Aral Balkan

Just read this disturbing article from a journalist and computer enthusiast who was arrested on the London Underground as a suspected terrorist for using a laptop and, among other things, *not* looking at the police officers as he entered the station and looking carefully at the steps as he walked down.

All in all, very scary. If you must take the Underground, please remember not to run on to trains to avoid being shot repeatedly in the head and try and fight your urge crack open your notebook computer lest you be arrested as a suspected terrorist.

In fact, it's probably best not to wear a jacket or carry a rucksack.

Comments

• tell me about that aral, im Jordanian and i am afraid of coming to britain coz they will investigate with me and treat me as a suspect just coz i come from the middle east. I was actually trying to come to one of ur workshops for AS2 development but i tried to take a visa and they said that i have a weak chance of getting one. Hope all this ends soon.

  by tambi jalouqa on 2005-09-24 14:20:54

• I completely agree with you Aral and I am glad that you bring it up. Things are getting out of hand and the sacrifice of one of our biggest human values, freedom, is being robbed from us only with the excuse that it is good for us and the only solution possible and to create the illusion that we can big brother us away from from "the evil" that exist out there.

  by Kim Hansen on 2005-09-24 15:11:43

• You could draw a pretty good parallel between handling attacks and investing in stocks. If you chase after the winning stocks and invest in them, you will always lose. That's the way goverments handle attacks. Attack on the subway? Invest all your resources protecting the subways, and assume everyone in it is a terrorist. Hijacked planes? Invest all your resources harrassing everyone who flies. Members of ethnic group X did something bad. Ignore everyone else and investigate every one of them.
  
  In stocks, you want to diversify, investing a sane amount of money in a variety of possible winners. You could probably develop a pretty decent national security policy along the same lines.

  by Keith Peters on 2005-09-24 22:10:31

• You know, if this event or something similar hadn't happened, we'll all be bitching about how there's been not enough security response rather than over-responding. But i don't know. It gets pretty difficult to see what's going on down there from up on my moral high ground.

  by dtbr on 2007-08-29 10:25:25