Suicide Bombings: Too Easy?

Terrorism experts agree that suicide bombers are virtually impossible to defend against. This week’s twin suicide bombings in Moscow show how easy it is...
No-one argues against more security, if for no other reason than the 'feel-safe' factor, but even an entire army could not have stopped the Moscow attacks, or those on the London Underground in 2005. Just a few well-placed suicide bombers in a public arena (a Rugby World Cup event for example) and a city grinds to a halt for days. We’ve seen what happens after just one bad traffic accident on the Auckland Harbour Bridge: the city is in total grindlock for hours!
There's a naivety that claims attacks like this won’t happen in NZ: it’s harder to blend into the crowd here than in Europe or the Middle East...we’re geographically isolated from trouble...we don’t have "people like that". But conventional wisdom also said women would not become suicide bombers... well, that's just gone out the window! And let's not forget the Maori activists' "terror training camp" incident of 2007. So it would be foolish to think that suicide bombers would never attack in NZ.
Just this month, reporters highlighted gaps in *yawn* Rugby World Cup stadium security. During next year's event, extra security will be added but in the end, if someone is determined, it probably won't matter much: armed officers could not stop Moscow's brazen suicide bombings. But maybe that’s the point: news stories called the attacks "brazen", yet the sad reality is that such attacks today are not really brazen at all. They seem fairly easy to pull off...

James Bond on Facebook?

Having battled Islamic extremists, Irish Republican terrorists and Russian agents, some veteran spies are being defeated by a foe they cannot master: information technology.
The fictional James Bond kept up-to-date with the latest gadgets, but older real-life spies have been warned they face redundancy if they fall behind with technology. Britain's MI5 Security Service is launching a round of redundancies to improve the overall level of computer skills among its staff. It is instead hiring new intelligence officers with a better grasp of information technology and other "deployable" skills: 007 on Facebook perhaps?
MI5 is concerned its overall IT skills are not up to scratch, leading to the redundancy of some employees. Only a small proportion will be affected, but redundancies will be across the board and not just with IT specialists.
With a move back towards on-the-ground eyes-and-ears human intelligence-gathering, MI5's current 3,500 officers will grow to 4,100 by next year, double its 2001 size. Many of the new recruits are in their 20s and 30s attracted by high-profile advertising campaigns and – in part – the excellent BBC drama Spooks.

Google On The Gigglebox

Now with control of the web's largest video library YouTube, Google is setting its sights on another new frontier: television. It's teaming up with Intel and Sony to access the web's most popular services through TVs.
For Intel, it's a way to get more of it's low-end chips into more TVs...for Google, the money's in the advertising potential...and naturally it'll be a Sony TV bringing this into your living room.
Many of the newest TVs on the market do have internet connectivity and built-in Web-based programming. Sony's latest HDTV, for example, comes with access to YouTube (owned by Google) as well as a variety of websites. But streaming internet-based media has been hampered by regional restrictions and licensing agreements - many popular sites can't be accessed outside USA.
Google TV plans to make the Web as accessible on TV as it is on computer, giving users everywhere access to sites across the spectrum, from social marketing to media content.
What's interesting to me is that this concept was first floated back in 1995 by Nicholas Negroponte who foresaw how the interactive, entertainment and information worlds would eventually merge, conceptually and technologically.
(See? I have remembered something from uni!)