Egypt Says Investigators Found No Sign Of ‘Terrorist Act’ In Russian Plane Crash by Eyder Peralta.
Despite early conclusions by the Russians, the United States, Britain, and claims by the Islamic State, the Egyptian government has concluded there is no sign of a terrorist attack in the downing of a Russian passenger plane in Egypt last October.
Reporters and citizens alike should view claims of “terrorist” and “not a terrorist” attack with heavy additions of salt.
In this particular case, Egypt wants to avoid further damage to its revenue from tourism, which is reported down by 10% over last year.
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are desparately trying to find a terrorist connection for the shooters in San Bernardino. See also: Everything we know about the San Bernardino terror attack investigation so far.
From the second Los Angeles Times story:
Why their plot wasn’t detected
Farook and Malik were unknown to law enforcement until the day of the shooting, but the reason for that isn’t yet clear.
The FBI is focusing on how they missed the couple’s secret radicalization and Farook’s apparent comments to an associate as early as 2011 that he was considering a terrorist attack.
Two people out of a current population of 322,332,500 (as of 14:58 EST today) not being known to law enforcement doesn’t surprise me.
Does it surprise you?
As far as threats of a terrorist attack years ago, if they arrested everyone who shouts “kill the umpire/referee, etc.,” there would not be anyone left to stand as guards in the prisons.
The reason for treating the deaths of co-workers at a holiday party as an act of terrorism is that it furthers the budget agendas of law enforcement and intelligence communities.
Imagine the surveillance that would be required to gather and be aware of a random statement from four years ago from otherwise unremarkable individuals.
Your system would have to connect a statement to a co-worker to the purchases of the weapons, ammunition and other supplies and then ring the alert bell to clue officers in on a pending threat.
That’s possible in retrospect but to prevent random acts your system would have to do all those connections in the absence of any reason to focus on these individuals in particular.
You know the old saying, when they criminalize guns, only criminals will have guns?
Same is true for privacy, when they criminalize privacy, only criminals will have privacy.
PS: Remember terrorism is a label used to question the loyalty, judgement of others and/or for furthering other agendas. You could substitute “belch” where you see it and still have 99% of the informative content of a message.