case, as the woman murmured without respite letting ladies have seats on buses, but she was no lady, not even if I stretched my imagination.

When we got to the last stop, she got off and started rummaging through the rubbish bins – that was our brush with the Mental Health – Care in the Community programme – if the medication does help bring good manners to the fore, she must have skipped her required dosage, where I could have had compassion, I had anger, disdain and disgust – I am only human.

Some have even suffered worse fates from those encounters, we only suffered a rude situation, and we can live with that.

Exciting Kitchen rage

On the Friday, we went up to a Nigerian Restaurant on Kinsland Road near Dalston in East London and we had the pepper soup and suya for entrées then as they had no okra soup we plumbed for the spinach and red stew.

This was the second time I felt like asking for an apron to invade the kitchen and teach a few ideas about cooking Nigerian stew – not only was it greasy and unpalatable, it completely put us off we could hardly try the beef in the stew.

The waitress then suggested a doggie-bag and in an unguarded response I rebuffed with the comment that my dogs would refuse the meal. Well, that was the truth, only it was not expressed in the finesse of tone, context and delivery.

I apologised, but I do hope that the message was clear that if another visit to that place records a failing of the sort we have once endured; my review of the place would be less appreciative than this one.

A changing London

All the area around London Bridge has changed considerably in 6 years from the City Hall and interesting performances in the bowl beside the building and those anti-skateboard knobs on the concrete platforms all down to Tate Modern, the Millennium Bridge and the London Eye.

I cried off the London Eye, the queues were as long as burger-gluttons lining up for a fat expensive burger at Hard Rock cafe or was it Planet Hollywood. The VIP express – jump-the-queue tickets were not only twice as expensive, the queue did not seem to be moving any faster either.

The view from the London Eye is not exactly a view to die for, having looked from the 7^th floor of Tate Modern did not show an amazing skyline rivaling New York, I can safely give that a miss for now.

London again?

Would it be another 6 years before I return? Probably … I cannot say I am that enamoured about London per se.

However, catching up with friends and family and seeing how so grown up those little kids have become is testament to the fact that time does fly and the accumulation of passing time adds up to what makes everyone exclaim – Has it really been that long ago since you were here? Well, yes, it has.

The end to presidential voyeurism

War against the presidential juggernaut

Somehow the presidential mandate in the United States cannot be accused for not putting up a robust fight in protecting the American People – whatever that means; it is an emotive appellation that deludes the group it refers to into a fall sense of security as their rights get trampled on.

Many bloggers including myself have derided vehemently the assumed untrammelled powers of the Presidency post 9-11 to abrogate legislative and judicial oversight under the premise of being the Commander-in-Chief in a time of war.

The one that has received the biggest brick-bats is the exercise of presidential privilege in the unwarranted surveillance of American citizens, the revelation of which caused stirs and the government in no mean terms condemned as unpatriotic and the most top secret activity in the war against terror.

The new un-American

The concern here is that the War on Terror has become a blanket term to separate acquiescing citizens whose complacency regarding their liberties and freedoms have been encroached upon with impunity and are assuaged with occasional coincidentally well placed security alerts from those who question the rationale behind many of those alerts and the intentions of the government.

The apologists are on the verge of calling the thinking ones un-American, time will tell if the ghost of Joe McCarthy does not return to haunt Americans, this time not on Communist activities but on trying to retain liberties, freedom and privacy over the behemoth of the State.

A timely judgement

Now, judgement has been returned in a suit filed in January 2006 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against the National Security Agency (NSA).

After weighing the government’s well-rehearsed mantra on state secrets, presidential war time claims of prerogative and powers as well as supposed value of the exercise against the issues of the first and fourth amendment, the separation of powers and existing laws regarding surveillance, the judge found in favour of the plaintiff.

On a broader scale, this is in favour of the sleeping majority who have allowed the machinery of government, especially this on to run roughshod over their rights which as a matter of course is enshrined in their constitution but never tested except in times of adversity.

Beyond that, it shows that the government should not take advantage of one situation (9-11) to exercise power in over other circumstances (constitutional rights) with the premise that all issues are related to some all-consuming desire to ensure national security – this is the whole aberration of the War on Terror.

