Old fashioned policework foiled bomb plot

Predictably, right wingers crediting illegal "tough" security measures for foiling the liquid bombing plot.

Not so fast. The plot wasn't stopped by extraordinary rendition, waterboarding, warrrantless surveillance, or invading anyone's country.

No, it was old fashioned police work that cracked the bombing conspiracy.

And as Spencer Ackerman observes, the Brits caught the bad guys while asking for warrants every step of the way:

However, it's worth pointing out one key difference between the British way and the new American way of surveillance: Barring some unforeseen and massively scandalous revelation, British investigators, in all cases, have to obtain and comply with court-issued warrants for any surveillance. This week's counter-terrorism success should demonstrate how possible it is, and remains, for open-society to combat jihadism while preserving the rule of law.

This counter-terrorism success story is proof that legal surveillance works.

Comments

[MikeEss]

Given how Effed everything is right now, the fact that none of the evil things the Bushites claim to need were responsible for uncovering the bomb plot will be used to justify further abuses of privacy and human rights...(I think it's already started...)

[Steve LaBonne]

Wouldn't it be nice, though, if the Democrats hammered day and night on the very nice sound bite Lindsay thoughtfully provided for them in her post title, in an attempt to prevent them from getting away with that? I do realize of course that this could only happen in some parallel universe...

[The Phantom]

Good thing that the NY Times didn't get wind of this. They would have loved to "scoop" MI5 and plaster this all over page one! Think of the Pulitzers they might have won!

[Steve LaBonne]

Phantom, you're very confused as usual. It's your heroes, in their normal party-before-country mode, who pressured the Brits on the timing of the arrests because they wanted to play cheap politics with this threat. By the way, your favorite criminals have also been trying to divert funds appropriated by Congress for explosive detection at airports. Also by the way, where's Osama?

What a @#$%^&! idiot you are.

[greensmile]

Lindsay, I am glad to have this pointed out because it had been my impression from MSM that "intelligence as usual" [which has come to mean wire-tap-at-will] was important to the interdiction. I could not imagine much impediment to such a valuable bit of sleuthing arising from the formality of getting a warrant.

[The Phantom]

Steve

I've always spoken highly of you. At least you didn't actually use obscenity this time, which is some sort of progress.

They wanted to "play politics"? Like a previous comment that implied that the "Rethugs" wanted to influence the super-important Ned Primary in CT by having this bust take place a day or two after that primary election.

How an after the fact bust would influence the election is quite beyond my powers of analysis.

This past Thursday, I went through security at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport and went through a brand new GE Explosives Detection chamber. And on Friday, went through security at Cleveland's Hopkins Airport and was impressed by the good security at the X-Ray machine and the second check at the gate.

I am a security hawk, and am never satisfied, but was impressed with what I saw.

[B-money]

I am all for tough security measures and doing whatever it takes to stop terrorists from striking. But the Shrub administration takes it too far. If they would do there jobs properly, they being the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc., they would not need to create protocol that circumvents the constitution. I see no problem in doing the good old fashioned police work that allegedly took place in this incident.

Unfortunately the Shrub did not use 9/11 as a springboard to change the way our "intelligence" agencies operate. He proliferated the problems that existed and created new ones with the Patriot Act, which I was initially in support of, but now...not so much. What Shrubbie should have done was call for a major overhaul of the intelligence community and reassert the need for accurate information. But no, we still have the same garbage info we had under Slick Willy and King GB the 1st.