Record year for swashbucklers

by Jerry Guo on

Almost 300 years after Blackbeard’s unseemly death, pirates are still a problem. A big problem. In the first nine months of this year, there have been at least 198 attacks, versus 174 for the same period last year. But there may be some relief in sight. The New York Times is reporting that international organizations are taking pirate attacks seriously, starting with authorizing troops to hunt them.

Don’t think this is just a problem for giant shipping containers. Tourists may also run into trouble. The two pirate hotspots are the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia and off the coast of Somalia in Africa. There’s two well reported and insightful features about pirates in these regions, one from Peter Gwin in the October issue of National Geographic and the other by the renowned writer-explorer Paul Raffaele in the August issue of Smithsonian Magazine.

Luckily you can read both articles online, and you definitely should. Not only do they put the global cruise and marine tourism industries in jeopardy, but pirates have their hands bloody with terrorism and smuggling operations. What we see on the big screen, such as from the Pirates of the Caribbean series (and the pornographic knockoff of that) trivializes what could become a crisis within the decade.

See also: Real Life Pirate Hangouts

EU to be the most surveilled region in the world

by Abha Malpani on

Privacy these days is a myth. I rang for a taxi the other day, and before I could say hello, I was greeted with my name and my residential address. Why does a taxi company have to know where I live if I haven’t told them?

Also, telecom providers who I don’t have a contract with, often call me on my cell and address me by my name. How did they get my personal cell number and full name? Do they have my credit card details as well? Probably.

When we travel, we have to give all our personal details anyway, so the EU‘s latest agreement to share these details with national and international authorities (depending on the countries we are entering and exiting): names, passport numbers, addresses, credit card details, email addresses, and phone numbers — in the name of fighting terrorism and organized crime, is no surprise.

What’s surprising is that on analyzing this most elementary information in the UK recently, British authorities arrested 1200 suspects. How is that possible? I suppose it’s more important to know the accuracy of the findings, i.e. how many of those arrests were valid?

So the EU’s request to allow the sharing of passenger details is under debate, but if it is approved, the EU will beat the US to being the most surveilled place on the planet.

I find it both scary and amazing how the information we give out willingly when we travel can be used get gory details of our lives.

[Via Guardian]

Japan to start fingerprinting foreign visitors

by Grant Martin on

It’s taste-of-your-own-medicine time in Japan. The Australian paper The Age reports that starting next month, foreigners visiting the Asian country will be subject to mandatory fingerprint and digital photograph collection. This includes not only tourists but the nearly 800,000 foreign residents already living in the country.

What I find particularly delightful is how angry people are getting about the new security measures. The Age writes that “Amnesty International is calling for the immigration plan to be abandoned”, saying “Making only foreigners provide this data is discriminatory.” What the heck do you call the US policy? Why don’t you have a problem with that?

I can see where the Japanese want to get a head start on security and it’s good that they’re taking a proactive approach to anti-terrorism. But isn’t one of the big reasons that reasons America is a target is that we’re the thousand-pound gorilla meddling in other countries’ affairs? Seems that Japan doesn’t subscribe to that sort of foolishness.

They can have my fingerprints. After this post, the DHS is going to do a thorough background check on me anyway, so there’s no hiding anything now (Mom and Dad, please dig up and burn the Romanian money I have buried behind the bougainvillea in the garden).

Note, if you’re connecting through Japan I don’t believe this extra security measure applies.

TSA Pours Out Coffee, Ignores Boxcutter

by Justin Glow on

Remember the pudding incident? Another BoingBoing reader had a similar experience — this time, Shannon Larratt‘s girlfriend forgot she had a boxcutter in her purse, but the TSA didn’t notice/care. They were more interested in throwing away the cup of coffee she had just purchased at the terminal cafe.

What’s scary is this probably happens pretty regularly, but not everyone thinks to sneak off to the airplane bathroom and snap a photo of the incriminating device. One commenter writes,

“I’ve done the same thing a half dozen times. I use my mess bag both for biking and travel, and I’ve at times forgotten to thoroughly de-terrorize it. I’ve been let on planes with an assortment of knives, bike tools and folding tools, no problems.”

What I’d like to know is if a passenger or flight attendant somehow finds out that there’s a boxcutter on the plane, whose fault is it? The person who accidentally forgot it was in their purse, or the TSA official who didn’t notice it?

How Would You Hijack an Airplane?

by Jonathon Morgan on

You know how in movies the bad guys always come up with a nearly air-tight plot to destory America, mankind, or whatever — only to be thwarted in the final hour by death-defying heroics?

Bruce Schneier, author of the Schneier on Security blog, things there’s some similarities between those seemingly plausible plans for destruction, and the ongoing battle between would-be terrorists and the TSA: We screened for guns and bombs, so the terrorists used box cutters. We took away box cutters and small knives, so they hid explosives in their shoes. We started screening shoes, so they planned to use liquids…

As such, he’s started a contest: invent your own terrorist hijacking plot.

Here’s the idea: invent a terrorist plot to hijack or blow up an airplane with a commonly carried item as a key component. The component should be so critical to the plot that the TSA will have no choice but to ban the item once the plot is uncovered. I want to see a plot horrific and ridiculous, but just plausible enough to take seriously.

Think you have what it takes to invent something so terrifying — yet plausible — that the TSA would be forced to ban wristwatches? Zippers over three inches long?

Give it a shot in the comments section of this post on Schneier’s blog.

[via BoingBoing]