For the world at large, hopefully, it would really help buttress the case of civil liberties where other governments appropriate the War on Terror and the American unconstitutional practices to clamp down on their people aspirations for the American freedoms of old.

Illegal, unconstitutional – STOP NOW!

In a 44-page judgement, the judge has declared surveillance without warrants unconstitutional and asked for them to be stopped forthwith. It is a definitely a setback for the Bush administration, but as expected, the government would appeal the ruling – this in the light of the fact that the Supreme Court has already told the President he does not have a blank cheque.

That cheque is written in the ink of the US Constitution, though pre-signed by the American People is only to the amount approved by the legislature, only then can the executive cash that cheque with the oversight in processing of the judiciary – that is the working of democracy – something we always get preached at us from the White House every time we try to catch breath.

What is strange is this landmark ruling does not to be hitting the headlines as much as other news stories like the tobacco industry getting away scot-free for deceiving customers with their advertising. How we get our priorities in a twist, at times.

Is this London?

I’m leaving on the slow train

With the new developments in the mind games that have been the real war on terror, travelling by air to London is completely out of the question. If you have to arrive at the airport a day before you depart and might only be able to have your hair shirt as hand luggage, why bother?

The other alternatives are road, sea and train – I took the latter which involves travel through Brussels and then the Eurostar from Brussels to London, at least you can carry whatever you want before some nut thinks that is another little scare in the making.

All signs lead nowhere

So, I arrived in London this afternoon and missed something I usually see in stations in Berlin and Paris, good signs for locations above ground and local maps on advertisement type billboards. Nothing of the sort, I need to get my A-to-Z out to find my bearings, hopefully, the street names appear where they should.

Before I surfaced, I had to get a London Underground travelcard (it used to be mainly paper-based with a magnetic strip – shows how long I’ve been away from London), it is now known as the Oyster card – a nondescript credit card sized plastic thingy that does not show any obvious sign that it is a 7-day travelcard for all zones.

Then to the hotel where I should had a deal that extended my entire stay, but with two days left, the cost is too outrageous to contemplate – this city is not paved in gold but they pay diamond prices for things that glitter like dark wood.

The spectre of crimes recent

So, I had a rather long walk to one of my old haunts and could not help but notice two crime scene notices seeking information for events that happened in the last few weeks. One victim was shot and another looked like a racial attack by a mob, all within a 5-minute stroll. Makes me weary of what is happening in London.

Then, somehow I ended up at Elephant and Castle; I remember my cousin once saying important landmarks in London are named after places in the biggest city in Nigeria – Ibadan. He gave a few examples like – Ìtá aperin (translates as the Elephant Square or Elephant and castle in this case), then Eléyelé (translates as the pigeon’s keeper or Trafalgar Square, if you like).

The maze of castle with no elephants

Anyway, I had to get a bus to my hotel, the signs indicated I need to look for bus stop C which was on the other end of that area, I got there and found that the maps did not correlate with the realities I could see, having traversed tunnels till my orientation is as bad as compass doing 10 revolutions per second, I threw up my hands in absolute despair and incredulity that anyone could make sense of those location maps.

A lady who seemed to know what my frustration was and the nonsense that masquerades as help for tourists and non-locals alike then gave directions which had me walking off in another direction, then finally I found the stop, only to see the that location map at the stop should have been the same all through.

It is strange because the map of the London Underground is considered a work of art, a masterpiece of engineering drawing and it is the standard by which other city maps are drawn; that these ideas have not converted to locations maps for bus stops is unfortunate.

London after six years of absence – not too sure – I give my views in a week.

Was that the Real Story?

When documentaries sensationalise rather than educate

I did not see the Real Story episode that was broadcast last night, but the snippets that were shown in the news stories during that day did have a touch of sensationalised histrionics to it.

It is a well-known fact that certain enterprising but dishonest Nigerians have been involved in what is known as Advanced Fee Fraud or 419 in the local parlance.

Part of what I saw showed a raid on an Internet café in Nigeria where officials of the EFCC (Nigerian Fraud Squad) had everyone vacate the computers; they asked everyone to put up their hands facing the walls and then as one of the suspects remonstrated an EFCC official assaulted the man with a slap in the face commanding him to shut up.

This is a poor reflection on the Nigerian criminal justice system that suspects can be assaulted but law enforcement agents with impunity and very little recourse for justice.

