alexpgp | A hard nut?

Remarks by FBI Director Robert Mueller, from an article at CNN.com:

"Clearly, these 19 terrorists were not supermen using extraordinarily sophisticated techniques. They came armed with simple box cutters," he said.

"But they also came armed with sophisticated knowledge about how to plan these attacks abroad without discovery, how to finance their activities from overseas without alarm, how to communicate both here and abroad without detection, and how to exploit the vulnerabilities inherent in our free society.

"There were no slip-ups. Discipline never broke down. They gave no hint to those around them what they were about," Mueller's statement continued. "They came lawfully. They lived lawfully. They trained lawfully. They boarded the aircraft lawfully. They simply relied upon everything from the vastness of the Internet to the openness of our society to do what they wanted to do without detection." (emphasis mine)

I'm probably overreacting, but I don't see the "vastness of the Internet" as a major factor in the attacks. And even the part about the "openness of our society" makes me a little jumpy.

Whenever cops start talking like this, I get the feeling that a major part of their implied solution is to do things to make the Internet less vast, and our society less open. It's an easy solution, which gives every indication of working... until the next attack, after which the proposed solution is simply more of the same.

Clearly nobody is thinking "outside the box" on this, certainly not in government circles.

Cheers...