My take on 419

Back to 419 - This is where using the human susceptibility to greed and gullibility, a victim receives a request to supposedly launder ill-gotten gains from bogus contracts or stashes of frozen sums of money by providing their bank account details and paying an upfront fee for the administration of the process. Some are so sophisticated in their ploys that it becomes too good to be true – anything that has that feel to it has my radar homing in on something fishy.

Many have fallen for this get-rich-quick scheme and lost large sums of money, but I have no sympathy for both the perpetrator and the victim, they were both about to engage in a criminal act. However, there are cases where the contracts do look real, but when you are about to invest money, especially in Nigeria, you have to have your wits about you and seek an independent, impartial review of the whole thing – involve lawyers and investigators you can trust before you part with your cash.

The Real Story episode revealed that people’s details were being sold for as little as 20 Pounds, the details were supposedly gleaned of hard disks which would have been in used and second-hand computers exported to Nigeria.

Your details can be used anywhere

The fact is the information on hard disks can be read in any country and can be used by any set of criminals either in Nigeria or elsewhere. Having completed a module on Computer Forensics, I am very well aware of the fact that it takes a lot more to delete data off a hard disk.

There are tools to recover long removed data and special tools are required to wipe hard disks to the security standard of the Department of Defence, in fact, in most cases, the hard disk would be melted if the data that it once contained is considered secret.

Besides, identity fraud is probably an issue closer to home than in faraway Nigeria. All you have to do to rummage through a bin and find letters, bank statements, if not credit card PIN slips that give enough information about a person – this is called bin raiding – a further search on the Internet can reveal birth date, birthplace and parents if the genealogy, census, birth, marriage and death registrations are online.

A letter posted to my cousin in England from Nigeria some 20 years ago ended up in the hands of a lodger who used that information to obtain a National Insurance number in my name – so identity theft does not have to be so complicated or sophisticated.

Developing a sense of security to protect privacy

People who generally would lock their doors when they go out and pull the curtains to keep prying eyes out, apparently, do not apply the same principle to their information, data, computers and personal details.

Everyone who receives a letter of any importance must invest in a paper shredder and shredders do have different security ratings from strips to pulp – I never dispose of any paper that has not been shredded and I have been doing that for at least 7 years.

Your computer when online is like an open door with drawn curtains and open windows; you need more than just any popular anti-virus software because virus developers test their malevolent programs against popular anti-virus software to prevent detection.

The general idea is to develop the fortress principle to your computer, an outer wall (a firewall), the doors and windows (an anti-virus software) and then the protection of valuables within the home (malware detectors).

Use good tools

In my case, I do use a hardware firewall found in my wireless router and enable the software firewalls on all computers, I have installed the well known McAfee VirusScan Plus and Trend Micro PcCillin Internet Security ensuring that the updates run every day at night.

Malware is software that gets installed inadvertently on your system through opening a suspicious email or visiting an innocuous web site, they can install key loggers which record all the keystrokes you have typed and send that information to a harvesting system where the information can be replayed as if it were you logging on to your bank account or some other security service. These are really the identity theft perpetrators.

I use Lavasoft Ad-Aware and SpyBot – Search and Destroy, with all that attention to detail, I still find that a keylogger still ends up on my laptop every few days – you just need to keep ahead of the criminals – time after time.

In addition, to remove all references to sites, I have visited and files I have opened on an operational system, I use CleanUP.

If you are done with your computer, you can recycle it, but before you do, search for a secure hard disk deletion tool as this write-up suggests – Purge hard drives before recycling.

Common sense approach to social engineering

In all, you have your identity to protect, ensuring that the people privy to your secrets are authorised to access that information with discretion under the contract of confidentiality, not of which should violate your right to privacy.

Where people, emails or forms ask for information that should be personal and known only to you like your PIN numbers, do not under any circumstances reveal that information because that that time you would be seriously compromised – they might want information about who you are where name, address, date of birth and account number might suffice, but that should only be divulged to those your have ascertained through obtaining their own details first.

Always err on the side of caution, err of the side of keeping the information than giving it out.

References

UK Bank Details Sold in Nigeria

Top Ten Scams targeting customers – 419 comes 8^th

Britain Alleges ICT Bank Fraud on Its Citizens

Avarice Anonymous